Calm // Emma Kate Patterson

     In book twelve Dickens uses diction to explain the environment and setting in a very explicit way. By doing this he creates a calm and serene mood. He is explaining the environment to show the calm after the storm. He states, ", the broken arch of the bridge in the park is mended; and the water, now retired within its proper limits and again spanned gracefully, makes a figure in the prospect from the house. The clear cold sunshine glances into the brittle woods and approvingly beholds the sharp wind scattering the leaves and the dying moss." He first starts explaining the park by saying that the bridge is now mended. This leads the reader to view the broken being mended. He then says the water is back within normal limits and spread. This gives the reader and calm and serene mood because it is almost as if what was flooded and ruined is now back to normal. Dickens then describes the sunshine as clear and cold. Although the cold normally entails an overall bad mood in this case I believe since it is paired with the describing word clear it creates a crisp and refreshing mood. It creates the type of feeling in the reader as when you wake up on a cool winter morning and look out the window at the sun beaming down. He then describes the wind as scattering the leaves and dying moss. The leaves and dying moss would both help to describe an eerie or unknown mood. By describing the wind as scattering them this shows a sign of new life and freshness. All of this diction that describes the environment creates an overall calm, serene, and fresh mood which is something we did not see in the opening of the book.

I commented on Emmett Bryant’s and Song Whittington’s post.