David Copperfield Lesson Plan

What is the symbolic significance of the weather during David's trip to Yarmouth?

David's journey to Yarmouth takes place during a powerful thunderstorm, and Dickens uses apocalyptic imagery in long descriptive passages to describe it. For example, David mentions the "Sweeping gusts of rain...like showers of steel," and "great sheets of lead" ripping off a church tower. This storm functions as a foreshadowing of the two terrible deaths to come the following day, and symbolizes the emotional destruction they will wreak on David's life. Even after being orphaned, widowed, and destitute, David identifies this incident as the worst of his life. It is so awful for him that...