Enduring Love extract Point Proof Comment.

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Thursday, 26 September 2002                Jad Salfiti

A2 English Literature

Enduring Love extract Point Proof Comment

Metaphors, similes, figurative language, repetition, antithesis, syntactical variety, compound sentences, grammatical inversion.

The passage begins with the “The beginning is simple to mark…” this instantly draws attention to the narrative, and shows the style is self-conscious. The narrator addresses the reader directly. The story is recounted in the first person narrative and the narrator is also the main character. The first sentence and indeed the whole extract hints that this is only the beginning of his problems. The passage begins at a pace, a lick, ‘in medias res’ The story is not chronologically retold but the narrator keeps stopping mid-narrative almost like a cliff hanger, the narrator uses freeze frames “this was the moment, this was the pinprick on the time map:” and then returns to flashback mode explaining the lead-up to the event and holds the reader’s attention using suspense and intrigue. The writer builds towards a climax “The encounter that would unhinge us was minutes away, its enormity disguised from us not”, this leaves the reader yearning a dénouement. The writer is involved in a kind of game with the reader because he chooses when to withhold or disclose information “I’m holding back, delaying the information” this is frustrating but draws in and involves the reader.

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The tone of the passage is both urgent and sedate at the same time. Although the events of this passage are traumatic and very effectively portrayed as such, there is an air of the dispassionate in the way they are recounted, Clarissa is described as “unencumbered by participation, by the ropes and the shouting, and by our [their] fatal lack of co-operation” this enhances the retrospective style, we are given an array of information obviously collated only after the event e.g. the names and occupations of all the participants.

The central incident in the passage is described using ...

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