"Perfume" passage analysis. This passage is important because it reveals a lot about Baldinis character

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Aletta van der Merwe 11A English Literature Perfume Baldini Paragraph This passage is important because it reveals a lot about Baldini’s character. One phrase or sentence which starts revealing Baldini’s character is “here everything flowed away from you - the empty and the heavily laden ships. The rowboats, and the flat - bottomed punts of the fishermen, the dirty brown and the golden-curled water - everything flowed away, slowly, broadly and inevitably”. There is quite a contrast within the phrase, “the empty and heavily laden ships” is the contrast between
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Baldini’s life and life itself. The empty ships represent Baldini’s empty life, how he has nothing left of himself. The heavily laden ships represent the life of Paris, or actually life itself. Life is being difficult and ‘heavy’ as in the sense of a burden. Baldini’s life is empty while the actual life of Paris is quite a burden. The phrase also twists the symbolic view of water, which is seen (symbolically) as pure or life. But here the water is “dirty brown and the golden-curled”. Dirty water is symbolic of impurity, or a dirtied life. Then the imagery of ...

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