One thing used a lot is suspense, which seems to be a theme of the text.

with quotes

like “windows were rattling everywhere”, “At that moment I began to doubt my own

reality.” and “a cry, that familiar cry of desperation” All of them serve to make the

reader’s heartbeat go faster with anticipation, and the writer forces us to have our own

theories, however scary it may be. It makes them alert, and feel excitement and fear

which leads them to read more. The writer also shows our main character’s mental

health dissipating under the pressure of not knowing what's happening

The writer uses adjectives like ‘disturbed’, ‘alone’ and “despair” which all have negative

connotations and are used to create a creepy setting. The writer also takes help from

these “gothic vocabulary” to foreshadow that something dreadful by making the

atmosphere tense. We, as readers, don’t want that but everything is pointing towards it,

creating suspense.

The writer uses a simile to help craft fear in his/her readers- “...felt like a ship in a sea”

giving a sense of imbalance and insecurity. The writer seems to use it as symbolism for

how out of place everything felt. They also use a repetition “...a cry, that familiar cry... a

cry for help” to emphasize the strangeness of all that's happening. The writer uses that

to make us emotionally vulnerable, which makes fear set in, thus, more suspense. Also,

the personification “howling darkness” is used to show how unhappy everything was.

The writer uses double dashes “there was indeed someone - another human being -

living here in this house” creating suspense because, in a practical sense, he was

alone. There was also the use of ellipsis and question mark “no one had been able to

do anything for...how many years?” for years no one could escape the insanity here,

how could he? The length of the time has been so long it's like it never happened.
The text usually has shorter sentences which creates haste or urgency. The writer uses

that to create suspense and make us fear this “woman in black” while for readers, it

emphasizes their shock. For example, ‘I listened hard. Nothing. The tumult of the wind,

like a banshee, and the banging and rattling of the window in its old, ill-fitting frame.

Then yes, again, a cry, that familiar cry of desperation and anguish, a cry for help from a

child somewhere out on the marsh. There was no child. I knew that. How could there

be? Yet how could I lie here and ignore even the crying of some long-dead ghost?’ This

has predominantly shorter, simple sentences with rhetorical questions and complex

sentences, creating a sense of tension.

The opening of the extract is highly descriptive. This sets the scenel and highlights the

tension. This is a part that does use its fair share of long sentences, ‘Windows were

rattling everywhere and there was the sound of moaning down all the chimneys of the

house and whistling through every nook and cranny.’ but by the end, sentences become

shorter as to create more drama “No light came on. The torch was broken.”