The Erl King.... So Far

Initially 'The Erl King' pulls the reader into a dream-like realm, with constant paradoxes and ambiguous language, making the narrative difficult to grasp onto. "Perfect transparency must be impenetrable", the juxtaposition of the contrasting ideas of light throws the reader into an unsettling world. The personification of the forest enhances this dream world which Carter creates; the light is "nicotine-stained fingers", the trees are "anorexic", and the wood seems conscious of itself, one "must stay there until it lets you out again". This creates feelings of entrapment, making the reader feel claustrophobic, and describes the foreboding and sinister characteristics of the wood.

The visual colour scheme - "brass-coloured", "sulphur yellow", "russet slime"- evokes the transition from autum to winter, a hard and dirty season where everything is "withered" and "discoloured". This may be a metaphor for the theme of mortality and death, which is a theme reffered to throughout the narrative. An awareness of the impermanent condition of exsistance is presented through the forest, where "all will fall still, all lapse", and "a haunting sense of the imminent cessation of being" is embodied, reinforcing the forest's connection with death.

The narrative seems to cling onto a state of certainty, trying to persuade the reader that the "ambiguities" of the forest are purely ones "own illusion", and that "everything in the wood is exactly as it seems". This seems contradictory to the pervasive personification of the wood previously, where "the trees stir with a noise like the taffeta skirts of women who have lost themselves in the woods and hunt round hopelessly for the way out". The narrative is claiming that although it is dreamlike, it is absolutely certain, suggesting it is the human imagination that creates supernatural ideas, and unlike the other stories in the collection, tries to allow no room for a suspension of disbelief. We are trying to be made to disbelieve the magical aura of the wood. However, when the image of "an imaginary traveller walking towards an invented distance" is presented immediately after this claim of reality, it is hard not to fall into the dreamlike, supernatural state of the story.

The narrative voice is also constantly shifting; the reader is positioned in various perspectives which creates an unsettling effect. The initial first person narrative adopts the ominous perspective of the third person, she knows everything about all the animals in the Erl King's garden, notices the "ash-soft doves", "diminutive wrens", and "freckles thrushes". She subtly shifts to the second person, addressing the Erl King directly; "I feel your sharp teeth", placing us in the perspective of the Erl King before we realise we have left the first person narrative. The cohesion of the events in the story are not chronological; no direct speech between the girl and the Erl King allows this, and the reader is shifted between past, present and future tenses, creating both a disorientating and entrancing effect.