The Little Stranger Literary Elements

Fiction (gothic horror)

Hundreds Hall, an old aristocratic family home in England during the post-war years in England.

The narrator is Dr Farraday who narrates from his own point of view, but he is a little unreliable in terms of recounting the events as they really played out. What he narrates and what he says to the family can sometimes diverge.

Depressing and frightening

The inhabitants of the house are the protagonists, the malevolent force within the house the antagonist.

The conflict that endures the longest in the book is that between belief in science and belief in the paranormal, with Dr Faraday using science and reason to explain what is happening, and the family believing that a malevolent paranormal force is manifesting itself on the second floor of the house.

Caroline's death is the climax of the novel and seems to lead to the disappearance of the malevolent spirit.

Caroline exclaiming, "You!" foreshadows the fact that she has encountered someone or something that has frightened her or shocked her and that they are shortly going to cause her death with their evil.

The house is said to be too expensive for the Ayres family to properly upkeep. This is an understatement because they have no money to speak of and the house is just too much for them, having been so for many years.

There are allusions to the current events of the time, particularly the election victory of the Labor Party in Britain's general election. This is something that causes doom and gloom within the nation because the party do not instill the populous with confidence.

The imagery is terrifying, dark and ghostly. The writer not only creates a visual picture for the reader but an audible one as well because much of the spirit's activity seems to be noise related. We are able to easily picture the terror of lying in bed in total darkness whilst the house continues to groan and creek around us.

Faraday is a proponent of a scientific explanation yet he warns people against going to the house which would suggest that he is leaning towards accepting the philosophical explanation instead of the scientific one.

There is a parallel between the people whose deaths or declining lives the Ayres women feel guilty about and the people they believe are causing the malevolent spirit to take over the house.

The House is used to include everyone who lives there.

The house is personified as Faraday insinuates that it is the entity that is bringing the evil presence to them. A house cannot feel malevolence and since possession is a psychological phenomenon it cannot be possessed either.