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The badness within him

by Susan Hill

Guide

Susan Hill was born in Scarborough, North Yorkshire. Her home town was later referred to in her novel A
Change for the Better (1969) and in some short stories like Cockles and Mussels.

She attended Scarborough Convent School, where she became interested in theatre and literature. Her
family left Scarborough in 1958 and moved to Coventry where her father worked in car and aircraft
factories. Hill states that she attended a girls’ grammar school, Barr's Hill. Her fellow pupils included Jennifer
Page, the first Chief Executive of the Millennium Dome. At Barrs Hill, she took A levels in English, French,
History, and Latin, proceeding to an English degree atKing's College London. By this time, she had already
written her first novel, The Enclosure, which was published by Hutchinson in her first year at the university.
The novel was criticised by The Daily Mail for its sexual content, with the suggestion that writing in this style
was unsuitable for a "schoolgirl".

Her next novel Gentleman and Ladies was published in 1968. This was followed in quick succession by A
Change for the Better, I'm the King of the Castle, The Albatross and other stories, Strange Meeting, The Bird
of Night, A Bit of Singing and Dancing and In the Springtime of the Year, all written and published between
1968 and 1974.

In 1975, she married Shakespeare scholar Stanley Wells, and they moved to Stratford upon Avon. Their first
daughter, author Jessica Ruston, was born in 1977, and their second daughter, Clemency, was born in 1985.
A middle daughter, Imogen, was born prematurely, and died at the age of four weeks. In 2013 it was
reported that she had left her husband and moved in with Barbara Machin, creator of Waking The Dead,
who is adapting Hill’s crime fiction series Serrailler for ITV, and previously adapted another of Susan's
works The Small Hand. However, she said that she was 'still married' to Wells in 2015.

Hill has recently founded her own publishing company, Long Barn Books, which has published one work of
fiction.

Hill's novels are written in a descriptive gothic style, especially her ghost story The Woman in Black, which
was published in 1983. She has expressed an interest in the traditional English ghost story, which relies on
suspense and atmosphere to create its impact, similar to the classic ghost stories by Montague Rhodes
James and Daphne du Maurier. The novel was turned into a play in 1987 and continues to run in the West
End of London, joining the group of plays that have run for over twenty years. It was also made into
a television film in 1989, and a film by Hammer Film Productions in 2012. She wrote another ghost story
with similar ingredients, The Mist in the Mirror in 1992, and a sequel to du Maurier's Rebecca entitled Mrs.
De Winter in 1993.
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In 2004, Hill began a series of crime novels featuring detective Simon Serrailler, entitled The Various Haunts
of Men (2004). This was followed by The Pure in Heart (2005), The Risk of Darkness (2006), The Vows of
Silence (2009), Shadows in the Street (2010),The Betrayal of Trust (2011), A Question of Identity (2013),
and The Soul of Discretion (2014).

Analysis of the story

1) Author’s biography
Is the author’s life or social background reflected in the story? If so, in what way?
2) Title: What is the significance of the title? Is the title ironic, symbolic? Does it summarise the main
events? Is the title a pun?
3) Setting :Where and when does the story take place? Broad setting? Narrow setting?
4) Plot: What is the story about?
5) Conflict :What is the conflict behind the plot? How is it resolved?
6) Climax: Mention the climax of the story.
7) Characterization: Mention the main and secondary characters. Describe their relationships
and use adjectives to describe the different characters.Are characters static or dynamic?
8) Main theme and subthemes: Does Col have loving feelings towards his family? Why does he think
he is filled with evil?
 “The ties of blood make no difference , we are separate people now.”How does this
comment help us understand Col’s situation?
 “Col waved back.” This is a terrible sentence. In what sense?
9) Point of view: Is it 1st person or 3rd person narrator? Is the narrator the same age as Col?
10) Language and style: What is the style of the story? What kind of language does the author use?
Susan Hill uses descriptions of the weather to help build up a picture of Col’s mood.
 How are the shadows and the sea described in the first paragraph?
 How do the others react to the weather? How does their mood make Col feel?
 As the weather gets hotter, how does Col’s mood change?
 What is the weather like on the morning after his father’s death?
 Col remembers earlier times at certain points in the story.Provide examples: can you
establish any parallelism between his memories and his mood?
11)Literary devices :
Personification: the attributing of human qualities to an animal,object, or abstraction.
Provide examples taken from the story.
Comparison: Provide an example.
Metaphor: a figure of speech which makes an implicit, implied or hidden comparison between two
things that are unrelated but share some common characteristics. In other words, a resemblance of
two contradictory or different objects is made based on a single or some common characteristics.
In simple English, when you portray a person, place, thing, or an action as being something else, even
though it is not actually that “something else,” you are speaking metaphorically.

Examples of metaphor in this story: the cliff and the sandcastle - Col’s got a black dog on his
shoulder.Explain what they stand for.
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12-Vocabulary section:
a- A glitering mist (page 19) Ways of shining : beam- blaze- dazzle- flash flicker-glare - gleam-glitter -
glimmer – glint- glisten - glow- sparkle- shimmer- twinkle-
b- Verbs of movement:
Clench his fist (page 19)
Lapping against his thighs (page 21)
His father was waving his hand (page 25)
He bobbed and disappeared (page 25)
His head was throbbing (page 25)
His body shivered (page 25)
The baby bounced up and down (page 23)
She wriggled her toes (page 22)

c- Verbs
1-His skin was peeling (page 19)
2-The covers bleached by the the glare of the sun (page 20)
3-The porch cluttered with shoes.
4-The warmth of the sun soothed him(page 21)
5-His father would lie on the rug and snore and play with Fay’s baby.
6-He felt completely taken over by the badness within him.(page 23)
7-The mist muffled everything (page 25)
8-He had watched his father drown and then Col wept.(page 26)