"I have the honor of attending court regularly. With my papers. I await a sentence. Soon. Judgment Day." Bleak House. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay In a novel so intensely dedicated to exposing the real and actual misery of its characters, very little of it comes from the literal application of frequent bouts of illness alone. Certainly diseases and apocalyptic images are present: Esther's smallpox disfigurement, Joe's deadly pestilential disease, Caddy's son, born deaf and dumb, Miss Flite's "Judgment Day", Krook's burning, the revenge" of Tom-all-alone, the premature death of Richard Carstone literally from heartbreak and exhaustion, to the metaphorical "doors" and actual stroke of Sir Leicester Dedlock, but this endless series of tragedies tends to end rather than foreshadowing the larger metaphorical disease that afflicts all characters equally, regardless of social status or economic strength. unaccustomed to the ways of a quick and efficient judicial system, and in the complicated plot of the novel with its dozens of characters shrouded in adultery, blackmail, murder and the abundance of fog and mud that characterize the turgid moral atmosphere, the Court of Chancery becomes the major provider of disease, illness and death. From its opening sentences, this institution of justice is linked to the symbols of obfuscation: fog and mud: "A fog that is too thick can never arrive, a mud and mud that is too deep can never arrive, to be reconciled with the groping and debating condition that this High Court of Chancery, the most pestilential of old sinners, holds, today..."But the Court is not only blind and inefficient in serving the cause of justice. His work is much more sinister: "This is the Court of Chancery... which gives the money power the means to exhaust the law abundantly; which thus exhausts finances, patience, courage, hope; thus overturns the brain and it breaks the heart; that there is not an honorable man among its practitioners who would not give the warning, 'Suffer any wrong that may be done to you, rather than come here!'" Evidently, the corrupt and destructive Court of Chancery of life has little interest in justice and more in doing "... business for oneself. There is no other principle distinctly, certainly and consistently maintained through all its narrow twists and turns." The fact that "Jarndyce and Jarndyce" bears a close phonetic resemblance to the disconcertingly panoptic term "John Doe" is perhaps not a mere coincidence, but in fact a clue to the fact that Jarndyce's interminable chicanery in the courts of justice can easily turn in a situation that fatally affects practically everyone, from Gridley to Dedlock. It certainly gave birth to entire generations, while others were dying because of it. As pernicious as the gravest of diseases, lawyers and the legal system are portrayed as physical embodiments of parasitic diseases that, as Gridley and Richard's deaths demonstrate, consume everything in their path. Tulkinghorn is portrayed as "a dark and cold object" and "like a machine" who jealously guards the aristocratic family's secrets and has become wealthy by administering marriage agreements and wills. Mr. Vholes looks at Richard predatory, "as if he were devouring him for a long time with his eyes as well as his professional appetite." “In general,” George says, “I am anti-race.” This inhuman parasitism extends through society to characters like the Smallweeds whose “God was an interestcomposed. [Their patriarch] lived for it, married it, died of it," and who are also variously described as prey animals as "a money-getting species of spiders, which spin webs to catch unwary flies." The connection between the lawyers of Chancery and Smallweeds as social parasites is made accurate by the analogy of "lawyers [who] lie like maggots in nuts" and Mr. Smallweed's grandfather who valued only "grubs" and "never raised a single butterfly." advanced" is also a Chancery property, part of the Jarndyce and Jarndyce case, and indeed the narrator claims that the case itself "had ravaged the road". Therefore, the heart of the Jarndyce case, which is the heart of the Chancellery, is Tom-all-alone, a place of decay, misery and disease. The third-person narrator skillfully connects these three worlds through plot and complex language right from the start and continues to intensify these connections throughout the work. The Dedlock mystery and the Chancery case suck in and consume the unaware or reluctant, and expand to affect not only the lives of major parties or willing snoopers, but also of bystanders such as Jo, Snagsby, George, and Boythorn. Esther's childhood and her mother's marriage are spent in squalid homes; Jo lives among the dilapidated tenements that are part of the legacy of House Jarndyce; the curtains of Jellyby's chaotic quarters are pegged with pitchforks; and the legal, judicial and political systems each seem locked into their own bizarre routines of circular repetition. Miss Flite, Gridley and Richard form the inner circle of this pervasive system of disease, decay and death that demonstrates "the human waste and suffering generated by the Court." But Jo is also a victim of both the Chancellery and society at large. Of these four, only Miss Flite is still alive at the novel's epilogue. His madness provides ironic protection from the greater madness of the Chancellery. But his collection of caged birds (to which he later adds "the two wards of Jarndyce"), symbolizing the Chancery's victims, and his many prescient comments serve as omens of Richard's fate. And his concern with the “Great Seal” suggests that in this society true justice can only be achieved in the afterlife. (“I expect judgment. Soon. On Judgment Day. I have discovered that the sixth seal mentioned in the Apocalypse is the Great Seal. It has been opened a long time!”) The same goes for Gridley who indignantly rails against “the system" of the Chancellery and swears "I will accuse the individual workers of that system against me, face to face, before the great eternal bar". Yet Gridley's impotent rage only accelerates his death. The deadly effects of the injustice that infects Bleak House society can be seen most vividly in the portraits of various key characters. The descriptions of Krook and his Rag and Bottle Shop are intended to function as a dark moral parallel to the Lord Chancellor and the Chancellery. Mr. Krook attests: "I have so many old scrolls and documents in my stash. And I like rust and must and cobwebs... And I can't bear to part with anything once I pick up or alter anything, neither for sweeping, nor polishing, nor cleaning... that's why I have the sick name of Chancellery. I visit my... brother quite well every day, when he sits at the inn... .There are no big differences between us. Krook's shop, in its filth and horror, exemplifies in a concrete and physical way the true moral nature of the Court, in the same way that the enormous abundance of neglected children in Bleak House exemplifies the unreliable relationship that the Court, in as the legal guardian of the company, he shares with his own districts, the inhabitants of that,. 1982.