How to analyse your set texts 1. Identify the writers methods2. Embed short quotations to illustrate those methods3. Analyse the ways in which those methods help to communicate the theme of darkess.

Butcher explores the themes of darkness in a number of ways in the opening paragraph, in order to communicate to the reader the mysteriousness, lack of visibility and moral threat of the Congo.

The first sentence immediately alerts us to a foreboding atmosphere. The use of pre-modification to describe the pre-dawn chill sets the scene at night and the imagery of the narrators legs pedalling for bedclothes helps the reader to picture a vulnerable character exposed to the cold night air seeking desperately for warmth. The fact that he can hear singing and a drum beat, in the night, adds to the foreboding atmosphere, creating a ghostly effect, particularly when we read that all the narrator could see were formless shadows. Again, the use of pre-modification here helps to develop our understanding of the narrators awareness of the empty but also threatening darkness around him. The fact that he cant make out lies behind that darkness, makes it more terrifying. He personifies the shadows when he moves slowly and carefully, so as not to anger them. The personification here gives the shadows a dangerous power over him. This impact is intensified by the end of the paragraph with the narrators use of two simple sentences in succession when he states that I was not just looking for warmth. I wanted protection. The effect of these sentences is very abrupt and the fact that he hasnt found warmth of protection reinforces just how dangerous his surroundings are. The emotive language used at the end of the paragraph, when he states that outside was the Congo and he was terrified, turns the Congo into a tangible threat and increases his vulnerability in the face of such darkness.