Essay
A* Unseen Crime Extract Exemplar Essay 6
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An exploration of the significance of crime elements in an extract from Snowdrops.
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Unseen crime practice essay 62018 paper
Written from the perspective of a homodiegetic narrator viewing the aftermath of a crime
first-hand, this extract from Snowdrops provides an invaluable insight into the grotesque nature of
crime – Miller suggests that it is not something that can ever be romanticised. The narrator’s
reluctance to reveal the details of what he has seen tantalises the reader, paving the way for our
immersion in a world of injustice where criminals can murder innocent people without fear of
punishment.
The extract begins immediately at a point of high tension thanks to the first sentence ‘I
smelled it before I saw it’. The ambiguous pronoun use here, contrasting with ‘he’ or ‘she’ to refer to
another person, introduces us to a crime of unspeakable abhorrence which incites our interest with
regards to who, how, why and what has happened. The clear reluctance of the narrator to reveal
what ‘it’ is strongly suggests that someone has been murdered, as no other crime would justify such
a reaction of not just sight, but also of scent. Further tension is created by the public interest in the
crime, demonstrated by the ‘crowd of people’ that was gathered around the corpse. Clearly, for a
transgression to capture the public interest, it must satisfy an unspoken degree of severity, or else
the victim must be well-known. In either case, we as the reader are desperate to know why ordinary
citizens concern themselves with going to see a dead body. Miller then tells us that ‘most of (the
crowd were) policemen’, further setting the stage for a crime of a heinous nature if numerous
policemen are forced to get involved. The presence of law enforcement authorities is a crucial
aspect of crime fiction. Naturally, the police are best equipped authority to investigate the crime,
and the restoration of order at the end of a work of crime fiction ultimately depends on the
performance on the law enforcement authority in successfully detecting those responsible for a
wrong to someone else. While it is revealed more overtly later in the extract that the police are
fighting something of a losing battle, as this is not the first disappearance, there are immediate signs
within this ‘crowd’ that the investigation will be unsuccessful. Generally, when ordinary people
involve themselves in an investigation, there is a conflict between enforcing the law and dealing a
morally sound judgement against a criminal. From this perspective, although there are no signs of
such an eventuality at this stage in the extract, one could assume that later in the novel the public
need for a harsh punishment may prove an impediment to an investigation, and those close to the
victim may take the law into their own hands.
As the narrator elaborates on the smell of the corpse, it becomes clear that Miller does not
seek to romanticise crime as a Golden Age writer may have done by negating a focus on dead
victims. Instead, crime is linked firmly with grotesque, evident in the incongruous use of figurative
language in clauses such as ‘It was a smell like the kind you come home to if you forget to put your
rubbish out before you go on holiday’. The very normal, relatable simile really gives us a feel for the
nature of the crime and its aftermath, recognising the unnatural presence of a body in the middle of
a street. The analysis of the sense of scent to illustrate the corpse in more detail demonstrates how
normal people can be involved with a crime by indirect means – that is, just being a bystander
means that crime affects many people. Indeed, Miller moves us on next to an analysis of what the
narrator can see; ‘he saw the foot’ and ‘can still see the foot now’. The use of the article ‘the’ as
opposed to ‘a’ serves to emphasise the mark that seeing a single foot has left on the onlooker. The
almost unreal sight has had a permanent impact on his memory, inevitably haunting his mind unable
to rid himself of such a grotesque image. The narrator is clearly unprepared and inexperienced in
dealing with crime first-hand, mistakenly personifying the foot as if the entire person of the victim
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