Wuthering Height Analysis

 ‘What were the use of my creation, if I were entirely contained here? My great miseries in this world have been Heathcliff's miseries, and I watched and felt each from the beginning: my great thought in living is himself. If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger: I should not seem a part of it.—My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods: time will change it, I'm well aware, as winter changes the trees. My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath: a source of little visible delight, but necessary. Nelly, I am Heathcliff!”

This is an extract from Wuthering Heights and I chose it as it one of the most tense parts of the book and shows how throughout the book characters can develop and interact with each other. There are few full sentences and many commas in the extract which gives the idea of fast, jumbled ramblings. The rhetorical question at the start makes the reader feel more involved but as Catherine goes on to answer her own question you can still sense her uncertainties. You can see through Catherine’s rant and the punctuation used that she is upset and possibly angry. The imagery is strong during the piece and the woods and the rocks contrast extremely well, especially as the theme with nature is important through the whole novel. I think the imagery is very exact to what Catherine is trying to explain as she explains she knows what the world is like but then goes to say without Heathcliff it would not be like that at all. As Catherine explains the world would be a ‘mighty stranger’ without Heathcliff, it infers how lonely and unaccepted she would feel in a foreign place. The emphasis on certain words suits the piece well as it contrasts against the use of full stops before it and contrasting against the calm and making the rant sound more real and angry.