The Wasp Factory Essay

The wasp factory

Activity one: 1. the novel is driven by an overwhelmingly obsessive fist person narration – frank cauldhame, who speaks cooly and calmly about strange events. There are also these sacrifice poles, upon which hang bodies and heads of large animals such as seagulls, that frank has killed. he believes they define and protext the borders of frank’s territory. 2. he is capable of hmour, irony, self-analysis and has an objective view of his strange situation. He lives in a ritual life, stocking his sacrifice poles with the heads of dead animals and then urinating on them. He is aware that life is filled with symbols, such as the alternative deaths represented in the 12 positions of the wasp factory clock fance. frank
the serious of the phone calls always trigger frank to remember something of his earlier years when he went through a phase of early childhood spontaneity in which he ends up killing 3 relatives. the phoen calls from eric are strangely hilarious and the conundrum of language and sense helps this. we find out that eric too is cruel to animals but gets extremely aggressive when accused of setting fires to dogs. it is never quite clear whether frank is extremely excited or prepared to see his borhter but it is clear that a strong bond still exists betweeen the two of them. in the first phonecall, ironic juxtaposition is a key factor and is used when refering to the dogs being burnt, and of course the return of the mental brother. there are some key differences between banks’ language use when in dialogue or descrptive passages, as there is no real meaning to the dialogue at that specific time but it there to sepearte certain points in the novel and leave the readers again quetioniong what has just happened in that specific section. i believe they are also there to remind the reader that eric is getting closer and closer which will slowly help unravel key questions from the start of the