'The Company of Wolves'

The Company of Wolves

Quotes

-  ‘you are always in danger in the forest’

-  ‘a man who vanished clear away on her wedding night’

-  ‘the forest closed upon her like a pair of jaws’

-  ‘they are grey as famine’

-  ‘you will suffer’

-  ‘we try and try’

-  ‘blood on snow’

-  ‘Quack, quack! went the duck’

Characters

-  Heroine

-  ‘she is an unbroken egg’

-   ‘she knew she was nobody’s meat’

-  ‘she has just started her woman’s bleeding’

-  ‘so pretty’

-  Wolf

-  ‘the tender wolf’

-   ‘fear and flee the wolf’

AO2 - language, form and structure and how they shape meaning

-  Language

-  Narrator addresses the reader - ‘you are always in danger’, ‘you will suffer’, ‘we try and try’

-  Written as if to recreate the oral tradition of fairytales - ‘Quack, quack! went the duck’

-  ‘hurl your Bible at him’, ‘call on Christ…but it won’t do you any good’, It is Christmas Day, the werewolves' birthday’, ‘canticles of the wolves’ - undermining religion (canticle = short song/hymn)

-  ‘The forest closed on her like a pair of jaws’ - isolated simile, only sentence in paragraph, highlight isolated setting - typically Gothic (see ‘Dead as his wives’ simile in BC = isolated)

-  Fairytale - ‘What big eyes you have’, ‘All the better to see you with’ (‘All the better to see you’ = BC)

-  Metaphor - ‘night and forest has come into the kitchen’

-  Structure

-  Lengthy introduction highlights importance of superstitions and wolves in the lives of the people

-  Opens reader’s mind to the supernatural - it is common here

-  No speech marks increase the strangeness of the story - also, there would be no speech marks in oral tradition

AO3 - connections between texts and different interpretations

-  Fairy tale motifs (see BC, EK, LOTHOL)

-  Personification of the woods (see EK)

Gothic Features

-  Religion - 

‘you must run as if the Devil were after you’

-  Weather/setting

-  Personification of the forest ‘like a pair of jaws’, also simile, similar to EK

-  Night time setting - typically Gothic, increases ambiguity

-  Dominant male 

- wolf

-  Non-passive female 

- she laughs at him, ‘she knew she was nobody’s meat’