Both writers convey mixed feelings about camping. Kennedy in source A presents a shifting, almost intentionally adolescent tone that has evolved through repeated experiences. Dudley Warner in Source B expresses a cynical, judgemental tone to impart his perspective with more than a hint of self-negation that his wonderful “escape” is, by the end of the extract “wrong” in his view.
In source A, Kennedy’s direct rebuttal of her mother in the phrase, “Holidays were not what you made them” suggests she is feeling twin perspectives; both the “horrific” idea of camping itself and the resentful notion of being told to enjoy herself on holiday as a then nine-year-old. This combines the contrarian perspective of a precocious child with older more contemplative view of herself looking back wistfully, the capitalisation of the linking verb “IS” in the phrase, “Yes it IS nice” epitomises her effort to draw some positive perspectives from her childhood experience. A nostalgic motif that is repeated throughout.
This duality of viewpoint is echoed in Kennedy’s use metaphor’s, carefully crafted to switch between the exaggerated distain of a petulant child with “Hoildays were assault courses”, to her more reflective older viewpoint at the time of writing with “the allure was not as sparkling”. Pointing again to a feeling of nostalgia while penning this as an adult, implying it was not all bad.
Similarly, the imagery of something she once saw as “such an astonishment of riches” implies the perspective of a child in wonderment, a feeling that switches with the image of “real contentment” as she skims a stone across the water. Kennedy abruptly halts this image with the quip, “as if I was actually enjoying myself”, making clear the thought she does not like being there, though hindsight has softened her outlook.
Her thoughts are reinforced when the foreshadowed “malevolent forces” of the holiday arrive with the pathetic fallacy of the storm, “clattering in to do its worst”, juxtaposing the image “hell rained” down with a “deliciously spine-tingling” feeling. Amplifying her conflicting emotions about the experience.
This is in stark contrast to Dudley Warner’s view; he can certainly see the allure of the setting and the “escape from society” it provides, in particular the closeness to nature conveyed in the soft tone and alliterative language of the “lovely lake” and “sweet song” of the evening birds. His view of the campers on the other hand is verging on contemptuous, cemented with the juxtaposition, “discoverers of this paradise, which they have entered to destroy”. The use of the noun “paradise” idolises the setting only to expose the paradox that the campers destroy it, establishing his cynical view.
His perspective of the camper’s lack of respect comes through again clearly in the anaphora of “they hear”, “they listen” contrasting against their failure to hear the “chatter” of the anthropomorphic squirrel “who angrily challenges their right to be there”.
Further, his use of the destructive images “great trunks fall with a crash” and “forked stakes are driven into the ground” encapsulate his feeling of disgust. The strong motive force explicit in the verb choices of “crash” and “driven” unambiguously revealing the forceful ruin of the landscape he earlier regarded as “beautiful and unspoilt.
The mocking tone of “perfectly water-tight roof, except when it rains” compounds his damning third person narrative, but the shift to a first person narrative in the following paragraph, “we eat”, “we curl up” betrays the irony that Dudley Warner is party to this destruction suggested by his resignation with “In the darkness there is recrimination”.
Shifting his structure to short sentences when he describes the following “cheerless” morning his brevity mimics the anti-climax of the trip and complements the imagery of the “melancholy sight”. The urgency he creates with his quick-fire list of the damage, “The woods have been despoiled; the stumps are ugly; the bushes are scorched” implies he wants to leave the scene where “Man has wrought his usual wrong upon Nature” thus concluding his distain.
Dudley Warner’s viewpoint cherishes the nature that ironically the act of camping in nature does not and in doing so is casting a broader opinion of man’s interference with the natural world in contrast to Kennedy’s anecdotal account. She views camping through the lens of enforced family fun, an ordeal, but in a more light-hearted way with the occasional tinge of excitement, albeit rose-tinted in retrospection.
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