Night Flashcards
Difficult childhood
“there seemed to be never a childbirth or a burst appendix of any other drastic physical event that did not occur simultaneously with a snowstorm”
Pathetic fallacy
Three part sentence emphasises the overwhelming list of events that occurred at the same time
“had to” be rushed to hospital at 11 pm. A blizzard “had to be blowing” - repetition leads to a sense of inevitability that this would always happen at the most difficult time.
Her illness:
Enjoyment
“Special status” “invalid status” - implies privilege as a result of illness
Relaxed about hospital stay: “Adventure” / “Minus my appendix” / “Distinction”
“Minus my appendix” - the subordinate clause suggests how it was an afterthought, casual tone
“Distincion”- ironic tone, as if it was an honour
“Enjoyed being excused from physical training”
Childish positivity
Something more sinister!
Foreshadowing that all is not good: “I looked well” - appearance only. Mentally, not well.
“But it was not the only thing removed” - wait until this delayed main clause to discover this, and then until the last clause of the paragraph to find out what it was: “A growth… the size of a Turkey’s egg” - visual image, easy for a child to imagine.
Build up of tension and mystery
“The doctor had seen fit to take it out while he was at it, but the main thing that concerned him was a growth. A growth, my mother said, the size of a turkey’s egg”
“The main thing” suggests that it was not the only thing, adds to the sense of mystery
“…a growth. A growth”, anadiplosis may also be an euphemism to avoid scaring a child
“Turkey’s egg”, metaphor, relatable to a child
“My mother said”, the subordinate clause casts doubt, the narrator is still uncertain
“But don’t worry, she said, it’s all over now.”
Free indirect speech, single line paragraph for impact
The discussion had been dismissed
Sense of mystery as some things still have not been revealed yet
“The thought of cancer never entered my head and she never mentioned it.”
Repetition of the adverb ‘never’, but she is thinking about it now
“…. without some kind of question, some probing about whether it was or it wasn’t. Cancerous or benign - we would want to know at once.”
Repetition of “some” highlights the fact that there was no curiosity at that time
Relationship with her sister
“I would take on the role of sophisticated counsellor” - metaphor of acting, doesn’t seem true
“I don’t mean to say I was entirely in control or even that our lives were constantly intertwined” - “entirely” and “constantly” (adverbs) implies that this was at least partially the case (line 49). Metaphor “intertwined”
- “She had her own friends” - implied sister had friends, but the narrator may not
- “Threaten to spit on [her]” . Even though the narrator claims that her sister was “the
person I loved most in the world” she is not always kind.
Uncertainty
- “Must have been” “maybe” “I think” dismisses and forgets “would have” past tense
conditional - doesn’t really know.
Sibilance of “Uselessness and strangeness I felt”
Uncertainty
“Must have been” “maybe” “I think” dismisses and forgets “would have” past tense
conditional - doesn’t really know.
Sibilance of “Uselessness and strangeness I felt”
Portrayal of night
Title. Symbolically and literally “night”. In the story she opens up to her own
metaphorical darkness, and thinks she won’t be able to resist killing her own sister
“Stranger place” - comparative
“Falling away” passivity and lack of control at night
“The furniture retreated into itself….” metaphor, idea things are unreal, doesn’t understand the reality - constantly seeming different.
“It took awhile for the house to change” - as if things are changing around her
“Without a light”, symbolically without a light as well as literally
“Everything was larger” idea that everything is worse, comparative
Colour imagery “White” “lilac” → “intensely black” familiar sounds frightening, house also sounds dangerous. “I can’t say whether it could be the twentieth or the twelfth or only the eighth or the ninth that I had got up and walked – I got a sense, too late for me to change my pace, that there was somebody around the corner.” Anaphora - lack of grasp on reality, but list becomes progressively more likely!
“The sky may have been whitening but hidden still between the heavy trees. The birds singing, too. The sky may have been whitening but hidden still between the heavy trees. The birds are singing, too.” - Uncertainty because of repetition of modal verb “may” + colour imagery. No possibility of it being fixed.
Powerlessness
“My failure to sleep prolonged itself” - reflexive pronoun: she has no control.
“First to make myself go under by then hardly of my own volition” losing sense of
reality
“I was not myself” - separation from reality, feelings and control. Simple declarative.
91, “Something was taking hold of me and it was my business, my hope, to fight it” correction, matter of fact “business”: vs abstract “hope”. Mental struggles and battles. Asyndeton. Mystery of the “something” that has agency / is metaphorically “taking hold”
97, “The more I chase the thought away the more it comes back” anaphora, paradox. Reflects confusion
98 “no vengeance, no hatred…..” anaphora, embedded clause (conversational) + metaphor of “cold deep thought” emotionally + symbolic. “could take possession of me” implication of supernatural evil and reflection of her lack of control. Parallel structure.
“I must not even think of it, but I did think of it” → epistrophe. Impossible to resist. Tense - present then past. Memories of her attempts to resist seem present and real.
Fear of potential actions-
“The thought was there and hanging in my mind” sense of anticipation.Definite article. Anaphora. Power of “the thought”
“I could strangle my sister.” possibility (modal verb) violence, escalation of violence.
“Little sister” “Asleep in the bunk” → vulnerability.
“I could get rid of it fairly easily” “so absurd” - in the daytime it seems ridiculous/ she can easily dismiss it
Single sentence paragraph “Absurd” says it so often to reassure herself
“The activity seemed to mock me. I was mocking myself, as the words turned into absurdity, into the silliest random speech.”
‘Seemed to mock me’ personification, ‘seemed to’ highlights the gap between her perception and reality, she is slowing losing her sense of reality and cannot properly distinguish between the two
‘The words’ are the subject of the verb as if they did it, not her, portrays her lack of control over herself
‘Absurdity’ ‘silliest’, strange, unusual, gives off a sense of unease, despite it being unreasonable it still happened
“I might do it not for jealousy, viciousness, or anger’ list of three shows how unreasonable it was for her to even think of strangling her sister, not for the sake of her but for ‘madness’
Personification of madness
“Madness, which could be lying right beside me” personification of evil, teasing, not entirely unwelcome, suggests a sense of familiarity as ‘lying right beside me’ suggests a level of intimacy, which portrays how she has lost a sense of reality
“A lazy, teasing, half-sluggish suggestion that had been waiting a long time.”
Sense of anticipation, inevitably
‘Lazy’ shows how even the slightest encouragement is adding to her insanity
“It might be saying why not. Why not try the worst ‘’ anadiplosis. “Might be ‘’ - modal. Her projections
“The demons got hold of me again” - metaphor. Intrusive thoughts as the enemy.
“even the inside of the rooms became more visible to me and yet more strange” - paradox
“I never sat down but it eased me to look towards town, maybe just to inhale the sanity of it.”- isolation driving her insane
Relationship with father
Metaphorically and literally cannot keep walking “the whole rhythm of it had been broken”
“I certainly did not intend to tell him more. If he had given the slightest intimation that he knew there was more, if he’d even hinted that he had come here intending to hear it, I don’t think he’d have got anything out of me at all…..” → conditionals, attempting to judge it retrospectively. “Had to” obligation on her to start talking.
“I meant to”
“When I spoke of my little sister I said that I was afraid I would hurt her. I believed that would be enough, that he would know enough of what I meant. ‘Strangle her,’ I said then. I could not stop myself after all.”
Violence of “strangle”
-last sentence shows she does not have power over her words. Irony
“My father had heard it. He had heard that I thought myself capable of, for no reason,
strangling little Catherine in her sleep.” Embedded clause = ambiguous - applicable
to both. (Does she believe she would do it but wouldn’t, or does she believe that,
without a motive, she would do it anyway?)
Comforting analogy “could not happen, in the way that a meteor could not hit our house (of course it could,but the likelihood of its doing so put it in the category of couldn’t).”
“There were other things he could have said.” criticism, repetition of modals “could have” and “might have”
“It set me down, but without either mockery or alarm, in the world we were living in.” - metaphor. Provides grounding / reality.
“Those strappings, then, would have stayed in his mind, if they stayed at all,
as no more than the necessary and adequate curbing of a mouthy child’s imagination that she should rule the roost.” → World was hard, conditional clause . her father helped her, but it could be hard too.
“However, on that breaking morning he gave me just what I needed to hear and what I was even going to forget about soon enough.”
- metaphors “breaking morning” - dawn, new day and hope
- metaphor “gave” - gift. She is grateful.
After the penultimate paragraph describes the darkness in her father’s life, the short sentence “Never mind” totally dismisses all of this suffering in the same way he dismisses her “darkness”. Similar to him.
‘From then I could sleep” sleep, mental peace etc. symbolism. End of unrest.
