Extract Revision in The Woman in Black by Susan Hill

The extract from "The Woman in Black" contains many of the different features of gothic horror and traditional horror stories. As it contains these features it covers more ground as in the fact that it has an answer for everyone who has some sort of fear of pretty much anything. This is opposed to "Out, out" which doesn't contain as many examples of the features as there are in "the Woman in Black".

They both convey many scenes of horror and fear to give the reader a more threatened feeling straight from the start of the extract.

I will start with the woman in black. The woman in black portrays fear with children. This means that it will be more "hard-hitting" to people with children. In the passage it is also directed to the nursery as Kipps has a child himself who he leaves behind to go to work in eel marsh house. The role of the rational protagonist is also apparent with Kipps as he shows that he is making rational decisions and mistakes such as dropping the light and breaking it.

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The role of distress is also shown by Kipps as soon as he drops and breaks the light, he is then brought back to his senses by Spider (Mr. Daily's dog), but is almost instantly filled with an inexplicable feeling of despair. This is when they decide it would be a good idea to go outside, it wasn't as Spider proceeds to get stuck in the marsh and Kipps has to retrieve the canine.

When they decide to trek back to the house Kipps spots a figure in the window watching him, this would be the first meeting of Kipps and the woman in black. He sees the figure in the window of the nursery once again linking in with the fact of that Kipps has a child and it will cause a better affect on people with children.

Secondly Out, Out is an extract that is about a young boy who is working in America's mountain ranges chopping down trees so his family can make money and have firewood. When the young boy is called for supper he gets startled and his hand gets trapped in the tree cutting saw, ultimately ending in his death. In the extract the saw that the boy is using is personified by Frost by making it feel like when the boy was called for supper the saw heard it and almost decided to eat the boy's hand. The title of the poem is a reference to Macbeth when his wife dies his response is "Out, out brief candle".

In the text, Frost anthropomorphizes the saw quite obviously. During the extract, he uses quotes such as "the buzz-saw snarled and rattled" and "as if to prove saws know what supper meant, leaped out at the hand, or seemed to leap- he must have given the hand." These are examples of Frost trying to blame the saw instead of the child, his sister, or his parents who sent him to work even though he was too young to work the saw which killed him.

Onomatopoeia is also used during the starting lines of the poem when Frost describes the saw as "rattling" and "snarling", this also makes this line animalistic but the following line conveys a more machine/factory feel.