Connotation In London

Sex sells, be it in music, media, or literature. However, sexuality can sometimes have a steep price: demanding lives, or even an entire city. While it may not be initially apparent, illicit sex can be poisonous. The speaker in “London” laments the concealed decay of the city of London by utilizing connotation, diction, and symbolism to depict the tension between Londoners and one of the sources of decay: the spread of venereal disease through London prostitutes. The connotation in the poem depicts an underlying meaning; a hidden source behind the decrease in London’s quality. For instance, the “charter’d streets” the speaker travels through are within a region of London known to be rundown and poor- essentially the slums (1). Their differences will have caused the citizens of the slums by the Thames to be looked down upon and ostracized from the rest of the region, resulting in a great difficulty in trying to

The most striking is the “Marriage hearse” in the final line (16). A hearse, which is a vehicle used to transport the dead, is depicted in order to represent death. The speaker writes of venereal disease transferring from prostitute to man, who then also spreads it to his wife. Due to the lack of medical advances in the slums, the only fate awaiting the couple is death. The rapidfire spread of disease and death is a glaring indicator of the city’s decay due to the desires of the flesh, which is exactly what the speaker is attempting to describe. The speaker inserts another symbol into the text, “blackning Church appalls,” in order to depict the gradually-spreading disease and decay (10). The color black, representing sin, slowly colors and corrupts the church, which is seen as a haven away from prostitution and other unseemly practices. The speaker utilizes this in order to express the severity of the blight overtaking London, which the sinful prostitutes