The Trial
- How do you end a story before it even begins? With a narrator who wants to be hanged and politely declines retelling her story. If the suicide isn't interesting enough for you, there's also some grossness about dead hands and smelly eels and swamps that swallow. Sounds fun.
- She goes on to describe herself as having "the face of an angel" (1.4) but a "horrid sort of heart" (1.4), which we know is pretty common actually and not that surprising—especially if you've watched Mean Girls or any other teen movie.
- Get ready to be a little confused, Shmoopsters, because this narrator is talking to us like we know the whole story. Based on this chapter's title, it feels like we are the jury, or maybe even the judge. So much power, yet so little knowledge.
- Someone called "Chime Child" wants to give this pretty, arrogant, evil, suicidal person a chance seemingly because she doesn't want to "hang an innocent girl again" (1.5). Wait… again? What?
- There is some more begging and pleading for us to believe her so we think she means it—that or she just really can't stand living with these smelly, swampy, dead hand memories. We get it—nightmares can wear you down.
- Even though she doesn't want to tell her story she starts to anyway. Does this girl mean anything she says? Maybe she's just fond of hyperbole.
- She mentions some guy named Eldric. We don't really know much about him, but he sounds like someone cool to meet based on the "handsome stranger" (1.8) description.
- Our narrator asks to be hanged… again.