Whole Towns Sleeping example essay topic

Many things create fear, loneliness, isolation, the supernatural, darkness. all of these things are fears of one things, the unknown. The Whole Towns Sleeping's structure is unusual in the way in which it ends abruptly leaving the story open to be finished, leaving the reader wanting more. Building up tension throughout the story and quickly dispelling it but at the end the tension is never explained away making the ending of the story hang in your mind and making you realize how involved with the story you are. The story also has an unusual twist in that the event that the whole story builds up to happens just when you think it will not. Lavinia who you are expecting to get attacked by 'the lonely one' outside in the ravine or as she is running to her house infact happens after she reaches the apparent safety other house.

We start the story at her house she is safe and the moo created is of a calm relaxed safe mood. It is only as she leaves the house that we learn of 'The Lonely One' and the dangers that lie in the ravine and out in the open streets. After the rises and falls in tension including the discovery of the latest victim of the lonely one. The structures of the two texts are very different whereas one leaves the reader with full knowledge of what has happened therefore eliminating the fear "The Whole Towns Sleeping" leaves almost all mystery's unsolved and so fear is present until the end of the story right until the last word. The viewpoint of the two stories is also very important to the creation of fear. With the view of Watson we believe that we know everything but infact the reader knows very little but with the third persons view in "The Whole Towns Sleeping" readers should get the feeling of knowledge but the story is told from only what Lavinia sees If she see something the reader does not see it either.

But often she will see things before the reader creating tension very quickly and also dispelling it equally as quickly. A good example of this is when Lavinia and Francine come across some children pretending to be 'The lonely one' they are whispering from the bushes "I am the lonely One. I am the Lonely One I kill people". We are initially lead to believe that this voice is indeed the lonely one, we have no method of differentiating between voices in literature unless we are told who is speaking Bradbury uses this to fool the reader into suspecting the unknown voice is a killer.

But the sudden outburst by Francine of "You there! Children, you nasty children!" tells us that the voice is the voice of a child playing dispelling tension just as fast as it was created. The Whole Town's Sleeping" uses the main setting of the ravine that cuts a path through the middle of the town which itself is situated in the middle of Illinois to create a fearsome place. The ravine is depicted as a harsh isolated place in the middle of an isolated town.

The ravine is used towards the end of the story as Lavinia is on her final walk home. She passes through the ravine after her night with her friends after telling her friend Francine that she is not scared of "The Lonely One" but as she passes down "the steep b rambled bank" down towards the bottom of the ravine down the one hundred and thirteen steps the number itself is very important as it depicts the number 13 which is unlucky and the number one hundred giving the sense of huge distance. She whispers to herself the number of steps she has travelled down thus heightening the distance she must travel. As the leaves "The locked doors, the town, the drugstore, the theatre and the lights" she becomes more and more isolated.

She continues down the ravine she listens out for a stranger but finds silence. Her footsteps start to produce echoes showing how desolate and empty the ravine is. How cold the valley is and how cold "The Lonely One" is. Just as earlier Francine had "never been so cold since winter" when they found Eliza Ramsell's body in the ravine.

Even if the ravine is not infact the place where "The Lonely One" will strike it is the most likely place in the story and is purposely created to give this false sense of certainty. I feel that in "The Whole Towns Sleeping" the actual written story is less important then what you decide to interpret the rest of the story as.