The
following six sentences are from “Hard Times” by Charles Dickens…
“The scene was a plain, bare, monotonous vault of a school-room, and the
speaker’s square forefinger emphasized his observations by underscoring
every sentence with a line on the schoolmaster’s sleeve.
The emphasis was helped by the speaker’s square wall of a
forehead, which had his eyebrows for its base, while his eyes found commodious
cellarage in two dark caves, overshadowed by the wall.
The emphasis was helped
by the speaker’s mouth, which was wide, thin, and hard set.
The emphasis was helped by the speaker’s voice, which was
inflexible, dry, and dictatorial.
The emphasis was helped by the speaker’s hair, which
bristled on the skirts of his bald head, a plantation of firs to keep the wind
from its shining surface, all covered with knobs, like the crust of a plum pie,
as if the head had scarcely warehouse-room for the hard facts stored inside.
The speaker’s obstinate carriage, square coat, square legs, square
shoulders,—nay, his very neckcloth, trained to take him by the throat with an
unaccommodating grasp, like a stubborn fact, as it was,—all helped the emphasis.”
Those six sentences, italics mine, form one paragraph. I have separated
the sentences here so as to help identify the usage of the words “emphasized”
and “emphasis”, within those sentences.
In sentence one we see the word used as a verb applying to “observations”.
In subsequent sentences we read how the emphasis was aided by some opprobrium of personal trait of “the speaker”.
I am convinced that Dickens, a master of opprobrium, did not, in these
sentences, exhaustively apply opprobrium, but did so sparingly so as to avoid
reaching the point of intolerance of the reader.
I hope, in my scrutiny of this paragraph, to have helped the reader
grasp an appreciation of Dicken’s style of over-emphasis of garrulous detail.
Envious of his writing style since first reading “Hard Times” in 1969, I
have tried to emulate to some degree his expertise of adjuring words and
imagery such that my reader would respond with either chuckle, chortle, or
well-chosen opprobrium.
