How does Du Maurier create a successful opening to her novel Rebecca?

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How does Du Maurier create a successful opening to her novel ‘Rebecca’?    As a reader we are immediately given an insight into a dream which the unknown narrator had the night before, detailing how they travelled around Manderley in ghost form. We discover this is the narrator’s old home, “I called in my dream to the lodge-keeper”, and a yearning and nostalgia is evident. ‘Home’ has connotations of being warm and welcoming, but the isolation from the home shows the opposite. ‘Padlock and a chain, ‘barred’, and ‘iron gate’ portray the extended metaphor of the narrator being cut off from their house.  A sense of loss and mystery grows, heightened by the narrator only giving us vague details concerning their house.   A feeling of loss seems to hang infused over the
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beginning of the novel, with the narrator found in exile of Manderley – a place of beauty lying in ruins. Very strong imagery is created which paints a vivid picture in my mind of familiar things such as trees, described as ‘white, naked limbs.’ This suggests that the trees are bare and devoid of life, reminiscent of its surroundings. As each paragraph progresses, an extended description of all the narrator can see continues too – resulting in this feeling that something terrible is going to happen to the narrator due to the constant negative imagery.   The narrative view of this ...

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