Can Hooper be seen as anything other than Evil? A comparative Essay on 'I'm king of the castle'.

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Shayne Grove        10GA        Miss Leader

Can Hooper be seen as anything other than Evil? A comparative Essay on ‘I’m king of the castle’

In this essay I will be attempting to find out if Hooper is anything but evil, I believe that Hopper is not evil but just unloved. I believe this because Mr Hooper thinks that he cannot show the love that his late wife could of and so he does not try to show him any love. But there have been occasions that Hooper has shown evil for example when Kingshaw and Mrs Helena Kingshaw first arrived at The Warings, Hopper wrote on a piece of paper ‘I didn’t want you to come here’ This note is thrown down to Kingshaw on the day that he and his mother arrive. This is Hooper’s first demonstration on how evil he can be along with how possessive of his property he can be. I think that evil is just a metaphor on how people can act when they are intimidated or being defensive of something of theirs or something that they feel very strong about.

        This book ‘I’m King of the Castle’ has been written by Susan Hill and was written in 1969 in a small farm cottage in a remote corner of Dorset. I believe that Susan Hill wrote this book in hope that people would comprehend some of the pressures that children are under today with school, friends, and family problems. Also I believe that she wanted parents to realise how life is for children as for adults it is so long ago and they cannot remember what their childhood was like for them and that they should try to read in between the lines of what their children say to them.

        The setting of the book is very typical for a book of this type, it helps the reader get into the book by telling you about the house where most of the story is set. The setting might affect Hopper by giving him an impression that he knows the area and that he controls, for example in his father’s house. The language used to create the atmosphere is extremely descriptive and interesting. Susan Hill also gives you the views on the other characters views on The Warings and the surrounding area for example Mrs Boland doesn’t like the house because she thinks that it isn’t lived in and its dull and dark. The words used to create the character also give you an impression of the way that the book will turn out for example when Mr Hooper tells Hooper that Kingshaw and Helena Kingshaw are coming to live with them, when he is told this he thinks

“This is my house,” he thought, “it is private, I got here first. Nobody should come here.” This shows that Hooper will fight to have the house to him self and that he is a very dominant character in the book.

        Hooper does many obvious evil actions in the book, this starts from the very beginning of the book with the arrival of Kingshaw and Helena Kingshaw at The Warings, this is when Hooper throws down the note to Kingshaw saying ‘I didn’t want you to come here’. As soon as Kingshaw enters the house and gets into his room Hopper decides to ‘inspect’ the ‘intruder’, as soon as Hooper starts talking to Kingshaw, Kingshaw starts to get scared of Hooper because of the way that he is talking to him ‘Why have you come here’ and ‘Why didn’t you find somewhere else to live?’ Hooper then thinks of his father going around the house with all of the keys and thinking that this is because ‘We live here, it is ours, we belong. Kingshaw has nowhere.’ Hooper then goes on to trying to find out about Kingshaw by attacking him with questions and the contradicting them in front of him and example of this would be when Kingshaw says that his father was in ‘The battle of Briton’ To start this ‘attacking’ of questions Hopper started by saying ‘Do you remember your father?’ Kingshaw replied to this with ‘Oh, yes. Well – a bit. He was in the battle of Briton. I’ve got.’ ‘I’ve got a picture of him.’

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Hopper then attacked by saying ‘Is it a picture of him in the battle?’ This shows that Hopper already doesn’t believe him. Kingshaw says in reply to this ‘No. But…’

Hopper then showing that he doesn’t believe Kingshaw says ‘I don’t believe you anyway, you’re a liar, the battle of Briton was in the war.’ Defensively Kingshaw replies by saying ‘Well, I know that, everyone knows that.’ This line of questioning carries on until it gets to the moment when Kingshaw doesn’t answer one of Hopper’s questions straight away, this makes Hooper angry an example of this is found ...

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