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W.S. L.P.Hartley Interpretation

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W.S. Leslie Poles Hartley is a nation-famous British writer famous for his novels ("Eustace and Hilda" (1947), "The Go-Between", "The Hireling" (1957) and short stories. He revived the genre of thriller in English literature, which had been forgotten for a long time, the main literary stream of the XIX century being the realism.
Though Hartley’s works have a lot in common with realism, he created his own genre following the English tradition of Gothic novel and E.A.Poe’s horror stories. Henry James was a master he always revered; and, like James, he was frequently possessed bys ideas of guilt and solitude and evil. As a contemporary reviewer remarked, "not only does he portray the
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It also hints at the conflicts of the story – both external and internal ones.
The author uses the 3rd person narration combined with the represented speech (when we don’t know exactly to whom the words like “Other-wordly indeed!” belong – to the author or to his character). Such a combination helps to make the story more complicated, to intrigue the reader, which is necessary for a thriller. The two-dimensional character of the story (one – the depiction of the events in chronological order and the other – the life of mind, the process of writing) is reflected in the type of narration.
The set of characters in the story is limited. It includes only the protagonist, Walter Streeter, and the antagonist W.S. We may say that the author’s interested more in the problems of writing and the writer’s responsibility than in giving a detailed description of characters, their background and appearance.
Both direct and indirect means of characterization are used in the text: to depict Walter Streeter mostly direct characterisation is used, but W.S. is portrayed mainly by means of indirect characterization.
Summing up the results of the literary analysis of the text we may draw a conclusion that the most prominent feature of the text is its double-layer character. These two layers are the real life, the chronological representation of facts and the life of mind. These dimensions are interwoven to such an extent that it is
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