Weather

Question 1

‘A great chocolate-coloured pall lowered over heaven’

Answer 1

• ‘great’ and ‘heaven’ - magnitude of what’s happening, all-encompassing
• funeral pall - city is as good as dead with Hyde’s presence

Question 2

‘A haggard shaft of daylight would glance in between the swirling wreaths’

Answer 2

• corruption of the goodness and safety of light with ‘haggard’ - could represent knowledge, can’t break through
• ‘swirling’ - connotation of wildness and uncontrollability, they have no power in the situation

Question 3

‘A fog rolled over the city in the small hours’

Answer 3

• Gothic convention - darkness, obscurity, late at night
• Hyde’s crimes always happen under the cover of fog, show something’s going to happen
• ‘rolled’ - unstoppable

Question 4

‘A pale moon, lying on her back as though the wind had tilted her’

Answer 4

• personification of the moon as woman - connotations of fragility and peace
• this is undermined by the wind - violent weather changing the normal
• on the way to Jekyll’s - nothing is as it seems, foreshadowing

Question 5

‘The wind made talking difficult and flecked the blood into the face’

Answer 5

• if they can’t talk they can’t rationalise (especially Utterson) - this is supernatural and can’t be explained, fear
• violent + dangerous connotation of ‘blood’ add to this

Question 6

‘I was coming home from some place at the end of the world, about three o’ clock of a black winter morning’

Answer 6

• Vague language - secrecy, sets this up as mysterious
• three o’ clock - again Gothic convention, darkness + solitude
• ‘black’ + ‘winter’ - not a comfortable or safe setting

Question 7

‘The thin trees in the garden were lashing themselves along the railing’

Answer 7

Horrible, unsettling + intense
- Idea of the trees ‘atoning’ for the sins of their ‘master’ (Jekyll) with punishment - effect on nature
- ‘Thin’ = delicacy vs violence of ‘lashing’ - contrast emphasises strength

Question 8

The court was… full of premature twilight, although the sky, high up overhead, was still bright with sunset’

Answer 8

• Near the laboratory (Hyde’s setting) it is dark (associated with evil and Hyde) even though there is light in other places - unnatural