London Fog

London fog is seen by many as an inevitable force that has plagued the area for centuries. The fog fills the air with a thick cloud that coats the city and everyone inside. Tim Goodwin believes the fog is a manmade force that acts as a parasite against the city. While Charles Dickens sees the fog as a shadow of the city that creeps around everywhere. Both passages clearly regard this topic with a different purpose and style, but still gives the viewer a good insight of life among the fog.

The purpose of Tim Goodwin’s 1997 passage was to inform the reader of the fogs effects with the use of statistics. He gives us everything from death tolls to the amount of tons of matter deposited in the city’s limits. Goodwin goes on to describe the city with diction such as “misty” and “marshy”. The use of this diction allows the reader to understand what it would feel like to be in London during a great fog. On the other hand, Charles Dickens passage’s in Bleak House was to describe the setting of London fog. He uses parallelism throughout the passage starting each sentence off with “Fog”. This organization helps with the purpose of the passage by emphasizing that the fog is, literally, everywhere.

Goodwin’s style represented in this passage is described as expository. His syntax used helped develop the tone of gloominess and despair. He does this by his use of certain words such as “plagued” to describe London as a smoky suburb surrounded by death. To contrast, Dickens has a more descriptive style to his work. Words such as “creeping”, “drooping”, and “cruelly” describe the fog captivating London’s people. Dickens, like Goodwin, has a tone of despair. He tells of all the malice effects of the fog, but not a solution to cure it.

The fog depicted from both passages leave the reader with heavy hearts. The fog haunted the city of London with no escape or fair warning of when it would come back.