I'm the King of the Castle: Writer's Methods and Techniques (Cambridge (CIE) IGCSE English Literature): Revision Note

Susan Hill uses a number of methods and techniques in I’m the King of the Castle. When considering the methods and techniques a writer has used, you should consider not only what the writer has used, but why. 

The following guide contains sections on: 

• Narrative perspective 

• Flashbacks 

• Gothic setting 

• Symbolism and imagery 

• Structure

• Language

Narrative perspective

• The writing in I’m the King of the Castle moves between third person description and third person limited point of view:

  • This is where the narrator tells you what a particular character is thinking or feeling at any given time

  • Giving an insight into a character’s inner-most thoughts helps the reader to understand what that character is going through and what triggers his or her actions 

  • It also helps to load tension and suspense in the plot, while building an intimate relationship with the reader by withholding information from other characters 

  • It gives the author storytelling flexibility as the plot can be moved on through characters’ thoughts

• This technique is used at different times in the novel for all five main characters: Edmund, Charles, Mr Hooper, Mrs Kingshaw and Fielding:

  • However, it is used less so for Edmund, the story’s bully, which perhaps suggests that he was a boy who didn’t think too deeply about his actions and their consequences

  • One exception to this is after Charles’ suicide, when Edmund thinks that Charles did it because of him and feels a “spurt of triumph” 

• In terms of Mr Hooper and Mrs Kingshaw, the technique is used to reveal how they feel about each other and how the situation is linked to their circumstances:

  • Economic uncertainty in the case of Mrs Kingshaw, or an acceptance of needs linked to loneliness and desire, in the case of Mr Hooper 

  • Their thoughts also question how successful, or otherwise, they have been as parents 

• But it is mostly used in this novel to reveal the thoughts of Charles, which reflect his fears of Edmund, external factors and of future events: 

  • After fighting Edmund, he thinks he has never faced this level of hostility 

  • In relation to his mother and Mr Hooper, he thinks they know so little of him they would believe anything 

• In despair and contemplating taking his own life, Charles thought of the things Edmund might do to him, of his new school and his mother marrying Mr Hooper 

Flashbacks

Flashbacks, when used in connection with a third person limited point of view, are an effective way of filling in the gaps to explain why a character is thinking or acting in a certain way. The author uses flashbacks throughout the book to make the characters’ personalities more three-dimensional and to provide context for their decision-making.

• Mr Hooper thinks back to his childhood and his relationship with his father, and this has a bearing on his relationship with Edmund 

• He also thinks back to his visits to London and the sexual desire he felt for women he saw on the Tube or in Soho, London’s ‘red light’ district:

  • This, together with his memory of the coldness of his marriage, goes some way to explain why he is keen to marry Mrs Kingshaw 

• But the vast majority of flashbacks are linked to Charles and are useful in understanding how experience has shaped his personality and led to his current state of mind: 

  • He thinks back to being bullied at school, which illustrates both his being a perpetual victim and puts the level of bullying at the hands of Edmund into context 

• He remembers being terrified, for no apparent reason, by an elderly female tenant in a hotel where he lived for a while with his mother:

  • This reveals the breadth of his fears and insecurities and shows that they were in place long before his arrival at Warings 

• He remembers being embarrassed when she turned up at his school for sports days and speech days because of her “slippery looking dresses” and because she put on lipstick when everyone could see:

  • This illuminates the distant relationship he has with his mother 

Gothic setting

Susan Hill reflects, in the book’s afterword, that the novel was written in a remote corner of England in a cottage surrounded by woodland “like the pelt of a dark animal thrown across the hillside", and that the setting had come first for her rather than the plot.

It is that setting, removed to another part of England, that shapes the novel and provides its gothic feel.

Gothic elements in this novel include:

• A sizeable if “ugly” and “graceless” house in a remote setting with many rooms, a dusty attic, dark passageways and a dilapidated air:

  • This is used to emphasise the theme of isolation

  • The decaying house serves as a physical prison that mirrors Charles’ emotional reality 

• Nearby woods leading to a larger forest where “the leaves locked together more tightly overhead and the sun could not get through” 

• Spaces that Edmund could trap Charles in, notably the Red Room in the house which contained a creepy dead moth collection, and a remote shed in which, Edmund says, “there might be a lot of moths or there could be a bat hanging upside down from the ceiling”:

  • The moth that disintegrates into “dark dust” when touched symbolises a world lacking life and warmth

  • The setting therefore mirrors Hooper’s nature

• The remote, ruined Leydell Castle where the boys climb the walls and Edmund falls off 

• The circus, in Charles’ mind, becomes a frightening place with “the terrible braying and roaring and trumpeting of the dancing animals” 

• The market, where Fielding and his father are taking the lamb “for veal”, only appears in Charles’ imagination, but he thinks the place would “hold all kinds of new terrors for him, sounds and fears and smells”:

  • Here, the author may be using external physical horror to reinforce the internal psychological terror Charles feels

  • Another example of this is the sparrowhawk catching and killing a bird mid-air

• The gothic imagery may also be signposting to the ultimate death in the novel:

  • Charles’ suicide then becomes a predictable event rather than a sudden shock

Symbolism and imagery

The gothic theme is carried on through symbolism (opens in a new tab) and imagery (opens in a new tab) in the novel.

Death 

• Death, in both real and symbolic terms, is prevalent in this novel

• The novel ends with Charles’ suicide 

• The dead moth collection in the Red Room is a source of terror for Charles and, coming at the start of the book, is a signifier of his wider fears and a signpost of the horror to come 

• A dead rabbit is found in the woods where the boys discuss the bodies of their parents 

• A thrush bangs a snail down on a flat stone to break its shell, while a sparrowhawk overtakes a small bird and grips it to death:

  • Here, the cruelty of nature mirrors the cruelty of man, in the shape of Edmund who terrorises someone weaker than him 

• Crows are often seen a symbol of death, partly as result of their reputation as scavengers feeding on the dead and their presence at battlefields 

• They are represented in imagery and simile (opens in a new tab), or likeness, throughout this novel:

  • Charles is attacked by a crow when he is exploring a nearby field 

  • Edmund puts a dead, stuffed crow on Charles’ bed 

  • Mr Hooper is said to resemble a crow 

  • A clown at the circus is said to have a mouth that is “opening and shutting like the mouth of the carrion crow”

• I’m the King of the Castle, the title of the book, is based on a children’s game where power is achieved by gaining higher ground

• Power and control are powerful symbols in the novel:

  • Edmund takes charge from when the boys meet and is physically in control of Charles as a jailer when he locks him in the Red Room and the shed 

  • On two brief occasions, when Edmund is hysterical when the boys are lost in the woods, and when he is scared to climb the castle walls which Charles has already scaled, Charles becomes the more powerful child and declares himself the “king of the castle”

  • Here, the author may be showing that although power and control is usually in the hands of the bully, not the victim, when the tables are turned (briefly), Charles shows that personality rather than circumstance is behind Edmund’s actions

  • Charles does not exploit the situation, even though he has the opportunity and means to do so

• Fielding, the farmer’s son, can be seen as playing a symbolic role in the novel when he appears towards its end: 

  • His easy going, assured nature is seen as a contrast to Charles’ fearfulness 

  • That same confidence shows Edmund that he won’t be able to bully him or tell him what to do 

• In this sense, Fielding might be a seen as a representative of the wider, “normal” world, and, by contrast, indicator of the extreme world inhabited by Edmund and Charles 

• Mr Hooper and Mrs Kingshaw’s blindness to what is happening to their children can be viewed as symbolic of a lack of love: 

  • In her afterword, Susan Hill talks of them being “selfish, insensitive, blind, stupid” 

Structure

There is a sense of foreboding in the novel that things are heading towards a tragic conclusion, and the cyclical structure of the text adds to this.

• The book has a cyclical structure, starting and ending with death:

  • What is suggested in the first chapters comes to fruition by the end

• A sense of foreboding is weaved into the novel throughout:

  • Charles certainly feels a sense of fear of what is to come towards the end of the book 

  • “He thought of everything, what else would happen, he thought of the things Hooper had done and what he was going to do, of the new school and the wedding of his mother” 

• Charles is a fatalistic child who doesn’t feel capable of changing his own destiny: 

  • “He was ashamed of being afraid and could not help it” 

• He is also superstitious, believing a wart on his hand is the result of a ‘black magic’ spell linked to the removal of a classmate’s wart at school and thinks that Edmund being alive after his fall from the castle wall is a punishment for him wishing Edmund dead

• The narrative is not only organised by time, but by specific “battlegrounds”:

  • These are the key locations where the power dynamic between the two boys shifts, escalates and ultimately resolves in tragedy

  • Hang Wood also acts as a structural pivot, where the power relationship between the boys shifts, albeit briefly

• A further recurring motif (opens in a new tab) in the novel is the “reversal of truth”:

  • The narrative repeatedly builds up to a crisis where Charles acts morally or bravely, only for the resolution to act against him

Language

• Hill uses language to create an atmosphere of decay, unease and tension in this book:

  • “Mrs Boland did not like Warings. It is too dark, it smells un-lived in, of old things like a museum”

• The author also uses simile, especially in relation to death, which keeps this theme at the forefront of readers’ minds throughout the novel:

  • “All he looks like is one of his dead moths”

• She also uses demonstrations of power and destruction in nature to reflect the uneven power struggle between Edmund and Charles, and to suggest where this is leading:

  • “They had watched a sparrowhawk overtake a small bird in midair, reaching out and pulling it back with its claws and then gripping it to death as it flew on”

  • Cruelty in nature is mirrored in Edmund’s cruelty

• Hill’s gothic descriptions of nature and its impact help to create a sense of fear and impending doom:

  • “Hooper was completely beside himself, wrapped up in his fear, oblivious of everything except the storm and his terror of it”

• The forest is described as a dense place, difficult to navigate, which adds to the sense of isolation in the book:

  • “There seemed no chance at all of them either getting out by themselves or of being found”

• The language Edmund uses is intended to manipulate Charles psychologically, playing on his fears and often warning him of worse to come:

  • “In science they make you cut up dead moths”

• Conversations between the parents, along with the narrative perspective used in the novel, are intended to reveal the adults’ self-absorption and their blindness to what is happening with their children

• In addition, the limited third person point of view is used to demonstrate Edmund’s predatory instincts and Charles’ view of himself as helpless prey:

  • “All he could do was bait and bait, seeing how far he could go, trying to think of new things”

  • “He was running away because he wanted to get away from Hooper”

Source

Hill, S. (1970) I’m the King of the Castle. 1989 edn. Penguin.