Language Analysis
This story is told from Sandra's viewpoint however it's written in third person. This means there is good use of personal pronouns and possessive forms (such as he, she, him, her, his). Despite this we do see the viewpoints from other characters such as Mrs Rutter and Kerry. Also this story relies a lot on dialogue - sometimes whilst reading you feel like your reading a script. At first the dialogue comes in the form of short sentences surrounded by the narrative however as Mrs Rutter's character is revealed, the conversation dominates.
Another point to be noted is that there is quite a bit of fairy tale imaginary used in The Darkness Out There. We can compare this story to Little Red Riding Hood as both the stories have similar contexts. This can be said as in Little Red Riding Hood the plot consists of - a little girl wandering through the woods to an old woman's cottage, where she needs help only to find not the old lady but evil in disguise. This closely relates to the plot of The Darkness Out There as Sandra is going to Mrs Rutter's house to help her however she soon discovers that Mrs Rutter is a selfish woman (just like evil is disguise).
Lively reflects the change in Sandra's perception and maturity when she moves on from viewing him as 'explosive with acne' to 'his anger eclipsed his acne' in the final paragraph when Sandra has her epiphany, which elevates him to an almost heroic status in her eyes. As a reader we can see the ignorance her previous judgement demonstrated and in the middle section of Lively's clear hints at Mrs Rutter's true character allows us to dismantle her stereotypical image very quickly. The metaphors used 'composed of circles' and 'a cottage - loaf of a woman' only just hint at a homely image, with the immediate 'snapped and darted' describing her eyes as probing and too disturbingly animal - like.
Another point to be noted is that there is quite a bit of fairy tale imaginary used in The Darkness Out There. We can compare this story to Little Red Riding Hood as both the stories have similar contexts. This can be said as in Little Red Riding Hood the plot consists of - a little girl wandering through the woods to an old woman's cottage, where she needs help only to find not the old lady but evil in disguise. This closely relates to the plot of The Darkness Out There as Sandra is going to Mrs Rutter's house to help her however she soon discovers that Mrs Rutter is a selfish woman (just like evil is disguise).
Lively reflects the change in Sandra's perception and maturity when she moves on from viewing him as 'explosive with acne' to 'his anger eclipsed his acne' in the final paragraph when Sandra has her epiphany, which elevates him to an almost heroic status in her eyes. As a reader we can see the ignorance her previous judgement demonstrated and in the middle section of Lively's clear hints at Mrs Rutter's true character allows us to dismantle her stereotypical image very quickly. The metaphors used 'composed of circles' and 'a cottage - loaf of a woman' only just hint at a homely image, with the immediate 'snapped and darted' describing her eyes as probing and too disturbingly animal - like.
Structure Analysis
Every story has five main stages to it - exposition (introduction of characters), inciting incident (the catalyst for conflict), rising action (a series of events which keep the reader interested), climax (the main character(s) come face to face with conflict) and denouement (the way in which the characters react to the conflict). In the darkness out there the five main stages consist of - Sandra walking to Mrs Rutter's house (exposition), Kerry jumping out at Sandra (inciting incident), they do a few jobs for Mrs Rutter; she seems nice (rising action), they discover that Mrs Rutter left the German to die and they decide to leave (climax), Sandra views Kerry and the rest of the world in a different perspective (denouement).