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The Lemon Orchard Sympathy

Decent Essays

In ‘The Lemon Orchard’ the writer creates tension and sympathy by contrasting the two characters of the slave and the gang members creating an unequal relationship. The gang members constantly threaten the man whilst asking him questions to intimidate him such as, ‘do you hear, hotnot? Answer me or I will shoot a hole through your spine.’ The tone in which he asks him shows how the gang are in full control of the situation. The noun ‘answer’ reinforces how demanding and powerful the gang is and by forcing the answer they are intimidating the man and gaining a sense of power. Despite this we feel a lot of sympathy for the man because in the relationship the innocent man is belittled and bullied by the gang members. The idea of the man being …show more content…

They ‘demanded’ the man followed their orders and if not they will have to take action. The imperative ‘demanded’ displays the hostility of the gang members and it also connotes aggression and violence. It also implies the dominance they have over the man who we might feel sympathy for because he is outnumbered, undeserving of the abuse and he also is innocent. The hostile language used is reinforced when they refer to the ‘coloured’ man as ‘hotnot’. This clearly portrays how cruel they are to the man being victimised and this also shows how they have taken away the man’s identity and given him a racist, degrading name in place of that. The reader can really feel sympathy for the man because he has been unfairly abused because of how dignified he is throughout all of it, for example; ‘he was cold and tried to prevent himself from shivering in case it should be mistaken for cowardice.’ The verb ‘tried’ reinforces his ‘dignity’ but also his fear of death and for that we feel sympathy for him. The fact they use these names really shows how weak and undignified they really are which completely contrasts all of the characteristics of the coloured

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