An Evil Cradling Essay Example

They manage to light a candle, and Keenan uses the simile "the tiny blue flame was like ourselves," describing how they are both "struggling to stay alive. " He continues: "exhausted with the struggle [the candle] was snuffed out," and on first reading it is not immediately clear that Keenan has dropped the simile and is now talking only about the literal candle.

His description of the dying candle is chilling because it hints that Keenan may fear that he or McCarthy may because exhausted with the struggle and "snuff out. " This is speculative, but is giving credence a little later in the book, when a suicidal fellow prisoner leds Keenan to consider his own despair at the possibility of giving up, asking himself how a man could do such a thing, reassuring himself that "the fury of life" would overcome the desire to die. Elsewhere in the book are more explicit references to fear, but fewer than one might imagine.

Although Keenan uses the adjective "fearful" twice shortly after his capture, to describe his cell and his captors, he describes two memorable moments relatively on in his captivity in which he felt deep fear, both relating to a fear of being physically tortured. The first comes soon after he is kidnapped when he discovers a pair of pliers. Keenan uses the transitive verb "mesmerised" to describe how he stared while trying to stop his imagination from "running wild" at the "horror" at their use. He goes on to metaphorically compare them to an "unlucky black cat," indicating there was nothing good in his future.

The second incident takes place when Keenan meets John McCarthy for the

first time. Once his excitement at the company wears off at least a little, he begins exploring the cell and finds exposed wires dangling from a power point near a metal bed. Keenan describes the sight as making him "very fearful," a rarity in the book. He moves the bed so as to hide the potential instrument of torture (using the cliche "out of sight, out if mind," perhaps in an attempt to make light of the situation). However Keenan does not seem to dwell on fears of being physical hurt and does not describe any real fear of the beatings he later suffers.

He reiterates several times that he was not afraid to die; "death held no fear," "we were not frightened of the possibility of dying. " Anger is a powerful emotion and Keenan demonstrates a great sense of anger and how it positively and negatively affected him during his captivity, both in the extract and throughout the book. Keenan powerfully compares his anger to a volcano, metaphorically describing it "a Vesuvius of rage. " This comparison is reinforced by Keenan's feeling that he will "blow up" and do his captor harm (as volcanoes "blow up" and explode). Earlier in the book, however, Keenan seems to feel his anger has a positive impact.

Although his primary anger early on seems to come from his captors mistaken belief in his nationality, where he denounces (with particularly affective use of the 'group of three' techinique) how he was "kidnapped as a British subject, locked up as a British subject and questioned as a British subject," he also describes his anger as almost being a physical force, capable

of both "pushing away the dark moments" and "pulling [him] back from madness. " Of course, it is impossible to separate feelings such as fear, anger, and despair, as I have attempted to do here; to do so is to ignore the complexity of emotions that Keenan attempts to convey.

Many times he uses the three words (or similiar words) in the same sentence, when describing his emotional state at times of great distress, such as when he discovered he had become impotent early on in his captivity, or when his captors forcibly shaved his beard later on, an event Keenan describes as being akin to rape (of identity). One of the main positive effect conveyed is the sense of camaraderie between Keenan and John McCarthy and the development of rich inner worlds, reinforced by a private language, that become a refuge.

In his descriptions of this, and more, Keenan also shows how he developed and became aware of his own inner strength. Lastly, one of the biggest emotional and mental effects that comes across is a feeling of one of great defiance, which seems to be linked with Keenan's attempts to understand the terrorist mind, using his own knowledge and experiences (especially of terrorism, from being from Belfast) to try to form some level of understanding with, or to try to humanise, his captors, possibly as a way of intellectualising and therefore gaining distance from an extremely traumatic experience.