Free Direct Discourse

When analysing a text at A Level students often become bogged down with a strict focus on word level analysis in a vain attempt to tick the AO2 ‘methods’ box. Unfortunately, the days of ‘the effect of this personal pronoun suggest that this event is very personal to the narrator’ do not quite cut it at A Level (or, with that example, at GCSE either!) One way that you can really showcase your abilities at A Level is to discuss with confidence some of the narrative methods that a writer has used and one of the most interesting but often misplaced examples of this is the use of Free Indirect Discourse. FREE DIRECT DISCOURSE What are they thinking?