1.
How does
Carter’s forest foreshadow the narrator’s fate and how does this differ from a
romantic view (e.g. what is her fate and choose/analyse quotations as evidence
of this from throughout the tale)?
2.
Describe the language, structure and subsequent
effects from ‘A cold day of late October’ to ‘a sickroom hush’.
3.
How does Carter present the Erl-King?
4.
Explain what is meant by this image: ‘His skin covers me entirely; we are like two
halves of a seed, enclosed in the same integument. I should like to grow enormously small, so
that you could swallow me like those queens in fairy tales who conceive when
they swallow a grain of corn or a sesame seed.
Then I could lodge inside your body and you would bear me’.
5.
Explain the two major metaphors in this story:
caged birds and music.
6.
What is meant by the final line, ‘Mother,
mother, you have murdered me!’
7.
Did you spot any intertextuality? Find allusions to other texts and consider
why they have been used.
8.
How is Carter’s description of the Erl-King
different to that picture of males (particularly in fairy tales) which we are
used to being presented with?
9.
At the end of the story, why has Carter slipped
into third person?
10.
What is Carter suggesting about the romantic,
fairy tale hero?
