Language

Style of writing

The language of Jan Carson’s short story “The World Ending in Fire” is informal and reflects a child’s worldview and way of talking. This is an interesting choice since the story is told by the adult version of the narrator. However, the childish language helps readers identify with the young narrator and Lyndsey.

The language used in the text also reflects the characters’ accents and dialects. Words such as “mam” (l. 10) instead of mom or mother, “loo” (l. 35) instead of toilet, “wee” (l. 72) to mean little, or the Irish word “eejit” reinforce the story’s physical setting.

Similes

The narrator explains that she and her friends cannot see the special chair Mrs Agnew uses for a toilet seat from where they are sitting on the wheelie bins. She says this is something she is glad of, “like when the camera goes to the roof during the scariest bits of a horror film” (l. 20). This rather funny ...