A* AQA ENGLISH LITERATURE B CRIME WRITING UNSEEN EXTRACTS
Explore the significance of elements of crime writing in this extract?
Essay received A* (23/25)
Explore the significance of elements of crime
writing in this extract. Remember to include in
your answer relevant detailed analysis of the
ways the author has shaped meanings. - 2017
[25 marks]
The extract presents a range of consequences centred around the aftermath of a crime
providing a dynamic exploration of a variety of different elements of crime. The text is set in the
1920s in a middle-class apparently domestic household where we witness two woman clean the
remains of the man that they murdered. This reversal of gender-roles in crime where women are
usually the victims and men the criminals allows an intrinsically fascinating exploration into the
psychological effects of a murder on a guilty mind and whether crimes of self-defence are
justified.
As the extract begins the crime of murder is clear. The fast pacing and focalisation of the
narrative through the heterodiegetic narrator who enters Frances thoughts creates a sensation
of pressure and tension building in the extract as though the characters are rushing to clean up
the aftermath of the crime because they believe someone will catch them. The frantically paced
writing with numerous short sentences scattered through adds to this affect making it clear that
the crime was not one of pre-mediation and lacked a ‘malice aforethoughtʼ but was a ‘acte
gratuiteʼ as stated by W H Auden. Instead, the crime is one spurred in the moment (as stated in
the epigraph that it occurred after Leonard was “threatening” Frances with violence), as can be
seen from the messy and hasty way that the women clean up the remains suggesting that they
were not prepared for such an event. This introduces an interesting question in the reader of
whether crimes can be justified if they are done for protection or against others who aim to
commit violent crimes. Due to the fact that the narrator introduces us to Franceʼs thoughts we
become connected with her and therefore also Lilian feeling sympathy for them as their
scattered and nervous response to the crime suggests a lack of evil and instead regret, remorse
and guilt.
This guilt is exemplified in the way that the setting begins to represent the internal turmoil of the
characters becoming personified or zoomorphised. As Frances burns the “scarf” and it gives “a
twitch, like a snake”, the simile used metaphorically encapsulates her own nervousness towards
the murder with the rapid quick way that the evidence for the murder disappears “up into
nothing” representing how quickly a crime can be cleared. The cushion which she begins to
“slice open” and then “pull out its wet woolly innards, clump by clump” creates a disturbing
representation of Leonards own body which we assume has already been disposed of in a likely
similar way. The gruesome and disrupting depictions of how the different parts of the house
take on the same traits as a dead body being disposed of showcases the psychological impacts
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