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The L-shaped Room by Lynne Reid Banks Essay

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The L-shaped Room by Lynne Reid Banks

The narrator's views of social prejudice are conveyed through the experience of Jane the main character.

"My father and I hadn't said a word to each other when I went home for my things. He's told me to go and I was going; he didn't care where and so why should I tell him?"

The above opening quotation is from 'The L-shaped Room' written by
Lynne Reid Banks. It captures an insight into the attitudes of the time. The author mainly focuses on reflecting the journey Jane faces through her "unwanted pregnancy," coping with emotional difficulties and the dilemmas that face her. I feel the novel made me sympathetic towards Jane, as the novel kept me captivated; with many twists and turns and …show more content…

Yet these neighbours eventually draw her back to life.

At the start of the novel Jane realised it was morally wrong in her society to be pregnant but she tries to be strong to admit the truth to her father:

“‘I’m pregnant' I said. These two words shocked even me with their crudeness. I instantly wished I'd said the softer 'I' m going to have a baby.' The blunt statement of the biological fact had the same after- echoes as a slap across his face."

The writer has made me feel that Jane thought some weight would ease of her mind by being strong and telling her father, as he may understand as she is the only child with no mother. However the sharpness of the truth hits Jane at the same time as she admits the truth because she realises she is in the situation and she is not generally stating something that will have no affect on her. I think the dash reveals extra feelings, of how she now feels after admitting the truth but in addition to this the sentence before and after the dash is a vivid contrast. Before the dash it suggests what she said was simple and straightforward words but it compares the effect of the words after the dash which shows the words are shocking. 'Echoes as a slap across the face' shows how forceful the words actually sounded.
This phrase is a simile which compares her words as being worse than a slap. In my opinion the word choice of ‘echoes’ expresses how the admittance of the truth must have been a

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