LMD Async Tutoring

[LMD]

@LMD

There is fog in the smoking pipe of the skipper (a trading ships master or captain). The pipe is for smoking tobacco, the fog there too mixes with the smoke that he breathes in.

The fog is “pinching the toes and fingers” of the boy on the “deck” of the ship, because it is cold. His extremities are feeling the cold. He is also shivering.

Also, I think that it is “cruelly” pinching the toes and fingers of the boy, is related to the “wrathful” skipper; the skipper is angry and perhaps cruelly disciplining his apprentice by making him stay up on deck in the cold, or otherwise giving him cruel tasks up on deck.

[LMD]

@Elliot

So, right after the flood, Megalosaurs would not be extinct.

Ah right yes, I do get that.

@Elliot

Does that now seem like a clear connection to you? The megalosaur comment follows from and relates to the flood comment, rather than being an independent, isolated way of saying it looks prehistorically muddy.

Yup, I see that. Megalosaurus is now extinct but wouldn’t have been just after the flood. Its not a random pair of prehistoric things, they’re related.

@Elliot

I think trying to go into scientific and logical details misses the point because the book doesn’t expect readers to know which dinosaur was discovered first or how intellectuals reacted to those fossils and tried to reconcile them with theology. The book is meant to be less difficult or obscure than that.

Sure. It would presumably have to be a reference that people of the time might get though right?

I would be surprised to find out regular people in 19th century England thought that dinosaurs should be included in the Noah’s Ark story. Like I think people wouldn’t think dinosaurs were on Noah’s Ark, so they might not make that connection. Even though afaik the story says Noah took a pair of every kind of animal abord the ark, I don’t know if people broadly would have reinterpreted that to logically mean that includes recently discovered dinosaurs. But I don’t know. Apparently this was the first reference to a dinosaur in a novel. I think Charles Dickens is probably smart enough to make that connection which is probably what matters here.

[Elliot]

If Noah had all the animals, I think it’s natural to think that would include animals that hadn’t been discovered yet including extinct ones. If you’ve never seen an elephant, then you see one, and you’re Christian with a mindset from centuries ago, I don’t see why you would doubt that elephants were on the ark. How could an elephant even be alive today if the ark didn’t save its ancestor from drowning? And if there are dinosaurs bones then obviously they went extinct after the flood because Noah didn’t miss any animals b/c God told him not to leave any out and obviously he would obey God and the story didn’t say he screwed up and he didn’t get punished for screwing up. (I think/assume without reading the Bible.)

If dinosaurs were a new discovery, idk how well that knowledge would have spread, but maybe anyone who is actually reading a book would be likely to have heard about it? Books were less accessible than news. Or maybe Dickens overestimated his audience and used a reference too early before it spread idk, but I don’t think that’s very relevant to what the passage is supposed to mean, as you said:

I think Charles Dickens is probably smart enough to make that connection which is probably what matters here.

[Elliot]

@LMD

First thing I notice is the word “aits”. I hadn’t heard that before. According to my dictionary, an ait is a small island in a river. This makes sense with the text. A green ait I think is one covered in grass or foliage.

The river in question I believe is the river Thames which flows through London. The Thames flows from west to east into the north sea. Upriver means toward the source of the stream, and downriver away. The green aits and meadows are to the west. The “tiers of shipping” I believe may refer to the locks and weirs along the Thames enabling freight ships to travel up and downstream. They allow boats to be raised and lowered to different levels of a river.

The “waterside pollutions” may refer to industrial activity happening in London and along the river to the east. The river was used in industry (and domestically) to dispose of waste and to help supply water for factories.

sounds right to me (I didn’t look stuff up)

@LMD

My guess was that they are geographically contrasting to emphasise that there really was fog everywhere, from coastal lowlands to higher lands?

yeah height contrast was my first guess (along with location contrast: fog in various different places).

@LMD

I saw someone asked a question about this on reddit that got no replies, their theory was that the essex marshes and kentish heights were socioeconomically contrasting.

that would be unsurprising. wealthy ppl living up on a hill is a common concept.

@LMD

I didn’t know what the term caboose meant, and I didn’t know what a collier-brig was. A collier is a cargo ship for transporting coal. A brig means a two masted ship. So a collier-brig is a two masted coal transport. This connects with the references to shipping, pollution, and industry earlier in the paragraph. The caboose is the kitchen of the ship.

The “yards” I believe are shipping yards, not e.g yards of a house. This fits with the ship theme of the sentence. which are places for loading/unloading cargo and that service ships etc.

I looked up gunwale, its the upper edge of a ship.

sounds right. “yards” is used for stuff besides house yards in modern contexts, e.g. train yards or storage yards.

@LMD

Also, I think that it is “cruelly” pinching the toes and fingers of the boy, is related to the “wrathful” skipper; the skipper is angry and perhaps cruelly disciplining his apprentice by making him stay up on deck in the cold, or otherwise giving him cruel tasks up on deck.

I’m doubtful about this. I think you did well when looking things up and figuring out what the terms meant. But I think being cold is just normal, not a punishment; I thought the boy was too poor to afford shoes and that’s why his toes were cold.

Being wrathful is normal (then, less so now but still some) for people in authority like the skipper and doesn’t suggest to me that he’s punishing the boy right now. I assume they are out in the cold to do productive work. I’m not sure what kind of punishments were normal then besides I think whipping or various forms of beatings were way more common. The idea of making someone endure cold as a punishment sounds kind of modern to me like something that might be a challenge on a TV show; I think it might make more sense to us now in a world where we have a lot more ability to stay warm. Back then when people were frequently involuntarily cold I’m not sure they’d use cold as a punishment much but I’m no historian just guessing.

[LMD]

@Elliot

@LMD

Also, I think that it is “cruelly” pinching the toes and fingers of the boy, is related to the “wrathful” skipper; the skipper is angry and perhaps cruelly disciplining his apprentice by making him stay up on deck in the cold, or otherwise giving him cruel tasks up on deck.

I’m doubtful about this. I think you did well when looking things up and figuring out what the terms meant. But I think being cold is just normal, not a punishment; I thought the boy was too poor to afford shoes and that’s why his toes were cold.

Being wrathful is normal (then, less so now but still some) for people in authority like the skipper and doesn’t suggest to me that he’s punishing the boy right now. I assume they are out in the cold to do productive work. I’m not sure what kind of punishments were normal then besides I think whipping or various forms of beatings were way more common. The idea of making someone endure cold as a punishment sounds kind of modern to me like something that might be a challenge on a TV show; I think it might make more sense to us now in a world where we have a lot more ability to stay warm. Back then when people were frequently involuntarily cold I’m not sure they’d use cold as a punishment much but I’m no historian just guessing.

True yeah that all makes sense. That connection felt pretty speculative to me, like I was unsure about it.

Funny I didn’t think that the boy might not be wearing shoes, but I think you’re right that he wouldn’t. I just thought his toes might be getting cold anyway.

I’ve tried reading some more of the book and I found it quite challenging, though fun. It felt like I was lifting heavy reading weights or something. I definitely needed to be using a dictionary almost every sentence. The language is a strange combination of familiar and foreign, I guess because it’s just old enough, but not too old. That means I had to be extra sensitive as to whether I was understanding or not. I could feel myself getting better at finding where my trouble lay with each sentence. I think I did okay though, I could just imagine it would take me a while to read. It felt like a good exercise. I think I’m going to do some more analysis of it.

[Elliot]

Bleak House came out in 1852 but (if the first paragraph is representative) it seems harder to read than William Godwin’s writing 50 years earlier.