How Does Susan Hill Manipulate the Reader’s Fears in This Extract?

452 Words2 Pages
How does Susan Hill manipulate the reader’s fears in this extract? Susan Hill uses a wide range of techniques in this specific chapter as it play a huge role in the story as Arthur begins to discover more about The Woman in Black, this chapter in particular has lots of anti-climaxes in it to build up suspense and tension. The first technique is anti-climaxes, she uses lots of them in this chapter as it is building you up to something unsuspected, for example Arthur wakes in the middle of the night and sees Spider standing at the door described as ‘every hair on her body was on end, her ears pricked, her tail erect’ but further through the chapter after Arthur and Spider investigate what is going on, Spider acts as if nothing had happened ‘Spider came quite happy and stood obediently there’ this is a real anti-climax as thought the chapter you are expecting nothing to happen but nothing does building up lots of tension for nothing, this makes the reader feel a sense of foreboding as they know something will happen sooner or later. This also makes the reader question what Spider was so on edge about and what the ‘Bump. Bump. Pause’ noise behind the locked door. The second technique is onomatopoeia; this is used in the ‘Bump Bump’ this help build tension as it makes the reader question what the bumping is and who or what is doing it, this builds tension in itself as people are oblivious to what is making the noise or what is behind the closed door, the type of onomatopoeia used also makes the reader try to think of what object could be making that noise leading onto more questions from the reader, Hill made sure people didn’t find out about this to keep them hooked throughout the chapter. The last technique used is the use of senses, the main one is what Arthur hears which is the bumping, but this itself almost implements its self in your head like you can

More about How Does Susan Hill Manipulate the Reader’s Fears in This Extract?

Open Document