Understanding the story

1. What is the profession of the first-person narrator of this story?

2. Briefly describe what may have happened on the night of Mrs Parker's death. Do not quote from the text, but say what you yourself think.

3. Why could there apparently be no possibility of "mistaken identity" in this case?

4. The lawyers who prepared the case for the Crown made one big mistake. What was it?

5. Why didn't the twins leave by a back way?

6. What facts about the case and its sequel make the author mention "divine vengeance"?

7. Does the author consider that the murderer has been justly punished?

8. What do you consider the most disturbing feature of the story?

Give a brief summary of the story (oral or written) in your own words.

Style and language

1. Compare the construction of the sentences in the first paragraph of this story with the first ten lines of Hemingway's "Indian Camp" (even if you have not read the whole story). What differences do you notice?

2. Greene uses a "first-person" narrator to tell the story. What effect does this have on the reader's reaction? Do you think Greene could have used an "omniscient narrator" who (like God) would have known all the facts of the case.

3. Pick out any examples of simile which you can find in the text and the effect they have on the reader.

4. Study the way in which the author describes the Adams twins and pick out the words which he uses to make his description a negative one.

Points for discussion

1. Why do you think the murder was comitted?

2. What is the difference between murder and manslaughter? Is there any evidence in the story that this may have been a case of manslaughter?

3. How would you have avoided making the mistakes which the murderer made?

4. Do you think that this story does anything to prove the existence of God? What arguments would an atheist use against the idea of "divine vengeance", and what arguments might someone who believes in God forward in its favour?

5. It is certain that one of the twins killed Mrs Parker. Can you think of any fair way of punishing the guilty person?

6. "Mistakes have been made." Why do you think Britain retained (and America, for example, still retains) the death penalty long after this was realized?

7. Put yourself in Mrs Salmon's position. Would you be able to sleep at night Say why or why not.

8. Give a full stylistic analysis of the text.

Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf was one of the most influential British writers and literary critics of the 1920s and 30s. She was born in London in 1882. The difficulties encountered by women in "a man's world" is one of her main themes. In her novels and short stories she sometimes follows James Joyce's "stream of consciousness" approach, where the reader "lives inside the head" of one or more of the characters. Her suicide by drowning in 1941 was a great loss to English literature.

"Uncle Vanya" is the title of a play by the Russian author Anton Checkhov. Written some time in the mid 1890s, it deals with the life of boredom and aimlessness led by the residents of a large house in the country.