Analysis.
When you are attempting to create a perfect PEE paragraph always ensure you weave all three components tightly together so that the analysis is powerful and as convincing as possible.
- Make your point clear and focused and link to your succinct evidence and full explanation. A successful analysis knits together all three PEE elements. For example: ‘ The extract reveals that the intimacy between Macbeth and his wife is violently passionate and excessive. For instance, When Macbeth exclaims ‘ bring forth male children only’ the audience can hear the dangerous, passionate adulation in Macbeth’s voice as he imagines the heirs he does not actually have but probably desperately hopes for in the future. This disturbing irony deepens the emotional resonance of his exclamation and emphasises how passion distorts our equilibrium. The pride in the non-existent ‘male ‘ heir reveals the disturbing irony of their passionate relationship which celebrates their mutual ambition, despite their evil intention to commit regicide. The excessive violence that precedes this exclamation is expressed in both Lady Macbeth’s barbaric anecdote about the baby she has given ‘suck’ to having its brains ‘dashed out’ and the disturbingly elated admiration expressed by her besotted husband, which would shock any audience with its murderously callous disregard for the defenceless child. It feels as if their relationship contaminates everything with their dark obsession. Yet we realise that this obsession has been fuelled by Macbeth’s encounter with the witches whose predilection for moral anarchy as evidenced by their ‘fair is foul’ mantra has instigated the moral disturbance in the drama.
The Demon Lover. ( Elizabeth Bowen)
http://omero.humnet.unipi.it/matdid/201/DemonLover.pdf
- A palpable sense of unease and foreboding is created by the gloomy ambiguity of the description in the opening two paragraphs. This description appears ambiguous as a result of the implications of the story’s title, The Demon Lover, which encourages readers to treat the apparently ordinary late summer day with more than a little suspicion. This reference to the ‘ end of her day’ has connotations of death as Mrs Drover’s life term is coming to an ‘end’ too and this is compounded by the sense that the ‘shut-up house’ is also a symbol of her too. Something seems slightly askew in the description and the ‘once familiar street’ now feels defamiliarised and disturbingly animated by forces that are not human: ‘no human eye watched ‘ and ‘dead air came out to meet her.’ This removal of the human creates an uncanny effect. It feels as if something fateful and catastrophic is being foreshadowed; in retrospect, the personification of the ‘unwilling lock’ might suggest that the old house is trying to resist Mrs Drover’s entry in order to protect her.
- In the second paragraph, we enter the ‘boarded’ up world of her old home and sense that the ‘prosaic’ Mrs Drover is out of her depth emotionally and spiritually. The ‘former habit of life’ makes her ‘perplexed’ which underlines the presence of something uncanny in the once familiar home: references to the ‘bruise in the wallpaper’ and the ‘claw marks ‘ on the ‘parquet’ give uneasy animation and secret violence to the house. It is deeply foreboding that we cannot understand exactly what is going on and thus we feel thwarted, just like Mrs Drover, and forever to wait for an answer.
- The ‘refracted daylight’ compounds this sense of uneasy animation in the fourth paragraph. The hall is illuminated by a shaft of lift that is different and changed. The use of the dash is also significant as it adds drama to the appearance of the letter. This drama is uncomfortable as the letter is separated from the rest of the description suggesting the letter’s impact will be isolating too.
- We are surprised by our encounter with the soldier’s fiancée whose illegible, faceless appearance unsettles us deeply. The use of flashbacks deepens the horror as the simplicity of the first sentence of the memory reads like an allegory: ‘The young girl talking to the soldier’ as if they are more archetypes than individuals. ( Innocence versus Conflict) And as we read on we sense the cold, distant yet predatory nature of the unnamed soldier. The details have an unsettling cumulative effect.
- The central image in this scene involves a button. Bowen uses the striking detail of the uniform which damages the young girl’s palm like sadistic stigmata: ‘ that cut of the button on the palm of her hand’ to show the callous nature of the lover whom we assume is the ‘demon’ due to his lack of identification and cruel extraction of an unwonted contract which he unnervingly tells her ‘ I shall be with you.’ As the story concludes we realise how horrifying this promise turns out to be. The reunion involves a demonic taxi ‘ into the hinterland of deserted streets.’ Which is a marvellously terrifying metaphor for hell!
