Writing About Charles Dickens 'Sketch' on people facing death penalty

Dickens uses a variety of adverbs in the passage description . An adverb is shown in the quotation: ' rumbling of some passing vehicle which echoes mournfully'. The word ' mournfully' displays how the environment in which the people are in is upsetting and barren. The reader can feel how depressing the area is and how many people have mourned in the past over their death sentence.                                                                                          

Try and use the word 'adverb' only once and bring in the quote a bit earlier - get the whole thing down to 50 words.

The use of exclamations is used to add drama throughout the extract which is shown in the quote 'The deep bell of St Paul's strikes - one!'. This use of exclamation is used to add affect to the sentence. For example the use of the quote adds a sinister feel and a sense of finality. The use of words within the quote symbolizes that his life is near end.

Dickens choice of language with direct address to the reader leads the reader to imagine themselves in the same situation as the condemned prisoner. "conceive the situation of a man, spending his last night on earth in this cell." The verb conceive makes the reader feel empathy for the prisoner's. This is because the prisoners are all ready to die, and spending their last night in a cell is not the best way to spend your last night. 

Charles Dickens uses an interesting verb "echoes" to talk about how the prisoners are feeling in the sentence "some passing vehicle echoes mournfully." The adverb "mournfully" describes the echoes as being deathlike. "echoes" means the deathlike noises are going through their heads and has a mental and physical effect on the prisoners, and allows the reader to imagine hearing the noises in the cell.

Missing word in first sentence... Capital letter missing... 

Agony ...    stone dungeon 

Dickens uses interesting vocabulary choices throughout the text. In the line "every muscle of his frame quivering with agony,"  the noun agony shows that he isn't experiencing pain he is experiencing an unbelievable pain and this helps the reader understand and imagine what the prisoner is experiencing.

The way in which Dickens uses the noun phrase 'a handsome boy' to describe the boy. The adjective 'handsome' gives a happy and youthful view on a sad story where a young boy is now in prison for burglary. By having the image of a young soul being a prisoner and not even being fourteen among older men who are sentenced to death, brings the reader closer to the prisoners' experience. The reader will feel the fate of the young boy being scared and still having his whole life ahead of him and we would be shocked to know that being that young you are able to still go to prison.

The emphasis of the personification phrase 'The feeble light is wasting gradually' suggests that the light is 'wasting' away as time continuously travels by and as it fades away so to does the prisoners hope. This makes the audience relate to the prisoners in the story due to the weakness that is conveyed in the adjective 'feeble'. The effect that this brings onto the reader is that it relates to the phrase 'light could struggle' proposing that both the light and prisoners are struggling through a comparable situation. 

Charles Dickens describes the meaning of  "A stone dungeon", using the post -modification "eight feet long by six feet wide". This extra description shows how  uncomfortable it is due to the size of the dungeon, giving a realistic dimension for the reader. 

Dickens uses semantic field of time, with phrases such as "Five o'clock... ten o'clock... hour after hour... Seven hours left!" to show us that the experience of a prisoner sentenced to death is tough and nerve wracking while the time slowly comes to the end.

This affects the reader by making him imagine being in the prisoner's skin and how the time is slowly counting down until his death. Dickens talks to us about a 14 year old boy who is going to die for doing something silly making the reader unsteady and nervous as the time goes down.

Dickens gives a sense that the prisoner feels time is short and fleeting. One way dickens does this is through the use of minor sentences for example "Seven hours left!". This sentence helps the reader to imagine the prisoners feelings and their sense of time, as the sentence is near to the end of the text giving the feeling that most of his time is already gone also the sentence has an exclamation mark implying that the prisoner is very worried about the whole situation. The sentence itself is very short like the prisoners time and its straight to the point with no unnecessary words making sure that the readers attention is completely focused on the amount of time the sentence is showing.