The gibbet and the beacon in this page stand for two types of people: ‘good’ and ‘bad’. The beacon shows sailors the way home, the light is there to save them from death. The gibbet is for the people who committed criminal activities, there is no light to save them from death. It’s Dickens way of saying we’re all both beacons and gibbets, basically.

We store emotions in our bodily organs. Ignoble, constrictive, base emotions like cowardice, timidity, guilt, remorse, deceit and duplicity weaken our Heart. Anger, irritability, frustration, resentment, jealousy and envy weaken our Liver. Watch what you feel.

We all carry some sort of metaphorical shackles, and we spend our lives wishing for someone to bring us a metaphorical sledge hammer to break them off. That usually never works out. The minute we smash them open there is a different set locking on you. It’s human nature.

Sometimes things don’t work out, you lose stuff, you lose. And during those times, there come circumstances we can’t control that put us upside down, making things even worse, taking away even the little that we thought we had left. Life gives you an umbrella when it’s sunny and it takes it away when it starts pouring, just like the banks…

I always loved the opening of the novel. It amazes me how in just a few words there could be said so much. It is such a dark story, right from the beginning. Everyone in it is a prisoner, either literally or figuratively. Prisoners of the living in a world of death.