Commentary on a passage from "Dombey and Son" by Charles Dickens.

The instances of visual and auditory imagery easily cohabitate the themes and sub themes. Golden sunbeams pierce through the rustling blinds and fall on the wall. These sunbeams are compared, by dickens, to golden water. This comparison serves as a simile which therefore also helps to visualize it. The word rustling signifies the sound of the window blinds being pulled up. This is onomatopoeia and also serves the purpose of auditory imagery as it helps the reader to compare the sound to real life situations.

Soon darkness sets in. as the sun sets the sky is described by dickens to be red and beautiful. But as night falls the atmosphere slowly changes from pleasant to gloomy. The word “deepen” is repeated thrice. This could be symbolizing how Paul is going to fall deep into the pit of death. These words bring about a sudden change in the readers mind. Death is symbolized by the onset of night. Even though death chases Paul and is soon going to catch him he is still trying his best to run as fast as he can to get away from death and go as far away as he can. Paul is in a state of peace and tranquillity throughout the passage even though death is hammering at his life’s door. Somehow he is protected by his peaceful mind and death cannot penetrate him. Paul thinks of the stars at night and imagines them to be placid like him. Hence the author has called the stars peaceful.

 Paul observes the city of London from his window but the river Thames always seems to catch his attention. The river symbolizes Paul’s life. The river flows on and ends when it meets the sea. In the same way Paul’s life too is swiftly flowing away and it will soon come to an end. Paul realises this and so he tries to stop it with his childish hands. He tries to choke its way with sand but to no avail as the river goes on.

As the night continues Paul can hear very few footsteps from outside on the street in contrast to the day when he could hear a huge amount of sounds not only footsteps but even carriages and the whinnying of horses. He hears the footsteps late in the night. They are few in number so they echo past Paul and quickly disappear into the night. The effect of the footsteps creates a mixture of visual and auditory imagery in the readers mind as one can easily imagine the sound of footsteps but the way in which dickens has written these lines literally forces the readers mind to imagine a person walking down a lone street at night.

The author has made cleverly made use of hyphens at many important parts of the passage for example the lines “he felt forced to try and stop it – to stem its way with his childish hands – or choke its way with sand – and when he saw it coming on resistless he cried out!” .The use of hyphens creates a dramatic effect in the mind of the reader and grips him due to the suspense and the tense atmosphere hence proving dickens as a master of writing. After the last line Paul wakes up realising it was a dream and seeing his sister Florence at his side he crawls into her lap and tells her of his dream. His sister is always at his side taking care of him. She adopts the archetype of a mother, nurse and a friend at the same time. This also shows us  how much love Florence has for Paul and how Paul shares everything with her.

Paul’s condition makes us all feel sorry for him and we all try to sympathize with him. But yet the bravery he shows as he fights his disease and tries his best to fight death at the same time should teach us all that we should never ever lose hope in something that we truly believe in.