Whistle and I'll Come to You

Question 1

Description of the storm as it builds up (Pathetic fallacy)

Answer 1

“The house felt like a ship at sea, battered by the gale that came roaring across the open marsh.”
- simile, “like a ship at sea” makes the house sound isolated and vulnerable
- metaphor, “battered” (violent plosives)
- Zoomorphism and onomatopoeia “roaring”
“Whistling” “moaning” - onomatopoeia, create a ghost effect in the house
“hearing the wind rage round like a lion, howling at the doors and beating upon the windows but powerless to reach me.” Safety in childhood / danger outside. Compared to this moment, when he does not feel safe
- “Like a lion” - simile
- “Howling” - zoomorphism and onomatopoeic
- “Beating” - violence, plosives
- “The tumult of the wind, like a banshee, and the banging and rattling of the window in its old, ill-fitting frame.”
- Auditory imagery / simile
- “Steady as a lighthouse, quite alone and exposed, bearing the brunt of winter after winter of gales and driving rain and sleet and spray.”
- “Steady as a lighthouse,” - simile
- “alone and exposed”, personification, hendiadys
- “bearing the brunt” - plosives and metaphor
“of winter after winter of gales and driving rain and sleet and spray.” - repetition and polysyndeton creates a sense of constant poor weather

“Howling darkness” - synaesthesia, zoomorphism and “catapulting” - violent verb

Question 2

Description of the supernatural

Answer 2

• ‘Rest in peace,’ I thought, but this poor one did not, could not”
• Sense of self-correction. Repetition of “not”
• Line 39 “…down the corridor. Down the short narrow corridor that led to the nursery whose door had been so firmly locked and then, inexplicably, opened.”
• Repetition of “down”
• Almost anadiplosis but changed with “Short narrow” adds onto the sense of claustrophobia
• “I had simply the absolutely certain sense of someone just having passed close to me and gone away down the corridor.”
• “Absolutely certain sense” oxymoron
• “I had seen no one, felt nothing. There had been no movement, no brush of a sleeve against mine, no disturbance of the air, I had not even heard a footstep.”
• Anaphora of “no” - highlights unease - no tangible reason for his discomfort
• “a” (indefinite article), singular rather than plural - emphasises the lack of evidence that there is someone / something else there
• “Whatever was about, whoever I had seen, and heard rocking, and who had passed me by just now, whoever had opened the locked door was not ‘real’.”
• “Whatever” → “whoever” - change in pronoun , difference between real (human) and a ghost

Question 3

Use of Darkness / sensory imagery

Answer 3

• Line 32 “a tremendous blast of wind hit the house so that it all but seemed to rock at the impact, the lights went out. I had not bothered to pick up my torch from the bedside table and now I stood in the pitch blackness, unsure for a moment of my bearings.”
• “a tremendous blast of wind” - intensifier / plosives / metaphors create violence
• “Hit” - violent verb
• “all but seemed to rock at the impact” - visual imagery
• “the lights went out.” - symbolic
• “pitch blackness” - metaphor
• “unsure for a moment of my bearings.” - navigation metaphor. Shows sense of disorientation
• “It went spinning away and fell somewhere… with a crash” - mystery / auditory imagery
• “No light came on. The torch had broken.” Symbolic. In darkness.
• “Brought me to my senses by scratching a little at my arm and then by licking the hand”
• “Brought me to my senses” - usually a metaphor but in this case is literal due to “scratching” and “licking” - sensory imagery
• “Calmer and relieved, while the wind boomed and roared without, and again again i hear that child’s terrible cry borne on the gusts towards me.”
• “Calmer and relieved,” - comparative - not actually calm. Still tense.
• “boomed and roared without,” - onomatopoeia
• “again and again” repetition.
• “towards me.” - sense of attack, to him and around him
• For a moment I was as near to weeping tears of despair and fear, frustration and tension, as I had ever been since my childhood. But instead of crying I drummed my fists upon the floorboards, in a burst of violent rage, until they throbbed.
• 2 pairs of hendiadys - build up of emotions
• “Drummed” - auditory imagery
• “Burst of violent rage” - metaphor
• “Throbbed” - onomatopoeic