Analysis: Part 1 (Scottish Highers English): Revision Notes
Analysis: Part 1
The unnamed narrator
McClory does not give the narrator a name or specify their gender. This choice creates a sense that the narrator could be anyone. The narrator might represent a common type of person whose lifestyle many readers share.
The story uses first-person narration, which raises questions about how reliable the narrator is. We only see events from their perspective, so we must consider whether they are reporting what truly happened.
Narrative Reliability
The narrator themselves addresses this concern when discussing the man in the mirror's name (lines 129-133). They only remember that the name began with 'Mal', not the full name. The narrator believes this incomplete detail proves the experience was real, because an imagined event would have been more complete and memorable.
Lines 1-10: Opening and setting
The opening paragraph delivers substantial information. The title runs directly into the first sentence, merging with the story itself. The basic facts appear immediately: 'A voice spoke to me at night' and the narrator does not know why. This merging of title and story creates a hesitant and exploratory narrative. There is no definitive, standalone title because that would suggest confidence and certainty that the narrator does not possess.
The narrator then provides details about where and when the voice appeared. The area's history seems hidden or completely absent. The narrator only knows a garage stood there previously, but what came before remains a mystery.
Understanding Brownfield Sites
The term brownfield refers to land that has been developed before but now lies empty. For councils and planners, this term has specific definitions, but it evokes ideas about abandoned land or land tainted by previous use, particularly industrial use.
This supposedly 'historyless' part of town becomes the site where a voice from the distant past appears. The contrast is striking: a place with no known history becomes the location for a historical visitation.
The narrator emphasizes how much they do not know or understand. They have read a little Geoffrey Chaucer, a medieval poet who wrote in Middle English, an older form of English. To modern readers, Middle English sounds simultaneously alien and familiar: 'a little bit gibberish and some I could get'. The voice reminds the narrator of that language, though it has a 'Scottish character' that cannot be identified more precisely. This vague familiarity suggests the voice comes from a distant historical period, somewhere recognizably Scottish but impossible to place exactly.
Lines 11-31: Daily routine and the voice's first appearance
The narrator describes their evening routine in detail, though many basic facts remain unknown, such as their name or gender. This selective revelation tells us what matters to the narrator.
The narrator needs to feel calm and cosy, and they use phone apps and activities to try to meet these needs. These activities all connect to contemporary popular culture: football, social media, true crime podcasts, food and recipes.
The Narrator's Anxieties
The story reveals the narrator's anxieties both directly and indirectly: they fear monsters under the bed or something similar ('something will come and drag me by the ankles'). The mirror-fronted wardrobe creates eeriness because it makes the bedroom space feel bigger and emptier than it actually is. These feelings of exposure and vulnerability may foreshadow what happens later. The preoccupation with the mirror certainly hints at what is coming.
The narrator has specific routines and preferred sleeping positions to ward off these feelings ('left-hand side, curled up, pillow against my stomach').
The narrator speaks directly to readers at one point, assuring us they are 'trying to be honest' about their lack of bravery. This direct address creates intimacy and reinforces the sense that the narrator wants to be truthful.
When the voice first speaks, it is 'garbled' and unclear. The narrator tries to explain it away, suggesting it might be their phone or their neighbours' TV. The phrase 'I had lots of reasons to sooth myself with' reveals how the narrator manages their fears. They need many possible explanations but carefully avoid settling on one, presumably because a single explanation might be too easy to disprove.
If they cannot maintain their explanations, they would have to face the possibility that the voice has no everyday explanation. That phones and TVs provide the attempted explanations suggests how we might use media and devices to distract or reassure ourselves in modern life.
Lines 32-55: Work, isolation and the voice's nature
The narrator thinks, sleeps, wakes and goes to work. They worry about what their boss thinks of them and reassure themselves that their failings are not serious enough to get them fired. They refer vaguely to 'unpleasant feelings' about meeting their boss. They do not engage in workplace social activities, and we learn nothing about the nature of their work. The work seems to carry little meaning for them. They maintain their routine strictly, going home 'at the usual time' after going to bed 'at the normal time' the previous night.
The phone remains central. Having skipped dinner in favor of toast, the narrator skips reading their book in favor of looking at Tinder, a dating app. However, they are not seeking romantic connection but just want to 'look at some faces'.
Technology and Loneliness
This detail reveals more about how the narrator lives through and manages their loneliness. They seek minimal human connection, mediated through technology, without risking actual interaction.
The narrator describes the voice: it seems to belong to a man and a smoker. However, the narrator recalls that tobacco did not arrive in Britain until 1586 with Sir Francis Drake. The voice seems to belong to an earlier period. These details help us imagine the extent of historical distance. This is before tobacco, before the potato even. The gap between the narrator's world and the voice's world becomes concrete through these specific markers.
The narrator tries to understand the voice's tone but soon realizes how difficult this is. The strangeness and suddenness of the event, combined with the language barrier, create obstacles to understanding even basic emotional tone.
The narrator then invents an even less plausible explanation: faulty surveillance equipment belonging to a 'spy' who reads old Scots stories aloud from boredom. While mass surveillance by states and corporations is real in the modern world, this explanation still seems stretched.
The narrator must put effort into imagining this scenario. They conjure up a spy so junior and unappreciated that they are assigned to monitor the unremarkable narrator. We might consider whether this fantasy makes the narrator feel sorry for themselves, or whether they are imagining themselves a friend of sorts—someone whose job is to keep an eye on them. This possibility suggests the depth of the narrator's isolation.
Lines 56-98: Autumn, exposure and the insistent voice
The following morning, the narrator discovers that autumn has begun. The season unsettles them in ways they find difficult to explain: 'a bit sad without specific reasons'; 'I don't have any particular thoughts about that, except I feel vaguely anxious'. The suddenness of autumn's arrival provides another example of how the story experiments with time and history, its cycles, seasons and routines.
Reflections on autumn and wet leaves on streets prompt more thoughts about risk and exposure, about falling, getting hurt, going unnoticed and being neglected. Facing these everyday dangers, the narrator concludes: 'You have to take care of yourself'.
The Limitations of Self-Reliance
However, we have access to their thoughts and feelings, their efforts at self-reliance and self-care. We can see the limitations of these efforts. The narrator is trying to manage alone, but their isolation may be part of the problem rather than the solution.
These attempts to manage life's journey, and the compression of historical time, appear subtly in the 'Let's Play' video the narrator watches while eating dinner. This is a voiced-over walk-through of a 'kingdom-building' real-time strategy video game. Such games compress whole swathes of history and give the player an almost god-like overview that actual people, who are swept up in history and subject to it, can never access. The narrator's engagement with history is passive, mediated through entertainment.
The voice interjects again during this scene. It becomes more insistent, and the narrator seems able to read more into it—about its tone and feeling behind it—though they continue trying to ignore it. They feel unable to do anything except ignore the voice, because to do otherwise would mean finally abandoning all the imagined explanations they are working to sustain.
The following day, the narrator faces another dilemma: they want to go out to avoid dealing with the voice, but doing so would mean changing their plans to stay in all day for something they are trying to pretend does not exist. The rain comes down so heavily it seems to want to return paved streets to mud. This image nods to the idea of undoing history and the built-up environment where the narrator lives, perhaps returning it to the world of the voice.
The narrator turns again to watching someone else play a game rather than participating themselves. This time it is Hearthstone, an online card-based game that is part of the Warcraft franchise. The game features representations of a fantastical medieval setting with magic, lore and monsters.
This provides yet another example of connection with a kind of history, though one diluted and distanced by popular culture and technology ('a bit of a look of pinball machine to it'). History here becomes an aesthetic, a style or appearance, rather than lived reality or genuine historical understanding.
Key Points to Remember:
- The unnamed narrator creates universality but also raises questions about narrative reliability
- The story explores the contrast between a modern brownfield site and a voice from the distant past
- The narrator's routines, phone use and attempted explanations reveal their anxiety, isolation and coping mechanisms
- Historical distance is emphasised through specific markers: pre-tobacco (before 1586), Middle English, alien physical appearance
- The narrator engages with history only passively, through mediated forms like video games that compress time and offer false control