Writing About Structure And Style Essay

Submitted By Aminah-Nazir
Words: 655
Pages: 3

Martyn Pig: Writing about structure and style
There are TWO ways of writing about structure and style:
APPROACH 1
APPROACH 2
Plan a paragraph (or two) to begin your essay that focus on structure and/or style.
Write about structure and style in the PEExplanation part of most of your paragraphs.

TRY TO PUT IDEAS ABOUT STRUCTURE AND STYLE IN YOUR PLANNING!
ALWAYS MENTION LANGUAGE, STRUCTURE and STYLE in your INTRODUCTION.
DO NOT FORGET: You will get NO reward for writing about structure and style if they don’t help you actually answer the question. NEVER just write a big chunk about style/structure that has absolutely nothing to do with the question!

Use of crime novels in the story – that world has a clear notion of good and evil

The femme fatale – Alex
The REAL world isn’t so clear cut – use of light and colour
Martyn creates a sense of the ‘monsters’ in his life – use of the grotesque/unreliable narrator
Martyn has conflicting feelings about his actions – the symbolism of the bird
Ultimately, the ‘monster’ Aunty Jean, ends up being the only force of good in Martyn’s life – sun comes out when she first arrives at his house – symbolism/pathetic fallacy.
Kevin Brooks cleverly uses the world of crime novels as well as a range of stylistic devices to present the concept of good and evil in his novel, ‘Martyn Pig’. Ultimately, Brooks reveals that, despite being clear cut in the world of crime novels, this opposition between good and evil is far from absolute in the real world.
Martyn’s love of crime novels is established early in the narrative. These stories offer him an escape from his increasingly complicated life. He explains that The Complete Illustrated Sherlock Holmes is the reason, “I came to love mystery stories.” Brooks uses this device to continually draw a contrast between the fantasy of there being a clear divide between good and evil and the reality of Martyn’s own mystery narrative in which it is difficult to discern who is the hero and who is the villain. In the world of fictional detectives everything has a meaning, “Dad’s ID number was 4514. Morse would have made something of that.” But in Martyn’s world, very little makes sense, including his own actions.
Brooks seems to draw the character of Alex, perhaps the most evil person in the novel, from the world of film noir. Like all femme fatales, Alex beguiles our naïve hero, Martyn, into trusting her by building up his hope of a romance. After