A* AQA ENGLISH LITERATURE B CRIME WRITING UNSEEN EXTRACT Explore the significance of elements of crime writing in this extract?
Received 22/25 marks A*
Unseen Extract – The Chain By Adrian McKinty
(Chapter 3)
Unseen Extract – The Chain By Adrian McKInty (Chapter 3)
The sentence structure – short sentences. The psychological effect of a victim.
A childʼs kidnapping – the morality of kidnapping a child for the benefit of your own child.
The conflict of victim becoming criminal.
The motive of this crime – for money (for bitcoin).
The narrator reflecting the chain itself.
The extract reveals a cyclical kidnapping chain with numerous crimes and motivations for crime
becoming clear. Racheal receives a phone call revealing that her daughter has been kidnapped
and the only way to get her back is by kidnapping another families child. The extract explores a
crime outside the bounds of the police force and legal system, being more shadowy and
underground. The crime elements of kidnapping, the morality of crime, victims becoming
criminals, and even the psychological effect on crime are all explored. In this essay I will
therefore discuss the significance of this extract in relation to the genre of crime writing as a
whole.
As the extract begins with the exaggerative language of the “sky is falling” “the sky is coming
down” to reflect Rachealʼs mental anguish towards the phone call reflecting the devastating
impact of a crime on those affected by it. The short sentence structure creates a frantic and
anguished pace to the extract creating a fast-unforgiving tone of pressure and anticipation. The
dialogue is swift and blunt with the two womenʼs conversation reflecting both their mental
struggles in the face of this larger chained operation seen through the simile of the “roaring in
her head that sounds like a giant wave about to break on top of her”. Through this it reflects the
personal and social consequences of crime as we witness two individuals with nothing in
common bonded together now in trust of each other to keep their children alive. The
psychological effect on the victim Racheal; can be seen through the omniscient narrators
descriptions of her sickness; “Her vision swims. She lets go of the steering wheel. Cars begin
honking as the Volvo drifts out of its lane”. Numerous aspects of drama and tension are
therefore created as we no longer only fear for Racheal daughter, Kylieʼs, life but Rachealʼs also
as she appears to almost enter a car crash from the stress she is experiencing; “she screams
and then grabs the steering wheel and rights the Volvo, avoiding an eighteen-wheeler by
inches”.
The womanʼs cold and instructive voice provides the background noise to the tension with the
repeated “You have to” creating the swimming effect of loss of consciousness; “You have to
remain calm, and you have to listen carefully to everything I say. You have to do it exactly the
way Iʼve done it”. We begin to feel sympathy for the textual criminal who has kidnapped Kylie as
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