Authors can use many ways to describe, hint, or show how corrupt a character will be to get their way. The main character, Judson Webb, is highly possessive with his personal possessions. As his family was packing up for the drive back to the city, Judson gets ready to poison a whiskey bottle in order to harm potential robbers attempting to steal his belongings. When his wife asks what he is doing, he replies with, “ ‘Whoever broke into my closet last winter and stole my liquor will probably try it again once we are out of here,’ he went on, ‘only this time he’ll wish he hadn’t.’ She caught her breath at this cruel vindictiveness as one by one he dropped the tablets into the bottle and held it up to watch them dissolve” (Mille 1). By using: imagery, diction, and emphasis, Mille shows the readers Judson’s corrupted ways as he tries to murder the robbers. …show more content…
The use of diction and emphasizism in “cruel vindictiveness” is a double negative; this means that the author is really trying to emphasize the word ‘evil’ and that the character causing all this, Judson, is truly nefarious and will attempt to carry out this plan no matter