'Images of Addiction'

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Richard Teasell

‘Images of Addiction’

‘Addiction’, ‘craving’, ‘dependence’, ‘enslavement’, ‘habit’, ‘obsession’…these are  some of the many ways of describing a persons need for something or someone. Addiction and the way it’s presented is the main focus of two books, ‘Junk’ by Melvin Burgess a contempary novel written in 1996 and ‘The Man With The Twisted Lip’ by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, a short story from the Sherlock Holmes series written in 1892. I will be comparing the two similarly themed stories and discuss how they show images of addiction.

Both of the books use many different techniques to make the story as realistic and believable as possible. In Junk each chapter is written from the point of view of a different character in the 1st person narrative. This style of writing gives the story a lot of credibility and often involves different characters telling the same event but from a completely different perspective. This is not just very interesting for the reader: it also gives you the chance to get deep into the characters heads and to find out what they are thinking. You can also formulate your own opinions of characters as many of them, particularly Gemma, really involve the reader and try to talk them round to their points of view. In contrast ‘The Man With The Twisted Lip’ is very formal and written throughout by the same character, Dr Watson. The details are very precisely written like a report of what has happened with constant references to street names and timings to give the effect that everything in the story has really happened one example is ‘found herself exactly at 4:35 walking through Swandom Lane on her way back to the station’.

Another method the authors use to convey a sense of realism is the language. In ‘Junk’ there is a lot of teenage slang and swearing both in the dialogue and the text itself, which adds a sense that you are getting the full truth however disturbing it may be, not a sugar coated version. I also thought that the way the story was written as if the characters were talking to you worked really well because you felt the characters were telling you, not just writing it down.  Another important aspect of creating realism from the language was the way the characters began to use ‘junkie slang’, drug terminology, unheard of at the beginning of the novel but common place by the end. This really helped to show how the lives of the main characters had really changed as the book progressed. Cultural references are also important because they help people to relate to the story and put the events into a certain time period. I think that all these factors were extremely important in making ‘Junk’ very realistic. In ‘the man with the twisted lip’ there are many words, which would be deemed very shocking for the reader at the time but were used with comfort in the text. Words such as ‘dens’ and ‘orgies’ were very powerful and controversial when the book was written and would have been somewhat disturbing for the reader to hear of such things. The descriptions and imagery are used to convey a very anti-drugs message, for example ‘I saw Whitney, pale, haggard and unkempt…’ this is the effect that drugs have on a wise and noble man. However ‘Junk’ takes a very different approach it’s very down to earth and understates things, which are hugely disturbing, which in my opinion conveys an even more anti-drugs message. But on the subject of language in ‘The Man With The Twisted Lip’ it is often very repetitive in style in an attempt to really get the image of drug addiction over to the reader though it could be seen as being rather melodramatic. The author often uses superlatives to describe the awful state, which opium leaves its users in and the imagery is often very sensory with descriptions relating to things the reader would be more familiar with to help create a strong picture of what’s being described. One example of the imagery of hell portrayed in ‘The Man With The Twisted Lip’ is ‘Through the gloom one could dimly catch glimpse of bodies lying in strange fantastic poses, bowed shoulders, bent knees, heads thrown back and chins pointing upwards, with here and there a dark, lack-lustre eye turned upon the new-comer’. This sort of language presents a very strong image of the den being like an evil hellish place. The portrayal of Isa Whitney is also important in ‘The Man With Twisted Lip’. Whitney is portrayed as being very different to Holmes, I think this is to help make Holmes look better and Whitney look worse. Whitney is shown to be very addicted and quite weak, a man who has lost control of his addiction.

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One of the main differences between ‘Junk’ and ‘The Man With The Twisted Lip’ is the length of the stories, because ‘The Man With The Twisted Lip’ is a short story the characters and situations do not progress as much as those in ‘Junk’.  For example when we meet Gemma at the beginning of the book she seems as if she is just a normal teenager but as the book progresses she runs away from home, becomes a junkie, works as a prostitute and even has a child and she is still only 18. In the end Gemma goes ...

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