RC Passage 1 Explanation
Paragraph Summaries
- Some people love P.D. James, while others think she should stick to detective stories.
- P.D. James shows signs of writing high literature. Some accuse her of abandoning the forms of detective novels.
- Sometimes James focusses more on character and setting than on the plot of her detective novels.
- Maybe James should abandon mystery novels to write normal novels.
Analysis
The most important thing you need to understand is that P.D. James does not write normal detective novels.
The passage hints that a normal detective novel follows a set structure. The plot is hard to predict, we’re allowed to see how the detective solves the crime, and the detective will catch the criminal, who is entirely responsible for the crime.
Characters will be fairly simple, and the plot is the most important thing.
P.D. James’ writes philosophical novels. Her characters have depth, and she describes settings in elaborate detail. She doesn’t seem to care about traditional plotting, and she breaks many conventions of the detective novel.
We often have no idea how the detective solves the crime (lines 34-37), and blame is spread between several people, including the victim (lines 45-50).
The author doesn’t see this as evidence that P.D. James is a bad writer. Instead, the author thinks that P.D. James should abandon the crime genre and just write normal novels (lines 51-53).
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