In George Eliot’s novel Silas Marner, Eliot coveys a didactive message of children being important and the basis for unconditional love in our lives through usage of figurative diction and abstract diction. Eliot uses figurative diction, through metaphors, to portray her didactive message of how children are valuable and are the basis for unending love. Eliot when describing children uses metaphors to express importance of children when she writes,
In the olden days there were angels who came and took men by the hand and lead the away from the city of destruction. We see no white-winged angels now. But yet men are led away from threatening destruction: a hand is put into theirs, which leads them forth gently towards a calm and bright land, so that they look no more backward; and the hand may…show more content… (Eliot 111).
Eliot uses angels and compares them to children, implying that children have become these angels. By using phrases like “city of destruction” and “threatening destruction” Eliot is setting a scene of pure chaos and destruction, a hell like existence. By mentioning the “hand”, it has a very similar meaning to the phrase “a helping hand” or lending someone a “hand”. These angels, now children, extend a helping “hand” to these men and bring them to a “calm and bright land”. This helps imply a thought that children, like angels in folklore, are beings that bring salvation to others and because of that deserve unceasing love and affection, similar to worship of an angel. Eliot also uses abstract diction to illustrate her didactive message of how children are valuable and deserve unwavering love. She believes children, with their innocence, have a habit, “…which makes us older human beings, with our inward turmoil, feel a certain awe in the presence of a little child, such as we feel before some quiet majesty or beauty in