Analysis of a passage from John Le Carr, "Single and Single". This opening passage begins with Mr Winser being confronted with an automatic pistol being aimed at him, and we immediately see the events portrayed through Mr Winsers point of view, despi

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Table of Contents

Initial Impressions        2

Thought and Speech Presentation        2

Deictic sub-worlds        3

Viewpoint Effects        4

Deviation and Foregrounding        5

Semantic Deviation        5

Graphalogical Deviation        6

Parallelism and Grammatical Deviation        6

Lexis        7

Elegant Variation        7

Context and Tone        8

Conclusion        8

Appendix        9

Bibliography        10

Initial Impressions

This opening passage begins with Mr Winser being confronted with an automatic pistol being aimed at him, and we immediately see the events portrayed through Mr Winser’s point of view, despite the majority of the passage being written in 3rd person. This effect is achieved through the use of thought presentation, such as direct thought, for example in the opening sentence “this gun is not a gun” (which is foregrounded throughout the passage). There are also other devices used throughout the passage to help the reader see the scene from Mr Winser’s perspective such as deixis, the use of the definite article, possessives and adjectives.  There is grammatical, semantic, and graphological deviation throughout the text, which helps us understand Mr Winser’s thought patterns and rationalisation to add to the pace of the novel, appropriate for this genre.  The tone of the passage, despite the severity of the situation is tense, but not too serious, and is almost quirky and slightly eccentric due to slightly unusual characteristics in the characters and their context.

Thought and Speech Presentation

The author starts off the passage using direct thought (DT). The majority of thought presentation uses DT (there are 13 sentences using DT throughout the passage). DT is used in its most unfiltered form; no quotation marks and no reporting clause “he thought”. The absence of narrator filtering achieves the effect of Mr Winser’s thoughts and feelings being closer and more immediate to the reader, thus putting the reader in the mind of our protagonist.

At the beginning of the passage, declarative sentences are used in all the examples of DT, e.g. “This gun does not exist. (3)  It is inadmissible evidence. (4)  It is no evidence at all. (5)  It is a non-gun. (6) my briefcase, my pen, my passport, my air tickets and travellers’ cheques. (12)  My credit cards, my legality. (13)” but as the text progresses to Mr Winser’s “flight down memory lane”, towards the end of the passage, four contrasting interrogatives can be seen: “Why did I do it? (25) Why do I have to marry people in order to discover I don’t like them? (26) Why can’t I make up my mind ahead of the fact instead of after it? (27) What is legal training for, if not to protect us from ourselves? (28)” The use of interrogatives represents a similar structure to that of a soliloquy, which emphasise Mr Winser’s desolation and regret, increasing our sympathy towards him.

During the second half of the passage, at first glance, direct speech (DS) seems to be used to represent the words of Mr Winser’s law tutor and also his wife, for example, ‘It may look like an apple, feel like an apple – innuendo – but does it rattle like an apple?’ – shakes it – ‘cut like an apple?’ This example represents the exact speech used by Mr Winser’s law tutor, and it is quoted in quotation marks. The italics represent stress on certain words such as “look”, “feel”, “rattle”, “cut”, which indicates that these words were stressed in comparison to the others. The DS used is in an unfiltered form, without the reporting clause. Bunny’s speech is more unfiltered due to there being no reporting clause and no quotation marks. This makes the flashback feel very real and close to the reader.

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Deictic sub-worlds

The DS being used is speech inside a deictic sub-world, as there is a shift in time and location during the flashbacks, so DS is not being used in the same timeframe as the current “text world” (Stockwell, 2002:140). What is interesting is the way the narrator interjects with words such as “innuendo”, “shakes it” and “pressing the shopping basket on him”, crossing the boundary of the sub-world, and making the reader actively involved in the actions and events within the flashback.

Viewpoint Effects

The passage is written from Mr Winser’s viewpoint. This can ...

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