‘An Evil Cradling’ by Brian Keenan Free Essay Example

The extract from Brian Keenan’s book “An Evil Cradling” recounts his experience of being kidnapped and help hostage by terrorist in Beirut. The story is written as an autobiography and has therefore got an omniscient narrator. It is written very descriptively and with a lot of imagery present. Moreover, it is not written in chronological order to reflect on the random and wild behaviours that Keenan was having inside the cell.

The extract starts with “come now into the cell with me and stay here and feel if you can and if you will that time, whatever time it was, for however long, for time means nothing in this cell.

Come, come in”. The repetition of the word “come”, makes us being dragged into the story by the author and start feeling the things that he felt at that time. Moreover, the polisindeton of the word “and” plots all the different things that we should do, as we are metaphorically in this cell. The tricolon of the noun “time” emphasises on how slow time went by and that Keenan always knew what happened at which time. As he utters that “time means nothing”, Keenan is strongly telling us that time was worth nothing in the cell and that everything was the same every single day.

In the next paragraph, Keenan tells us about his actions, “I hear”, “I lift”, “I look”, which shows how he is rapidly doing all different things and is slowly moving into madness. Te phrase “I hear the padlock slam”, makes us think of prison doors and the metallic clang as the doors smash closed.

Keenan is looking at “food on the floor”, which indicates the unhygienic conditions and that he feels the disgust for it. He knows though that he can only survive if he would eat it. The long sentence of “Every day I look to see if it will change, if there will be some new morsel of food that will make this day different from all the other days, but there is no change” shows that time is very slow going and the repetition of the word “days” for six times, shows us that the days move on and on but nothing changes. Also, the word “same” becomes repeated constantly to emphasise on the same effect, the non-changing life.

Next, it is being talked about the drinking of water and the urine being stored in bottles “bottle of drinking water… urine bottle”. The fact of both being stored in bottles, makes us feel sick. The bread is said to be “like eating cardboard”. This simile shows the dreadful food that was given to the hostage and that no new resources were given out within one day. Keenan is becoming crazy as he is starting to talk to himself and questioning “Will I go with it or will I try to hold it back, like a father and an unruly child?”. This rhetorical simile shows that his mind is spazzing out and taking over his control. Another fact that shows this is the fact that he “like a dog [sniffs] patch[es] on the wall”. The simile “like a dog” shows that he is totally out of control.

The loneliness in the cell is illustrated with the phrase “…push away the crushing emptiness of this tiny, tiny cell and the day’s long silence”. The same thing becomes demonstrated a few lines after, when he says “It is as if we are running down a long empty tunnel looking for something that we left behind but cannot see in the blackness”. This simile also shows that everything is horrible and that no nice things become true in this tomb. Keenan articulates that “it must be time to eat”. This shows that during the amount of time he was held as a hostage, he evolved a internal clock that told him when it is time to do what. Moreover, he starts questioning all different kind of unimportant things, as he has nothing to do “How someone decided once to call that part of the egg ‘albumen'”.

Keenan shows that he needs to stay focused to survive as he says “I must ration my drinking… if I were to knock over this water-bottle there would be nothing I could do…”. This shows that any little mistake can lead to him going mad and eventually dying. The cell he is in is described as a “tomb… under the ground”. This makes us think of him being in a coffin and buried under earth, already being dead. The next part begins with “Then it begins, I feel it coming from out of nowhere. I recognize it now” This makes us question about what the “it” is. We realise that Keenan’s conditions are getting worse and worse and that his mentality is vanishing. Moreover, he starts thinking about the “sea” and that he can “swim” in it. He is totally confused and starts imagining hallucinations. He starts talking about snakes and ladders “up snakes and down ladders” and totally goes mad as he sees the board game the wrong way round; it should be “down snakes and up ladders”. That his mentality is going crazy is emphasised with “mind is manically playing games with me… teasing me… threatening me”.

Keenan is all alone for a long time in the frightening darkness, as the phrases “there will be none for ten hours… I hate the dark” show. He has candles under his bed but does not light them. This again shows that he is confused and that every day, as the story continues, he becomes more and more nutty; this is heightened as he explains “I am going crazier by the day”. He personifies the darkness by verbalizing “in the thick sticky darkness”. The adjectives “thick” and “sticky” make us sense the heavy atmosphere at night time and the suffocating air underneath the ground. The alliteration on “full of filth” emphasises on the same thing, as the repeated “f” sounds make us perceive the stickiness and dirtiness of the blankets. The onomatopoeia in “drooling”, “humming” and “buzz, buzz, buzz” evoke the sound of the mosquitoes constantly swirling around Keenan’s head and making him go mad. He describes the hours of darkness as a “night’s battle”, which is ironic in a way as mosquitoes are normally harmless but to him, they are the greatest enemies.

He compares their bites to chicken pox as exclaims “Red lumps like chicken pox, all raging to be itched and scratched”. The simile and personification following it, highly evoke the annoyingness of these insects and what a torture it must have been for him to be bitten every night. They were so itchy, that he uttered “nails tearing my own flesh” and “scratch the skin from [my] feet”, which show that he would have preferred to rip his skin off to not be bitten by those beasts. The assonance of “i’s” in “insects is insidious” emphasise the sound of the small insects zumming around his head and providing him with a sleepless night. The bites felt for Keenan “like a shroud”. This simile is very strong as we directly think of death, in contrast with the shroud. As a shroud covers the whole body, so did the mosquito bites. In the final sentence, Keenan states that he would “let the mosquitoes feed and hope that [they would] ha[ve] a fill of [him]”. This shows that he has in a way given up the fight against these creatures and knows that he cannot do anything about getting bitten. Frustration is exceedingly shown in this last extract.

The extract from “An Evil Cradling” by Brian Keenan was very evocative and made the audience feel in the same way as he did, when he was a hostage in Beirut. The story was set up in many small paragraphs, showing all different things that were going on and the uncertainty of his well-being. A lot of the word “I” is being used to emphasise on all the different things that were going on and that everything happened to only him at that certain moment. Overall, I found his writing very effective as he wants to drag us into the story using metaphors and repetition. He is being very descriptive, trying to portray the surrounding he was ‘living’ in as contemplative as possible.

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