Briefly explain and illustrate how in the opening extract Dickens makes the reader respond to the narrator.

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                                                            Hayley Kelly

                          A Confession found in a prison in the

                                 time of Charles the second

Task:

         Briefly explain and illustrate how in the opening extract Dickens makes the reader respond to the narrator.

          This short story is set in the 17th century when Charles the second reigned. The title tells us what the story will briefly be about, in this case a confession.

In the opening paragraph the narrator sounds like a very well respected man, proud, and from what I can see reasonably well off ‘a small estate lying a few miles east of London’ At the start he doesn’t seem to feel guilty about anything and seems likes normal man, which makes us stop and think, what can this man of done? The crime is somewhat a mystery, this is what the narrator is trying to do, he is making us respond and feel that we need to read on to find out his reasons for such a crime. We seem very confused to what the man has done, and seem very surprised when we read on to find out that he is a murderer, let alone the murderer of a child. This is where we notice his split personality and realize he is trying to make us sympathise with him, the narrator is very clever in the way he does it. We keep asking ourselves questions, the narrator is trying to arouse our curiosity by making us curious to why such a respected man would do such a thing.

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Dickens develops the character quite a lot throughout the opening paragraph; he seems to paint some sort of picture of this person. He develops this character more and more which keeps our interest as the reader sustained, at this point most of all we are given another side to his personality.

In the following paragraph we find out a lot more about the narrator and why he is writing this confession, we find out that it is his last night to live ‘I will set down the naked truth without disguise,’ the brings the title back into consideration, it’s a ...

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