Passage Commentary On The Crow Road By Ian Banks

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The introductory paragraphs of Ian Banks’ The Crow Road establish a clear setting as well as emotional and physical representations of the characters. The passage recounts the funeral ceremony of Prentice’s – the main character – grandmother and the family gathering it entails. This scene serves to expose the general atmosphere in the crematorium and Prentice’s reactions to the situation. This expert features significant literary elements, namely: a rich and precise descriptive prose that works to define the passage spatially and in term of its characters; a deliberate choice of narrative chronology by which readers better get a grasp of the main character’s personality; and the process through which the author engenders empathy, sympathy or some other form of emotion for the characters from, augmenting the reader’s interest. Using these methods, Banks is able to successfully keep readers engaged and solidly begin his novel. Undoubtedly, Banks’ writing has a significant amount of imagery and description which give the reader a clearer view of the situation. Much of the description is used to give a sense of setting such as the very early description of “the cold, echoing chapel” (line 5-6). This short, yet powerful, depiction of the chapel immediately puts into the reader’s mind a very definite sense of what it is like. Banks also puts much care into physically describing his characters, notably Prentice’s father’ “broad, graying-brown head” (line 6) and his mother sitting “upright and trim, neatly filling a black coat and sporting a dramatic black hat shaped like a flying saucer” (line 17-18). Once again these concise descriptions leave a very precise portrayal of the characters and the fact that Prentice, from his vantage point, is observing them all in a rather detached and objective manner. These descriptions are not only physical but also imply
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