Sometimes Dickens uses [[metonymy]] in a way such that the [[metaphor|metaphorical associations]] are still extremely important. Consider, for example, the metonymic use of "fog" at the very beginning of [[Bleak House (1852-53)]]. The famous opening introduces the fog: > Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among green aits and meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city. Fog on the Essex marshes, fog on the Kentish heights. Then, the metonymic link — at the heart of the fog sits the Lord High Chancellor and the court of Chancery: > Thus, in the midst of the mud and at the heart of the fog, sits the Lord High Chancellor in his High Court of Chancery. This then seems to allow "the fog" to be a metonym for the Court as a whole: > Suddenly a very little counsel with a terrific bass voice ==arises, fully inflated, in the back settlements of **the fog**==, and says, "Will your lordship allow me? I appear for him. He is a cousin, several times removed. I am not at the moment prepared to inform the court in what exact remove he is a cousin, but he IS a cousin. > > Leaving this address (delivered like a sepulchral message) ringing in the rafters of the roof, ==the very little counsel drops, and **the fog knows him no more**==. Everybody looks for him. Nobody can see him. The fogginess is really both metaphor and metonymy. The Court is _contiguously associated_ with the fog because the fog is "literally" where the Court is (metonymy), and the fog is _like_ or _similar to_ the Court in that both the Court and the fog produces confusion, muddle and frustrationg for those who are caught "in" them. Dickens even plays with this dance between metaphor and metonymy, or the literal and the figural, in the naming: in the Court, there are people named "Chizzle," "Mizzle" and "Drizzle." One person is called "Mr. Tangle." Are these really their literal names, or metaphoric descriptions? Yes.