Right, Here's The Thing...

Right, I was looking through my school books, you know as you do, and I realised to myself, where is "The Crucible"? And I looked and looked and I still can't find it. I found An Inspector Calls by J.B bloody Priestley but I just can not find THE CRUCIBLE, I'm not panicking or that because we only have a PRELIM tomorrow and it's only paper 2, the ESSAY section.

Yeah....not panicking IN THE SLIGHTEST.....

the trick i realised i put it up as adraft lol! i h8 pc's! danielle locke

Critical essay “The Trick is To Keep Breathing” by Janice Galloway

The novel “The Trick is to Keep Breathing” by Janice Galloway revolves around an ironically name character, Joy Stone. By looking at the opening section of the novel the reader is faced with the main ideas of the book. These ideas are repeated throughout the book and by introducing these themes at the beginning of the novel the opening section is proved to be very effective. This study will prove how effective the opening is by focussing on imagery and the use of scripts and then connecting these ideas with quotes taken from later on in the text.

As Joy Stone is grieving the loss of her partner, the opening passage is set in a rather depressing atmosphere and we are immediately introduced to the idea that Joy no longer feels part of her body, “I watch myself from the corner of the room.” she feels her mind and body are separate. It’s as if she does not have much control over her body because she is watching what it is doing.The huge gap between her mind and body reflects the huge gap between her mindset and reality this allows the reader to have a good insight into her mental stability at this point in the novel. The idea of her body and mind being separate is repeated many times throughout the book, an example of this is when she is crying to the psychiatrist “cold spots dripped on my upturned palms but I didn’t feel it was me crying. I could find no connection between these splashes and me.” Joy describes her tears as “cold spots” and “splashes” she denies the tears of being any part of her. Crying is one of the most intense physical expressions the body uses to convey the mind’s distress. By rejecting her tears Joy is again denying that her body has any insight into her mind and is again allowing a big separation.

As Joy sits alone in the dark in her living room we are confronted with two very important uses of imagery light and water. Both of which are incredibly important to Michael’s death. Light because brightness of that sunny day by the pool and also because a very dark thing happened on that day. In the opening paragraph Joy tells us “It looks emptier when the lights are on.” This portrays the loneliness Joy feels and we can immediately sympathise with her. This idea of light is also continued through the book however as Joy begins to recover we see her liken to the idea of light. As shown on the last page “watching the coloured lights” To begin and finish with the idea of light is very effective as it shows the complete contrast in tone which light mainly symbolised.

The water imagery is used continuously and especially in the opening section. Joy tells us at the beginning that there is a wet patch on her floor “It seeps when I put my shoe near, bleeding at the rim of leather, suckling at the sole.” she makes an immediate connection with water to death “bleeding at the rim of the leather” this is also a personification this might be because if she can think of the water as a person there is someone to blame. She describes the water to be “sucking at sole” however we can also interpret this as “suckling at the soul” the water has drained her soul when it took Michael away. The idea of seeing water as the murderer is eventually defeated when Joy, at the end of the book, decides to take swimming lessons.

Joy Stone is a drama teacher however when she did not want to open up to someone or was scared to, she went into an acting mode this is demonstrated in the novel by using a script, and this is also introduced in the opening section.

HEALTH VISITER So, how are you/how’s life/what’s been

happening/anything interesting to tell

me/what’s new?

PATIENT Oh, fine/nothing to speak of.

She does not mention names by doing this she keeps it very impersonal and business like because after all acting is her job. Janice Galloway uses lots of these small scripts throughout the novel usually when Joy has to discuss her mental health with a professional for example

DR THREE what sort of treatment do you want?

PATIENT I don’t know. What do you suggest?

Towards the end these begin to be less frequent. We understand that she is recovering from her breakdown because she no longer needs that barrier.

“The Trick is to keep Breathing” has a very effective opening section because we were immediately introduced to the themes that would be carried throughout the novel all of which are incredibly important to Joy’s recovery. The light imagery showed Joy’s tone and successfully portrayed her recovery at the end but to understand the importance of the light the reader needed to be faced with this imagery primarily so to get insight into her depression. The water imagery was very dangerous and sinister to begin with it really set the tone to reveal Joy depressed alone and scared. The separation of Joy’s mind from reality is really effectively described through imagery. Her separation from reality is furthermore shown through Joy’s script. To show all these main ideas in the opening section shows to incredibly valuable to get to know Joy’s mental stability.