Listening Piece Commentary, English Language and Literature Essay

My audience audience pick was inspired by the old man in Poes Tell Tale Heart, thought evil by the protagonist, nevertheless given no voice to express himself. My protagonist is an elderly character reference with a dark side, similar to Angela Carters in The Werewolf. To subtly bankrupt this hidden soulality I adopted the style of Alan Bennetts monologue Playing Sandwiches where he gradually builds suspicion of the speaker, ultimately distinguishing the ugly truth. I created a radio monologue told from the viewpoint of an elderly lady, intend to make the listeners think about the secrets that lie hidden behind closed doors in regular peoples lives, typical of the Gothic. The exposition of my component introduces the lady as a kind soul Im gloomy Miss Hawking doesnt live here anymore. I used apologetic mannerlyness Im sorry to encourage listeners to like the character. The nonstandard auxiliary verb was makes her speech sound raw(a) Had herself a nice feller too they w as having a baby together, as does the colloquial lexis feller. The visitor is a dramatic cunning to allow the lady to speak her thoughts.When she talks of vision, the protagonists oral communication is more like a written story than spontaneous speech, and then he held her that night, under the moon, with the stars all shinin from above. She uses discourse markers, lexis like a romance novel, and conventional romantic imagery of the moon and stars, suggesting that she has played it everywhere and over in her head. Because this is a monologue, the visitors presence is only implied by the protagonists speech. Instead of stage directions my protagonist says everything needed to refer the action No, no, you neednt take your shoes off . The repetition of the disallow No, no and the lack of back-channeling begin to reveal her unusual side, sounding a bit too firm with her requests while covering it with a polite tone.Cumulative word count 317From here I slowly reveal her darker s ide making listeners question her knowledge of the couple, and her mental health the take outs been in there a little too farseeing Im afraid. To construct her mental breakdown in the line, I, I, Sorry, I dont know whats come over me I used a false start to show her nervousness and fear, and the adjectival sorry to echo her opening line. Her identity is revealed when she changes from second to first person in mid-sentence She loved you and you turned me into this.I implied that she has been tracking him since he left(p) in a series of photographs in a locked manner personifying her feelings The room wont forget. Her change in register, She was pretty, for a mistress You Bastard with taboo lexis unnerves the audience because it subverts expectations of how an old lady should speak. Writing this piece has crystalised the difference between spoken and written language for me in creating it I felt the need to say it out loud to visualise the voice accurately reflected the speech of an old lady. Overall I take I did so effectively as the register change at the end is quite striking.