We lived at the top of the last house, and the wind rushing up the river shook the house that night, like discharges of cannon, or breakings of a sea. When the rain came with it and dashed against the windows, I thought, raising my eyes to them as they rocked, that I might have fancied myself in a storm-beaten lighthouse. Occasionally, the smoke came rolling down the chimney as though it could not bear to go out into such a night; and when I set the doors open and looked down the staircase, the staircase lamps were blown out; and when I shaded my face with my hands and looked through the black windows (opening them ever so little was out of the question in the teeth of such wind and rain), I saw that the lamps in the court were blown out, and that the lamps on the bridges and the shore were shuddering, and that the coal-fires in barges on the river were being carried away before the wind like red-hot splashes in the rain.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 39. Pip describes the intensity of a thunderstorm he experiences one night while living in London. Dickens uses hyperbole, simile, personification and metaphor to emphasize the ferocity of the storm. When Pip says that “the lamps on the bridges and the shore were shuddering” the lamps are personified by being given the human action of “shuddering.” Pip imagining the house he is in as a “storm-beaten lighthouse” is a good example of metaphor and hyperbole. There are also vivid similes that heighten the drama in this important chapter where Pip is about to learn the identity of his mystery benefactor. The wind is compared to “discharges of cannon, or breakings of the sea,” while the coal fires in the river barges are like “red-hot splashes in the rain.” The storm that rages outside the house foreshadows the tumultuous and life-altering events and revelations that await Pip.