COMMENTARY. 1. So furious had been the gusts

1. So furious had been the gusts....

Note the inverted word order in this sentence. This word order is usually resorted to emphasize the idea expressed in a sentence or passage. To give the description an emotional coloring and to intensify the feeling of gloom and impending horrors Dickens uses in, this passage some other stylistic devices besides inversion. They are: a specific choice of epithets pertaining to weather (wretched, stormy, wet), parallel constructions (see commentary to Lesson 1, note 7) and reiteration.

Reiteration (repetition) is one of the basic figures of speech employed as a means of emphasis. In this passage the words "stormy and wet" and "mud" are reiterated to emphasize the wretchedness of the weather.

2....heard the footstep stumble in coming on. The above sentence may serve as an illustration of metonymy — the name of the thing is of metonymy, one of the most significant tropes in which of the thing is put for that of another related to it (see Lesson 1, note 9). When the author says that Pip "heard the footstep stumble" he means that Pip heard somebody stumble on the stairs.

The use of metonymy here contributes to the atmosphere of grow­ing suspense, for Pip's imagination played a trick on him and he associated the sound with the footstep of his dead sister's ghost,

3. "There is nothing the matter?" [25]

Note the order of words in this question. In colloquial English an interr