Fear and Danger - Stuart: A Life Backwards
Fear and Danger Essay
This extract is situated in chapter twelve of the text and describes a riot that took place in Whitemoor prison, Cambridgeshire whilst Stuart was imprisoned for stealing from an “open-counter post office”. In this extract Masters offers us an account of the events that took place, beginning with an article from The Times newspaper and continuing from the point of view of Stuart. For the first time, in this extract, we see an event where Stuart is the one who fears for his life, as he has been put into a prison for a minor crime, amongst terrorists, psychopaths and professional gangsters.
Masters uses the simple sentence, ‘Two days after Stuart arrived there was a riot’, to introduce what the next part of the story is about and to draw the reader in, making them want to know more about what happened. He goes on to give the facts through his use of formal register and intertextuality, by using the newspaper extract which acts as a direct contrast to what follows i.e. the biased way in which the account of the riot is told by Stuart. This tells us that Masters doesn’t necessarily trust the view with which Stuart has witnessed and recounted the story.
The use of Dynamic verbs such as ‘tremble’, ‘smashing’ and ‘threatened’ are effectively used throughout the extract to keep the exciting pace and emphasise the violence and action of the scene. This is also achieved through the use of alliteration, fricatives e.g. ‘furniture, flared, flames and fire’, plosives e.g. ‘table-tennis tables’ and bilabials, such as, ‘between balconies’. The use of fricatives also accentuates the imagery of the spreading fire.
The use of proper nouns such as names ‘Colin Richards’, places ‘Walton on the Naze’ and the magazine ‘National Geographics’ all give a sense of realism to the account of the riot and help to draw the reader into the story. The reality of the situation is also helped by the inclusion of profanities in the quoted speech, for example, ‘If you don’t
This extract is situated in chapter twelve of the text and describes a riot that took place in Whitemoor prison, Cambridgeshire whilst Stuart was imprisoned for stealing from an “open-counter post office”. In this extract Masters offers us an account of the events that took place, beginning with an article from The Times newspaper and continuing from the point of view of Stuart. For the first time, in this extract, we see an event where Stuart is the one who fears for his life, as he has been put into a prison for a minor crime, amongst terrorists, psychopaths and professional gangsters.
Masters uses the simple sentence, ‘Two days after Stuart arrived there was a riot’, to introduce what the next part of the story is about and to draw the reader in, making them want to know more about what happened. He goes on to give the facts through his use of formal register and intertextuality, by using the newspaper extract which acts as a direct contrast to what follows i.e. the biased way in which the account of the riot is told by Stuart. This tells us that Masters doesn’t necessarily trust the view with which Stuart has witnessed and recounted the story.
The use of Dynamic verbs such as ‘tremble’, ‘smashing’ and ‘threatened’ are effectively used throughout the extract to keep the exciting pace and emphasise the violence and action of the scene. This is also achieved through the use of alliteration, fricatives e.g. ‘furniture, flared, flames and fire’, plosives e.g. ‘table-tennis tables’ and bilabials, such as, ‘between balconies’. The use of fricatives also accentuates the imagery of the spreading fire.
The use of proper nouns such as names ‘Colin Richards’, places ‘Walton on the Naze’ and the magazine ‘National Geographics’ all give a sense of realism to the account of the riot and help to draw the reader into the story. The reality of the situation is also helped by the inclusion of profanities in the quoted speech, for example, ‘If you don’t