The Eye in the Door Literary Elements

Fiction, Historical Fiction

England, 1917-18 during World War One

Third person narrator telling the story from Billy Prior's point of view

General tone of both the main characters and the nation as a whole is frightened and almost paranoid

Billy Prior is the protagonist, Spragge the antagonist

The major conflict is the war but there is also extreme conflict within the main characters, particularly Billy who is conflicted about betraying his roots, and Manning who suffers inner conflict regarding his sexuality

The climax of Prior's hardwork in investigating Beattie Roper is reached when his department is forced to send case files to the war office, thereby enabling him to see all of the paperwork on Spragge that had hitherto been hidden

Spragge's visit to Beattie foreshadows her being arrested for attempted murder

Prior feels that he is prone to violence, which is an understatement as his dreams show him to be a person who enjoys masochism

Prior alludes to the Victorian serial killer Jack the Ripper when he tells Rivers that he "nipped to Whitechapel and ripped up a couple of prostitutes"

Vivid imagery painted of bombed out London, for example in chapter one "the pavement became gritty beneath their feet, pallid with the white dust that flowed so copiously from stricken houses and never seemed to clear, no matter how carefully the ruin was fenced off".

Prior is opposed to the "Conchies" yet is on their side when it comes to revealing the plot to frame Beattie Roper

Prior draws a parallel between himself in his youth when he was paid for sex and the female prpstitutes he meets in France

The nation is angry and looking for someone to blame; because a nation cannot itself be angry or seek anything for itself, it is used to represent its citizens in this context

Rivers dreams that an eyeball is after him and chasing him down the street, giving the eyeball the ability to move freely on its own and to decide its own intent