Essay 2

Ben’jamin Dameron
Mr. H Salsich
English 9
27/09/10

Secret and Mystery
An Essay on Similes with People:

Human minds might be some of the most complex theory induced possessions that humans have. Everybody has theories and simile to attempt on making the brain a little clearer. Some people talk about themselves and some people talk about others. Dickens uses similes a lot in his books and there are many theories, but I also have some of my own.

I have found evidence to support a theory about Dickens possibly writing about himself on page 15. It is possible that when Dickens says, “I have had glimpses of buried treasure and other things submerged.” (Dickens, 15) That he is talking about his dreams. If this holds true, the “book [that] shut with a spring” is life telling him no. People can not always get want they want; this is what Dickens might be saying, though from his view, and his loss. He goes on to say, “It was appointed that the water should be locked in an eternal frost…and I stood in ignorance on the shore.” And he might be trying to say that he is ignorantly continuing to try to reach lost hopes, and lost dreams, and lost love ones. When he expands on this statement, he says, “[that] in any burial-places of this city (his mind) through which I pass, is there a sleeper more inscrutable than its busy inhabitants are, in their innermost personality, to me, or than I am to them?” he could have been trying to say his mind, a city where all sleep, has seen so much pain and loss, that he is simply asking, “Could there be anything else that could go wrong.” There are many explanations of this paragraph in A Tale of Two Cities, and I hope I have given ample evidence to one of them.

Just as Dickens might compare his dreams to a book or water, I compare people secrets and mysteries to a fire atop the snow. To make a fire on top of snow requires the correct tools, just as it takes time to get to know somebody. It takes a long time to get all the dry wood and kindling that you need to make a fire on the cold wet floor. It also takes a long time to really get to know someone very well. Once you have your wood, and your friends personality, you to know what to do from there. You can not just light a fire from anywhere, you need to know all the tricks otherwise you will just have a lot of wet smoke in your face. The same theory applies with people, for you can not just walk up to someone and say, “Would you please tell me those things that you have never told anybody else ever in your whole life?” because if you did that, you would just end up with some cold smoke in your face. If you learn somebody’s secrets and hopes, you need to know where to go from there, just like how you must know what to do with a fire once you have a cold wet flame, because the fire could keep you warm and well, or it could burn you and spoil your good mood that you have received do to the wonderful accomplishment of starting a fire in the snow which is nasty stuff that is generally difficult to light fires on (long sentence-82). If you know someone’s secrets, you could help them keep it a secret or, you could spoil there good mood by telling everybody, loosing their trust, and being thought poorly of, and being left with few friends (tricolon). On a very similar note, if you get too close to the fire, taunting it and poking fun at the brilliant cold wet flames, you will really just be putting your hand on a barbecue, yet if you respect the flames, they will keep you warm. I do believe that you can get inside a person and start a fire in their cold wet heart, but it takes time and once you have, you must respect that privilege.

Everybody from children to accomplished writers have theories about minds of people. Dickens has elaborate and difficult similes that are near impossible to fully understand. However, people everyday come up with simpler similes about brains of people. I believe that no simile will really explain the mind, and I believe that Charles Dickens thought the same way.