Analysis: Part 1 (Scottish Highers English): Revision Notes
Analysis: Part 1
Narrative voice
Rain narrates the story using first person perspective. From the opening line, she uses a conversational style that draws readers into the unfolding events. The story begins mid-sentence, creating an immediate sense of intimacy and involvement.
Rain's character emerges through her responses to the objects discovered in the house. She displays an imaginative and romantic nature, consistently wondering whether each item contains a "secret message". This tendency to create fictional meanings from ordinary objects raises questions about her reliability as a narrator. However, Logan balances Rain's perspective by including Alice's pragmatic responses, which provide a contrasting viewpoint and help readers assess the reliability of Rain's interpretations.
The dual narrative perspective created by Rain's romantic interpretations and Alice's practical responses serves a crucial literary function. This contrast allows readers to question Rain's conclusions whilst maintaining narrative momentum, creating a more engaging and complex storytelling experience.
The contrast between the two characters creates tension. Rain searches for hidden meanings and romantic explanations, whilst Alice offers practical, grounded responses that challenge Rain's interpretations.
Title
The title "Things My Wife and I Found Hidden in Our House" uses pronouns to establish themes of power and identity. The phrase "my wife and I" presents the couple as unified, working together as a team. This echoes the traditional phrase spoken by newly-weds: "On behalf of my wife and I...". The positive associations suggest partnership and celebration.
The possessive pronoun "our" before "house" establishes ownership and control. This becomes meaningful as the story progresses, because the couple's struggle centres on retaining control over the space that should belong to them. The title sets up expectations that will be challenged by the discoveries within.
Pronoun choices in titles often reveal deeper thematic concerns. Here, the shift from "my wife and I" (individual identities) to "our" (shared ownership) mirrors the couple's journey from separate individuals to a unified household, whilst simultaneously foreshadowing their struggle to maintain control over their shared space.
Structure
Logan divides the story into eight sections, each titled with a single word naming the discovered object. The one-word titles create a list-like effect, suggesting an organised, methodical approach to cataloguing strange findings. This apparent order becomes ironic as the story develops, because the situation grows increasingly incomprehensible despite attempts to categorise and control it.
Each section functions as a vignette, capturing immediate moments surrounding each discovery without extensive plot development or character background. The vignette structure creates intensity and focus. These brief, concentrated sections work cumulatively, allowing readers to make connections between different objects and events. As the story progresses, these connections build tension and deepen the sense of unease.
The vignette structure is central to the story's effectiveness. Unlike traditional narrative structure with rising action and climax, vignettes allow information to accumulate gradually. Each discovery gains significance only when readers connect it to previous findings, forcing active engagement with the text.
1. A ring
The opening section begins with Rain sweeping the kitchen floor and discovering a green sea-glass ring amongst the "grot". Her immediate reaction reveals her optimistic, romantic nature. She describes the discovery as "too perfectly sweet" and quickly constructs a narrative in which Alice's grandmother deliberately left the ring as a "message of hope" to bless their life together.
However, Logan surrounds this positive interpretation with ominous language that foreshadows trouble. The ring is described as scraping along the floor, "making a hell of a racket". Although the glass gleams "green as the summer sea" after rinsing, it also has "shadows at the centre". This dual imagery of beauty and darkness suggests something sinister lurks beneath the appealing surface.
Character backstory
The section provides essential context about the couple's relationship with Alice's grandmother. We learn that the older woman refused to acknowledge their same-sex relationship, referring to Rain only as "Alice's friend". This detail establishes the discrimination they faced. Despite this treatment, Rain and Alice visited the grandmother "a thousand times", demonstrating their patience and kindness.
When Rain shows Alice the ring, their contrasting perspectives become clear. Alice calls it "junk" and suggests it "came out of a vending machine". She directly challenges Rain's idealistic interpretation of her grandmother's character: "Trust me, Rain. My gran didn't wish anyone well." This exchange establishes the dynamic between Rain's romantic imaginings and Alice's practical realism.
Water imagery
The first section introduces water as a recurring motif. Beyond the sea-glass ring itself, Rain observes that the house "always smelled like the sea even although it was miles from the water". This inexplicable smell suggests something unnatural about the house. Alice worries about damp in the walls whilst throwing out "musty" duvets. The repeated references to moisture and the sea create an atmosphere of unease and hint at the kelpie mythology that will become more explicit later.
Water imagery functions on multiple levels throughout the story. Literally, it appears through objects like the sea-glass ring and the damp smell. Symbolically, water connects to the kelpie mythology and the grandmother's death. This layered symbolism creates depth and coherence, tying seemingly unrelated elements into a unified narrative pattern.
2. Paper
The second section takes place in the car as Rain and Alice transport the old bath to the tip. Logan reveals that this bath was where Alice's grandmother "had a stroke and drowned". This detail connects the grandmother's death directly to water, reinforcing the story's aquatic imagery.
As they wrestle the bath through the doorway, they accidentally dislodge a piece of yellowing paper hidden around the door frame. Alice reads it to herself first and shows reluctance to share its contents with Rain, signalling that the note has unsettled her.
The note reads "KELPIES TO HELL". Alice explains to Rain that kelpies are mythical creatures believed to drown people they dislike by dragging them into water. The note appears to have been written by Alice's grandmother.
Doorway symbolism
Logan draws on ancient beliefs about doorways as threshold spaces connecting physical and magical worlds. Many cultures have traditions of protecting doorways from evil spirits. The note's placement in the doorframe suggests it may have functioned as a curse or protective charm to prevent kelpies from entering the house.
The doorway functions as more than a physical space in this story. As a liminal boundary between inside and outside, public and private, the doorway becomes a site where supernatural forces might cross over. The grandmother's placement of the note here suggests she believed something needed to be kept out—or perhaps kept in.
The timing of the note's discovery carries meaning. It becomes visible only when they remove the bath where the grandmother drowned. The note is described as "yellow as old bones and smelled musty-sweet". The word choice of "musty" connects back to the damp-smelling duvets in section one, whilst "old bones" carries spooky, death-related connotations. The simile emphasises the note's age and suggests it has been hidden for a very long time.
Growing tension
Rain continues searching for romantic meanings, speculating about hidden messages. Alice's response reveals frustration: "My gran was losing it towards the end... She didn't know I was going to live here with you. None of this means anything, okay?" Her outburst creates tension between the couple. The rest of the journey takes place in silence, showing how the mysterious objects are beginning to affect their relationship.
3. A horse
Alice discovers a "thumb" sized copper horse lodged between the skirting board and bedroom wall. The unusual unit of measurement ("thumb" sized) adds to the strangeness of the find. Rain observes "runes or something" engraved on its surface. She immediately interprets it as "an old Highlands superstition" meant to protect them from "...well, not a horse, but – life? Sadness? Money worries?" Her uncertainty reveals how she imposes meanings without clear understanding.
The first wife's story
Rain's speculation prompts Alice to reveal more about her grandmother's past. Alice's mother called the grandmother "a witch" because "she stole my grandad from another woman". The witch label introduces supernatural possibilities alongside the kelpie myth. It also highlights sexist assumptions that the "other woman" must have used magic to attract a man, leaving him blameless.
Alice describes the first wife in detail. She was "always dressed in green [and] wore ... rings made of glass she found washed up on the beach. She had green eyes and long black hair." These details directly connect to the sea-glass ring discovered in section one. The connection suggests the ring may have belonged to the first wife, not the grandmother.
The description of the first wife is crucial for understanding the story's layered meanings. Her association with green, sea-glass rings, and water imagery strongly suggests she may have been a kelpie herself. This realization recontextualizes all the "protective" objects found in the house—they weren't protecting the grandmother from external forces but perhaps keeping the first wife's presence contained or preventing her return.
According to family lore, the grandmother visited the first wife and stated: "I want your man and there's nothing you can do about it." The first wife then disappeared, supposedly travelling south for work, and was never seen again. Alice believes her grandmother invented "silly stories" to portray the woman in green as a "spooky witch, a baddie" to justify breaking up the marriage.
Physical harm
As Alice recounts this story, the copper horse in her hands becomes unbearably hot. She drops it and discovers the heat has blistered her hand. This marks the most extreme impact of any discovered object so far, because it causes actual physical injury.
A paragraph break follows, beginning "All I could do was stare ...". This structural choice emphasises the shock both women experience. The physical harm makes the situation impossible to dismiss as imagination or coincidence.
Copper has traditionally been thought to possess healing and protective powers. The copper horse's presence raises questions: whose object was it? Why was it wedged into the skirting board? What was it meant to protect against or achieve?
Key Points to Remember:
- Rain narrates in first person with a romantic, imaginative perspective that contrasts with Alice's pragmatic responses, creating narrative balance and tension
- The story structure uses eight vignettes with one-word titles, building connections between objects cumulatively whilst increasing tension
- Water imagery appears throughout: the sea-glass ring, damp smells, the grandmother's drowning, and kelpie mythology all connect to aquatic themes
- Each discovered object links to the past: the ring belonged to the first wife, the note and horse suggest protective magic