Reading Assessment: Michael Morpurgo’s Use of Language and Structure to Create Drama in the Novel – Private Peaceful.
Private peaceful is a story which mainly follows the life of a boy named Thomas Peaceful (or Tommo as he is called by his friends and family) in the build up towards WW1. It talks of his family in their ups and downs including his Father’s death. We follow Tommo in the past tense as he reflects upon his time up to the trenches. In the extract of pages between page 153 and 155 (which is in the present tense), we see Tommo attacked by a gas cloud whilst writing to his mother. He is saved of his life by a German attacker (or “Fritz”). He is then given a bill of clear health upon inspection of how seriously he was hurt. He then goes to see all of his comrade’s bodies who were not so lucky and died in the attack. In the extract, Morpurgo uses lots of imagery to add to the drama and tension in the piece. By making the scene more realistic and gripping for the reader. The links to animals and monsters used through imagery, metaphors and personification give the reader an insight into what the character is feeling, this in turn makes the reader far more gripped and hooked on the novel because they see themselves as actually being there. In the extract Morpurgo shows many examples of personification, metaphors and imagery. When Tommo first sees the gas reaching towards him, he says; “we see it rolling towards us, this dreaded killer cloud” This is an example of a metaphor. Morpurgo uses this to give the effect that the cloud has a life of its own and is capable of murder and wishes to do it. He uses some specific words ‘rolling’- Morpurgo uses this to give the effect of the gas being an unstoppable machine or a robot that is programmed to do only one thing. Kill. Morpurgo also uses the word ‘dreaded’. Dreaded is a word that gives the effect of something that everyone knows of and is feared. Like a plague that has the power to kill hundreds and is often not stoppable with hardly any precautions to take. The last word that Morpurgo uses in this sentence is the word