Structure

The story “The Case for the Defence” by Graham Greene can be also divided into two parts; the murder trial and its aftermath.

Point of view and narrator

The story is a first person-narration, told from the perspective of a reporter who had covered the trial of a murder. Consequently, the narrator has limited knowledge on the events and a biased point of view.

Notice that we only find out the narrator is a reporter half-way through the story: “If you had reported as many murder trials as I have, you would have known beforehand what he would say. And I was right, up to a point.” (p. 40, ll. 15-17)

Furthermore, the narrator admits his limited perspective on the events several times, allowing a certain ambiguity to the story. Even if it is obvious the narrator thinks one of the twins is guilty, he cannot be certain who: “He was crying, but whether he was the murderer or the innocent man, nobody will ever be able to tell.” (p. 41, ll. 28-29)

Apart from presenting his perspective on the events, using the personal pronoun “I”, the narrator sometimes also uses the personal pronoun “we”, showing that his opinion was shared by most of the people at the trial: “What we saw then was the end of the case. There wasn't a witness prepared to swear that it was the prisoner he'd seen.” (p. 41, ll. 11-12)

Finally, the narrator addresses readers directly in his story, making it thus oral, as if he was telling it to an audience: “It was all over, you would have said, but the hanging.” (p. 39, l. 17); “But if you were Mrs Salmon, could you sleep at night?” (p. 41, ll. 29-30)

Setting and time

The story takes place in London, sometime at the end of the 19...

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