\u201cThen I heard a key inserted and turned in the lock behind me. After a little while I heard through the locked door the noise of the staghounds, that had now been brought up from the beach. They were not barking, but sniffing and growling in a curious fashion\u201d (21).<\/p>\n
This paper will provide a close reading of the passage in which the narrator is first shown where he will be staying on the island. This scene is one of the first where our narrator becomes aware that something unusual is going on on the island. The emphasis on the locked door and the repetition of the word \u201cheard\u201d in the passage reveals Mr. Prendick\u2019s unawareness of what is happening on the island.<\/p>\n
There is great emphasis placed on the locked door throughout this passage. Within two sentences, we see the words \u201ckey\u201d, \u201clock\u201d, and \u201clocked door\u201d. Even though the first sentence very explicitly lets the readers know the door is locked, the author reiterates it again in the next sentence by saying \u201clocked door\u201d. This repetition reveals that there is information our narrator is unaware of that is intentionally being kept from him. He is literally being locked out by not being able to physically go through the door, but he is also figuratively being \u201clocked out\u201d of information. The repetition of \u201clock\u201d builds the curiosity of the reader, as they are at this point also unaware of the secret being kept from the narrator. The mention of \u201cthe beach\u201d in this passage can be seen as a contrast to the room the narrator now finds himself in. The beach often evokes feelings of freedom. If we think of the beach as an allusion to freedom, and our narrator is no longer down at the beach, then we might consider our narrator as no longer free. By having an allusion to freedom in the middle of a passage talking about locks and locked doors, it suggests the room the narrator is now in, or perhaps the island as a whole, is incompatible with freedom.<\/p>\n
Not only is there a great emphasis on locks in the passage, but there is also an emphasis on sound. Throughout this short passage, the word \u201cheard\u201d gets used twice. There is also emphasis on sound in the words \u201cnoise\u201d, \u201cbarking\u201d, \u201csniffing\u201d, and \u201cgrowling\u201d. It is important that the narrator is hearing things instead of seeing them. He hears the key get inserted in the door and he hears the staghounds, but he is not actually seeing what is going on. The fact that he is hearing, but not seeing, could allude to the fact that he is unaware of what is happening on the island. If he could see the staghounds \u201csniffing and growling\u201d, then he would know what they were reacting to. Instead, he can hear them growling behind the door, which could suggest there is something unusual or unsafe behind the door, but the narrator does not get to see what it is. Similarly, the reader does not get to know why the dogs are growling. The use of staghounds, rather than say a poodle or dachshund, could also be meaningful. Staghounds are hunting dogs, and are very protective. The narrator can hear these protective dogs, but they are behind the door, and therefore in a place he is not allowed to go. This could symbolize the narrator losing protection once he got to the island. The emphasis on hearing instead of seeing reveals the narrator\u2019s knowledge that something unusual is happening on the island, but his unawareness of what it is.<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cThen I heard a key inserted and turned in the lock behind me. After a little while I heard through the locked door the noise of the staghounds, that had now been brought up from the beach. They were not barking, but sniffing and growling in a curious fashion\u201d (21). This paper will provide a … Continue reading Locks and Sounds: A Close Reading<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3296,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[125359],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-598","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2018-blog-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/598","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3296"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=598"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/598\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}