Analysis of Running Wild by J.G. Ballard

Uddrag

Already in the title of this short story we see a glimpse of the 13 young murderers´s desire. This is a story about evil and about what happens when children get overprotected and don't get to know real life. There are a lot of psychological aspects in the story, and I don't believe that there's only one explanation to what the children did. In this assignment I will point out the most important aspects and theories regarding the motive of the murders. Furthermore I will analyse the language and the story in general. I'm also going to interpret the text.

The main character in this story is the police psychiatrist Dr. Greville, and the text is built up like a forensic diary of his. He is working at the Pangbourne Massacre case, investigating the murders, so the language in “Running Wild” is mainly a professional language. Many times the author uses linguistic tools that otherwise would have been used in factual texts. Therefore it is not an omniscient author, but mostly a first-person narrator, Dr. Greville. There is one case of third-person narrator, when Greville presents his theory of how and when the children killed the adults of the estate.

This manner of telling the story does that we hear about the different theories of the police and so on, without really knowing what happened. This makes the story more exciting and the author uses suspense to do this. Furthermore it makes the whole story more believable, even though it is a somewhat bizarre plot.
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