Language Cocktail
In this passage from Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, Pip's "guilty mind" conspires with the environment to give him the impression that everything and everybody is aware that he has taken food from his sister's larder.
The mist "run(s) at him" and the gates, dikes, and banks "came bursting through the mist" as if chasing after him.
And at the pinnacle of paranoia, Pip mistakes "a black ox with a white cravat" for a priest with his dog collar, to whom he confesses his crime.
It's a perfectly balanced cocktail of language, psychology, and humour.
Pure Dickens.
Alberico Collina
"The mist was heavier yet when I got out upon the marshes, so that instead of my running at everything, everything seemed to run at me. This was very disagreeable to a guilty mind. The gates and dikes and banks came bursting at me through the mist, as if they cried as plainly as could be, "A boy with Somebody's else's pork pie! Stop him!" The cattle came upon me with like suddenness, staring out of their eyes, and steaming out of their nostrils, "Halloa, young thief!" One black ox, with a white cravat on,--who even had to my awakened conscience something of a clerical air,--fixed me so obstinately with his eyes, and moved his blunt head round in such an accusatory manner as I moved round, that I blubbered out to him, "I couldn't help it, sir! It wasn't for myself I took it!" Upon which he put down his head, blew a cloud of smoke out of his nose, and vanished with a kick-up of his hind-legs and a flourish of his tail."
In this passage from Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, Pip's "guilty mind" conspires with the environment to give him the impression that everything and everybody is aware that he has taken food from his sister's larder.
The mist "run(s) at him" and the gates, dikes, and banks "came bursting through the mist" as if chasing after him.
And at the pinnacle of paranoia, Pip mistakes "a black ox with a white cravat" for a priest with his dog collar, to whom he confesses his crime.
It's a perfectly balanced cocktail of language, psychology, and humour.
Pure Dickens.
Alberico Collina
"The mist was heavier yet when I got out upon the marshes, so that instead of my running at everything, everything seemed to run at me. This was very disagreeable to a guilty mind. The gates and dikes and banks came bursting at me through the mist, as if they cried as plainly as could be, "A boy with Somebody's else's pork pie! Stop him!" The cattle came upon me with like suddenness, staring out of their eyes, and steaming out of their nostrils, "Halloa, young thief!" One black ox, with a white cravat on,--who even had to my awakened conscience something of a clerical air,--fixed me so obstinately with his eyes, and moved his blunt head round in such an accusatory manner as I moved round, that I blubbered out to him, "I couldn't help it, sir! It wasn't for myself I took it!" Upon which he put down his head, blew a cloud of smoke out of his nose, and vanished with a kick-up of his hind-legs and a flourish of his tail."
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