Figurative Language In Charles Dickens's 'Buddha Of Suburbia'

The first passage, extracted from author Charles Dickens’ book Oliver Twist, establishes the meaning of the morning rush to work in the year 1837; Dickens creates this meaning through his specific sentence structure and his continuous use of imagery within the extract. The second passage, extracted from The Buddha of Suburbia, written by Hanif Kureishi, establishes a modern description of the class division created by the city of London; Kureishi creates this meaning with the use of characterization and figurative language. Both Dickens and Kureishi, are able to create a theme of society and class that is accurate to the time period in which each individual passage is written. Dickens extract contains a repetitive writing structure when he is describing the various people making their way toward the city for work in the early hours of the morning. The continuous use of the semicolon punctuation indicates a sense of a never ending line of individuals going to work on the morning that Oliver is walking through the street. Dickens writes “then, came straggling groups of labourers going to their work; then, men and women with fish-baskets on their heads; donkey-carts laden with vegetables; chaise-carts filled with live-stock or whole carcasses of meat; milk-women with pails; an unbroken concourse of people, trudging out

In his extract, Dickens is able to display the repeated idea of class by having all the people making their way to work be of lower and/or middle class occupations. Similarly, Kureishi creates the theme of class when he is comparing the close towns in the city of London that give the impression of being two completely opposite worlds. Kureishi brings out the theme of society by simply describing the characteristics and occupational norms of the people that live in specific areas in