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Unit 7: Charles Lamb-Dream Children: Critical Analysis


          1.  Children love to listen to stories about their elders, when they were children; to stretch their  Notes
             imagination to the conception of a traditionary great-uncle, or grandame, whom they never
             saw.
          If applied to daily communication, the former part of this sentence seems somewhat prolix.
          However, here it gives us a sense of comfort and enjoyment, for in the essay it causes our sympathy
          with the author of the fondness of innocent children. Therefore, we do not feel weary.

          7.4.2 Cohesion
          Sentences in Dream Children are long, sometimes containing more than eighty words in one. The
          author makes them cohesive with the help of coordination, conjunctions, as well as some adverbs.
          For instance:
          1. Then I went on to say, how religious and how good their great-grandmother Field was, how
             beloved and respected by everybody   (Adverb  then and the coordination  how…how…how…
             here function as cohesive devices.)
          2. But still she lived in it in a manner as if it had been her own, and kept up the dignity of the
             great house in a sort while she lived, which afterwards came to decay, and was nearly pulled
             down, and all its old ornaments stripped and carried away to the owner’s other house, where
             they were set up, and looked as awkward as if some one were to carry away the old tombs they
             had seen lately at the Abbey,  and stick them up in Lady C.’s tawdry gilt drawing-room.
             (Conjunction and here functions as a cohesive device.)

          7.5 Article Features

          7.5.1 Narration Enlivened by Depiction of the Children.
          As is illustrated in sentence (5) and (6), the author’s narration of the great-grandmother and his
          brother is enlivened by a certain depiction concerning the children. Incidentally, while preparing
          his ultimate solemn effect, Lamb has inspired us with a new, intensified vision of the wistful
          beauty of children—their imitativeness, their facile and generous emotions, their anxiety to be
          correct, their ingenuous haste to escape from grief into joy. This vision gives us an impression that
          they seem real, thus makes the revelation in the end touching and pathetic.
          7.5.2 Unexpected Ending
          Dream Children begins quite simply, in a calm, narrative manner, representing Lamb as sitting by
          his fireside on a winter night telling stories to his own dear children, and delighting in their
          society, until he suddenly comes to his old, solitary, bachelor self, and finds that they were but
          dream-children. In the end of the essay, we read:
          That I became in doubt which of them stood there before me, or whose that bright hair was; and
          while I stood gazing, both the children gradually grew fainter to my view, receding, and still
          receding till nothing at last but two mournful features were seen in the uttermost distance, which,
          without speech, strangely impressed upon me the effects of speech; “We are not of Alice, nor of
          thee, nor are we children at all. The children of Alice called Bartrum father. We are nothing, less
          than nothing, and dreams. We are only what might have been, and must wait upon the tedious
          shores of Lethe millions of ages before we have existence, and a name.”
          Reflecting upon the essay, we will surely be obsessed by the beauty of old houses and gardens and
          aged virtuous characters, the beauty of children, the beauty of companionships, the softening
          beauty of dreams in an arm-chair—all these are brought together and mingled with the grief and
          regret which were the origin of the mood.






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