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Schule > Englisch > Susan Hill - I'm the King of the castle > How does the author try to create tension?

Hausaufgabe Englisch: 15.02.2001

Describe two scenes that you find “creepy” / terrifiing / “scaring”!
How does the author convey / create a feeling of horror / tension / suspence… try to give you the “creeps”
The first scene is the scene, where Kingshaw is attacked by a crow. The author tries to emphasise the feeling of horror, one the one hand by describing everything extremely detailed and by creating a rather mysterious athmosphere. This happens for example when she scribes: “For a moent, he could only hear the soft thudding of his own foodsteps, and the silky sound of the corn”, “Then, there was a rush of air” or “with the sound of his own blood pumping through his ears”. As everything is described in detail you can see the situation in your imagination, what of course creates a feeling of tension. You can also see this at some other parts of this scene: “Then, his left foot caught in one of the ruts and he keeled over, going down straight forwards.” It is not only said that he felt down. He keeled over. He was going down and he was going down straight forwards. In general you can say that Susan Hill writes in a way that you can easily imagine what the situation must be like. As if it was real, she can tell every detail. On the other hand the use of signalwords is to stress the tension and the horror. Phrases like “enormous, ragged black wings” implie that something is dangerous and words like “suddenly” and short sentences like “He ran.” cause hectic.
The next scene is the scene where Kingshaw gets locked up in the Red Room. The tricks used by Susan Hill to producte a feeling of horror are the same. Again the athmosphere is kind of mysterious and tensed. “The rain was driving agains the window. It was gone nine o’clock, and already dusk, because of the heavy clouds.”. In these senteces there are even several things that cause this impression: It’s dark, it’s raining and it’s late. And there are also very detailed descriptions of the dead animals in the Red Room, which show the horrible athmosphere.

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