Q2.

Both Garett and Dickens set out on night time adventures in London, but have
very different experiences.

Garrett is accompanied by his friends, while Dickens sets off to wander the streets
of London alone.

Garret is ambitious, climbing the Shard, “the largest skyscraper in Europe” as part
of his mission of urban exploration, while Dickens explores London in order to
“conquer” his “temporary inability to sleep”. This is seen when Garett has to get
past the guard at the construction site, emphasizing the idea of urban exploration
being a mission of visiting places that are out of bounds. Garett also needs a large
amount of physical “exertion” to perform a single activity of climbing the shard.
However, Dickens doesn’t intrude upon any particular place, and wanders
aimlessly, but with curiosity, about many different locations, hoping to gradually
tire himself out over the course of his walk, and before “sunrise”.

When Garett reaches the top of the Shard, he has a bird’s eye view of London,
and is so high that he sees the city as “just rows of lights and train lines that
looked like converging river systems or a giant circuit board”, and is thus
experiencing London in a more surrealistic, impersonal way. On the other hand,
Dickens moves through London at ground level, meeting people of different
backgrounds and viewing the struggles of the homeless and beggars, which allows
him to build “sympathetic relations” with them.

Q3.

Dickens describes the young man he encounters as a “beetle-browed, hair-lipped

youth of twenty”, the compound adjective “beetle-browed” comparing the man’s
eyebrows to that of an insect, giving the reader the impression that the man lives
in filth, with such beetles, and is thus unclean, seen through the fact that he
hasn’t shaved. He describes “it” as snapping at him “like a worried dog”,
undermining the man by comparing him to an animal, while “worried” implies
that he is frightened of Dickens. He refers to the poor man using the impersonal
pronoun “it”, rather than “him”, which emphasizes the fact that he sees the man
as less than human because of “its” behavior and physical state.

He describes the poor children that slept under “wagons” in Covent Garden
market as thieves, saying that they were “perpetually making a blunt pattering on
the pavement of the Piazza with the rain of their naked feet” appealing to the
reader’s sense of sound in the onomatopoeic verb “pattering”. He uses
alliteration of “p”, to create rhyme and emphasize the idea of the rain splashing
on the pavement being compared to the sound of running feet. The fact that their
feet are “naked”, also adds to the sense of poverty, that they can’t afford shoes,
and thus have to go barefoot, stealing for a living. They are forced to “dart”,
“dive”, and “dodge”, fighting for “offal”, the three verbs portraying them as
unkempt savages, using their nimble skills to escape “constables”, while running
about unabated.

Q4.

The two sources show very different views of the city of London at night time.

In Source B, Dickens embarks upon a night-time walk through London in order to

cure his “distressing” disorder of insomnia, and feels “houseless and alone” along
the course of his journey. However, in Source A, Garett embarks on a thrilling
journey of urban exploration, seen though his “burst of enthusiasm” when he
nears the top of the shard. He uses the metaphor “ripple of adrenaline” to
describe the feeling of accomplishment after his long, exhausting climb.

As Dickens wanders through the theatre, he uses the semantic field of death to
give the reader an idea of the loneliness he felt, using the simile “like a great
grave” to introduce the theatre as a place where relics of the past were buried.
Dickens describes the watchman as a “ghost” that was “haunting” the theatre.
The watchman seems to take his job seriously, as the verb “haunting” suggests he
is guarding the theatre as if he were a specter with unfinished business. Dickens
feels the watchman’s presence is almost supernatural and is creating an ominous
atmosphere, with the “faint corpse candle” being symbolic of impending death.

In contrast, Garett and his friends refer to the watchman guarding the
construction site using colloquial language, “only one secca”, who doesn’t seem
to take his job seriously, as he is “watching TV and ignoring the CCTV cameras”.
They view him as a relatively low level of security, probably an insignificant risk
compared to their past exploits.

Dickens tries to find company among the homeless and impoverished of London,
and is able to sympathize with these people, as they, like him “have no object
every night in the year”. He makes many interactions on street level, juxtaposing
the “growth of corruption” among the immoral upper class, with that of the
street kids. This employs irony to display the failures of society in depth, as the
“fruits of the earth” are just as corrupt as the “uncared for savages”

However, when Garett views London from the Shard, and he uses the simile “like
a giant circuit board” to the emphasize how the rivers and railways lines seemed
like an unfamiliar network of lines. We are thus given the impression that the
sheer height of the Shard undermines the importance of all that at ground level
would seem large and impressive, but from a bird’s eye view seems unrealistic
and trivial. This contrasts with Dickens insight into the societal problems of
London, which Garett is unable to see for the “first time in my [his] life”.

Q5.

GO FOR IT.

Have you ever felt the pangs of regret because you stayed safe and didn’t take
the leap? Have you ever felt your hair gradually fading to desperate strands of
grey, the only thing lying awake in the dark with you being the persistent niggling
of regret…

Well, you’re not alone. Millions of people all over the world live in constant fear
of meeting their end, their final destination, their inevitable fate. This fear is
contagious. Every breath you take, every move you make, every second that ticks
away on the foreboding grandfather clock, you come one breath, one step and
one second closer to death.

So why waste it? Why waste the precious hours you’ve been endowed with?

If all of the great artists, scientists, inventors, leaders and sport legends never
took the leap and tried something new, the world as we know it would be drained
of color, of hope and creativity. There wouldn’t be any art to adorn our houses,
no breathtaking monuments to look forward to visiting, no ripple of adrenaline
watching the final decisive seconds of that football game, no songs to sing in the
shower, no technological breakthroughs and no controversies to gossip about.

We’d all be automatons- limited to the instructions we were built to do, bound by
our collective fear of the unknown. We’d be born. We’d survive. We’d reproduce.
We’d die.

Moreover, everything in life is a risk. Believe it or not, even getting out of bed in
the morning is a risk. In a 2020 survey, 80% of people said they’d rather stay safe
than take a risk- even if the prize for it was an invaluable experience. Well, you
could be electrocuted taking your phone out of the charger. You could fall down
the stairs and crack your skull. You could slip in the shower. Maybe even stung by
a wasp in the garden. Or hit by a speeding bus. Or…

The possibilities are endless, and there is a slight possibility that I frightened you
so much listing some of them that you die from the shock.

Sure, you might say that’d make us all reckless, immature teenagers, but there’s a
difference. Reckless is when you ignore the risks, and put others in jeopardy.
Facing your fears is you, gathering up all your courage, taking a deep breath, and
reaching out to an old friend. Or, you could go skydiving. Or learn how to pop-
shuv it on your new skateboard. Whatever it is, as long as it doesn’t intentionally
shove other unwilling people into the line of fire, go for it.

Our fears are the trials and tribulations we must pass to grow as complete human
beings. If we want to truly ripen into old age recalling the beautiful experiences
we had, narrating tales of courage to our grandkids, and reminiscing the scars
that embellish our otherwise plain skin; we have to initiate that journey now, not
tomorrow, not later, but this very second.