The Collector - Opening Paragraph Analysis

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THE COLLECTOR – OPENING PARAGRAPH

QUESTION: Identify the characteristics of writing and comment on the tone and style of the piece and the effects achieved by the writer. How does the writer make the reader want to read on?

Having not read the entire book and only having the opening paragraph to work from it is difficult to establish in what direction the novel will take us. However, it is certain that despite this, I as a reader want to keep reading and discover more about the story and its characters. The question is how does the author manage to capture the interest of the reader to such an extent? To discover this we need to look at the tone and style the author uses to invite the reader into his character’s world so that you need to know more.

We need also, then, to look at the way the author has begun to develop the characters and how despite the lack of any actual malicious language or violent actions, the author makes the reader feel uncomfortable about the narrator’s intentions towards ‘M’. Why does the reader feel that the narrator’s intentions are not innocent but instead in some way sinister?

Finally, we need to examine the paragraph’s overall content to discover what aspects of it compel the reader to continue reading.

The title itself, although simple, alludes to a wish to possess a prized or coveted object and is the first hint the reader gets that the story will develop this idea.

The piece is written as a first person narrative, using predominantly colloquial language. This simplicity and the attention to every detail within the long conversational sentences almost seems to attempt to gain the reader’s confidence. Further, this attention to each small detail, such as “…I stood by the window and used to look down over the road over the frosting…” and “I stood right behind her once in a queue at the public library down Crossfield Street.”, helps the reader build a pictu...