In Stave One, Dickens provides a description of Ebenezer Scrooge. This description is rich in figurative language.
Dickens uses a simile, for example, to convey Scrooges's inaffable nature: he is described as 'hard and sharp as flint'. This comparison to stone implies to the reader that Scrooge does not display warmth of emotion. He is an extremely reticent character who does not enjoy the company of others. This use of figurative language also hints at a key them in the text: the theme of change of reformation. By saying that he is as 'hard' as 'stone' Dickens could be suggesting that Scrooge has a very immalleable nature and a fixed attitude. He is stubborn and reluctant to change his ways.
Another example of figurative language in Stave One is when Scrooge is describes as being 'as solitary as an oyster'. This simile emphasises Scrooge's reclusive nature as it creates the vivid image of Scrooge being comfortable within the confines of his 'shell'. On a more implicit level, the image of an oyster alludes to the goodness that lies dormant within Scrooge. Oysters produce pearls; this could imply that deep in Scrooge's shell, he too possesses something of value that is redeemable.
In Stave 1, the narrator employs a simile when he says that "Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail." This is a common expression that the narrator sort of plays with on the first page, suggesting that perhaps it would be more appropriate to say that someone is as dead as a "coffin-nail," but of course that's not how the saying goes. He uses another simile when he says that Scrooge is "Hard and sharp as a flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire [...]." He means to suggest, of course, that Scrooge is, figuratively, cold and hardened. Another simile suggests that Scrooge is "solitary as an oyster." The narrator employs a metaphor when he says that Scrooge had a "frosty rime [...] on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin." He implies that Scrooge is so cold that even his white hair makes him seem covered in a frost. The narrator uses personification when he says,
The ancient tower of a church, whose gruff old bell was always peeping slily down at Scrooge out of a gothic window in the wall, became invisible, and struck the hours and quarters in the clouds, with tremulous vibrations afterwards as if its teeth were chattering in its frozen head up there.
He gives the bell human awareness and expressions as well as the attributes of teeth and a head. Later, when Scrooge's door knocker turns into his old partner, Marley's, face, the narrator describes it has having a "dismal light about it, like a bad lobster in a dark cellar"—another simile. Another simile describes the loud sound of the door banging shut as "resound[ing] through the house like thunder."
There are so very many examples of figurative language in this text! These are all only in the first chapter.
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