Genre
a collection of stories
Setting and Context
London, beginning of the 20th century
Narrator and Point of View
Narrator: some stories have a narrator that is a character in the story, others have an omniscient narrator
Point of view: first and third person
Tone and Mood
Tone: impersonal, passionate
Mood: nightmarish, uneasy
Protagonist and Antagonist
Protagonist: The "Sound Machine" a man called Klausner who invents the machine; Antagonist: the machine itself
Major Conflict
In the "Galloping Foxley" a man's piece on his train commute to work is disturbed by a new face, who he then believes is his abuser from youth.
Climax
In the "Galloping Foxley" Perkins musters up the courage to approach Bruce Foxley, but it turns out that it wasn't even him.
Foreshadowing
"...afraid that the machine might not work and afraid also of what might happen is it did."-"The Sound Machine"
Understatement
"It was a curious sensation, sitting only a yard away from this man who fifty years before had made me so miserable that I had once contemplated suicide."-"Galloping Foxley"
-What's the understatement here is the nonchalant tone with which the abuse suffered and contemplated suicide is mentioned.
Allusions
"Nunc Dimittis"-allusion the Latin phrase and the Bible
Imagery
Imagery of body grotesque to evoke unease and discomfort in the reader, like the stories "Skin" or "Neck".
Paradox
"Mind you, she wasn't expecting to find anything. She was just going home with the vegetables."-"Lamb to the Slaughter"
-Mary wasn't expecting to find anything because she already knows what's waiting for her, but her not expecting is also a part of her plan.
Parallelism
"That meant that soon it would be tomorrow. Tomorrow was worse than today. Tomorrow was the worst of all because it was going to become today-and today was now." -"The Soldier"
Metonymy and Synecdoche
"At least half the faces I pass on this little walk are now familiar to me. And good faces they are too, my kind of faces."-"Galloping Foxley"
-The word face is used as a word that describes the entirety of another human.
Personification
"He tried to remember what the shriek of the shriek of the tree had sounded like, but he couldn't."-"The Sound Machine"
