A* AQA ENGLISH LITERATURE B CRIME WRITING UNSEEN EXTRACTS
Explore the significance of elements of crime writing in this extract?
Received 25/25 marks A*
2021 Unseen 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. [25 marks]
2021
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. [25 marks]
The extract is taken from Chapter 1 of Birdcage Walk by Helen Dunmore, published in 2017. The
story is set in late eighteenth century England and the ‘heʼ referred to in the extract is, as yet,
unidentified.
The setting reflecting the psychological state of the narrator and crime committed.
The inconsequence of her life through the small bugs described.
The short sentences and manʼs thoughts representing that of a broken psychology.
Not being said what the women did to make him hate her.
The manʼs rearrangement of the womanʼs body.
The extract presents the reader with the aftermath of a murder where the narrator buries and
laments the loss of a woman who he once appeared to care about. We witness the
psychological state of the criminal through the justification of his actions, the setting and
language which appears to mirror the narrators initial paranoid, and the burial of the victim of
the crime deep within a forest. In this essay I will therefore discuss the significance of the
elements of crime writing within the extract.
As we begin the extract the focus on the surroundings and setting which is described as vast
and empty appears to mirror the narrators paranoia as though someone will appear
contradicting his belief that the “old forest… had never been cut since men lived in their hill
forts”. The setting appears to mirror the narrators bizarre psychological state which can be seen
as almost melancholic similar to the narrator who is both distressed and has accepted the
womanʼs death. The setting appears to be what he used to lure the woman out into the “glades”
“where sunlight dropped down through the tall trees and made the orchids grow” presenting a
very picturesque setting in contrast to a gruesome repulsive crime which is hinted at occurring.
The “rich smell with an edge to it” which is initially described is the readers first hint that the
forest setting is not as calming as it seems, appearing to foreshadow the smell of “a dead thing”
which the butterflies surround later on in the extract. The combination of “too much birdsong”
which “muddled” the narrator, alongside the long-ended depictions of the “brambles and ivy”
create a claustrophobic effect presenting the psychological state of the narrator who appears
confused and disorientated.
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