Along with the repeated concept of the lost innocence of the young age, we also observe the repetition of the concept of death of a guardian, like the death of Father Flynn in the first story.

Again here we see the concept of lost innocence, which was repeated in the previous two stories. It seems that the stories so far revolve themselves around the experiences of young people.

The "Father", paralysis, the priesthood... All seem to be recurring themes. It would be interesting to see if one can create an algorithm that finds the related words and concepts in-between a book of mini stories

I would be curious to see how the stroke is connected to the mental alteration in behavior that was depicted by the priest as discussed here. Might there be the case that there is more to the story, I am not sure if that had something to do with the boy as well, as he seems to be involved with the chalice

I find it really interesting that there are quotes like this in the text, which are used a lot even today by a lot of people. It would be a good topic for the paper, to find quotes like that throughout the text and see how many of them are in each story.

Another instance of paralysis like how the young boy felt paralyzed every time he thought of the dead Priest. Finding parallels through the stories in this book is certainly an interesting endeavor as there are so many of them. It's as if the author is trying to subliminally tell one single story through all those small stories.

While a drunk, the uncle seems to can't help himself and all he can do is apologize. I find it interesting, the fact that the characters of this book have multiple dimensions, not necessarily only a bad nor just a good side. This makes them seem very realistic.

This internal monologue goes to show the power of inertia and the subsequent cognitive dissonance that it entails. Might I suggest that both of the sides of the coin are wrong? On one hand, she wants to stay into her safe zone and go on to live for her father and brother, on the other hand she thinks of going away with her other half. Notice how both of these realities have her essentially being dependent, or placing her wellbeing, on other people. A third option would be to make a change from within as a first step.

It is very interesting that a small boy's vocabulary include words such as garrulous and other relatively unusual words/phases throughout the article. I feel like most of the adults wouldn't have that kind of vocabulary. It would be interesting to see what the TTR is for this story in particular compared to the other ones in the book.

Although it may seem a bit surreal, the fact that all of Isabel's friends seem that shallow and selfish, I think that this is ment to be an overexageration of what is actually going on in the minds of many of our surroundings. That is, those reactions wouldn't nessesarily be apparent not one bit, in the real word, but many people would react exactly this way internally towards the misshappening of other people. To me it seems that Mansfield is trying to give emphasis on the disturbingly strong shallowness of today's relationships, a fact that while is very strong, it is not at all that obvious.

I like how much information can be packed into a few words "What a weight!". I wonder how a machine learning approach on summarizing the text , or finding and outlining those little phases, would perform. Although I am pretty sure there already is some kind of attempt to train a classifier using premade summaries of stories and notations. One of the challenges I would assume to be the correct identification of the actual borders of such notations by the classifier. One solution for that would be to assume that a notation is always one sentence long and work from there.

I just don't understand why they use dash in to-morrow or to-day. I remember seeing that in Collins book as well but I disgarded it as a one time occurance, however it seems that it serves some kind of purpose for english novels? Might this be a way to indicate accent?

Interesting way to put it, and also a hard truth for humanity in general. "What we don't know can't hurt us" is an argument that can be applied to a myriad of things due to the processing or production of which, other parties get affected negatively. From food, to clothes, to technology ect. Like an unavoidable 'selective' morality.

According to Erza, the results of the experiment were only half of those that were expected. It may be possible of course that this is all that took place during that night. Someone else could have been present during Franklin's 'sleep walking' phase, just like how Franklin was observed during this experiment by Erza, and took the stone when Franklin tossed it to the ground? Or perhaps this outcome goes to show a more realistic point of view, in that it would have been actually impossible to replicate the whole night entirely, and that even the fact that they were able to reproduce it to such an extend is in itself an impressive accomplishment.

At first I got confused as to who Erza was calling Miss Verinder, but with this added context, it made it clear that he ment Rachel. At least for me, this was a rather unexpected turn of events for Rachel and Franklin. The truth slowly comes to light and old characters are been brought back together. Maybe we will have a good ending after all, and the curse of the moonstone will not come to fruition? Interested to see how the story between the two turns out.

It is rather sad that the two characters never met each other again afterwards, similar to the sudden end of the relationship with her and Goffrey. As if the diamond strips all the people away from Rachel one way or the other. Mr Verinder, Goffrey, Franklin, one by one seems to be going away from Rachel. Albeit in Goffrey's case, it might have been a blessing rather than a diamond curse. In general, Rachel seems to be at the center of the diamond 'curse', which begs the question of what is going to follow with regards to the future of that character.

This seems to suggest that Franklin stole the diamond under the influence of opium, which is also why he forgot that he ever stole it. This also reminds me of that scene with the three indians and the little boy during the First Period, although I am not sure if the two are connected. It also finally explains the role of opium in the plot. I am not sure how this drug works, but to my knowledge this is supposed to be a pain killer. Not sure how it would make someone 'do things' without recollection, which is the only thing that confuses me about all this. Nevertheless, it would be interesting to see what else happened during the period that Franklin cannot recall, as I am sure that it will be revealed at some point later on.

It would be rather anti climactic for the mystery to be dependant on waiting for the reclaim of the diamond from the bank. It makes me believe that something else is likely to happen in between that timeframe, perchaps a new fact that reveals a different location of the diamond. At any rate it seems as if this part of the plot (the diamond resting in a bank) may not be what's really going on... Interested to see what is missing here, maybe Franklin will somehow remember something from before that event that renders this fact irrelevant, assuming that Rachel is truthful and did indeed see Franklin steal the diamon.

This situation seems to like an analogous one to that of Mr Verinder and Rosanna since both of the assistants can be described as having a 'doubtful character' due to past events with a malformed appearance that portrays something remarkable at the same time. Furthermore, both of the characters have a backstory that is largly unknown, a limited social circle, ect. It's as if Rosanna's spirit lives on with the introdution of this character. I wonder whether we will see a connection between the two later on, and how this character will play out as the story unfolds.

Miss Clack seems to be trying to 'protect' Mr. Godfrey throughout the naration. Might this be an indication of something more relevant to the plot. Narrators are supposed to be interpreted as truthful according to Collins, which further enchances the confusion. Nevertheless, that doesn't nessesarily exclude the possibility of underplaying certain facts, which seems to be what is happening to me. Assuming that this is the case, it acts as a strong indication for Mr. Godfrey being somehow involved. So far Miss Clack is depicted as a figure of questionable morality. It would be interesting to see what role Mr. Godfrey has at the end of the story.

Could this be attributed to the curse of the moonstone? Was this merely a random event, or is there a connection between Lady Verinder's death and the fact that the moonstone passed through Rachel at some point? Interested to see if those two events are interelated somehow in the end, as well as the first death that was introduced in the book (Rossana).

So far, a pattern of tragic events surrounding the family seems to unfold, with the second death of another female character. Could there be some kind of explanation that ties them both?

Can't help but see this as a remark towards Rossana and the stolen diamond. Not sure if Rossana's relation to the theft will be direct or indirect if any, but, there have been many references of roses in the text for seemingly no reason... 'show me any two things more opposite one from the other than a rose and a thief'. Might that part act as a building block of the irony that will ensue when we find out that Rossana might be more related to the case than we thought? Nonetheless, It would be interesting to see if it would be possible to find the 'thief' of the story by observing the content and frequency of the words used before and after the word thief in the book, excluding any stopwords.

It would be interesting to see if and how Mr.Betteredge is introduced by other narrators later on in the book. It seems that Mr.Betteredge knows the whole story and that tempts me to go back and reexamine the first period for clues. I wonder if this is a general theme in the book, if the other narrators are also aware of the whole truth but chose only to reveal what they lived, or if there would be different kinds of story telling from different narrators. I believe that the former is more likely, although uncertain at this point.

Might be the case that Mr.Franklin was not so innocent due to the fact that Mr.Betteredge painted this character as someone who was constantly in pursue of money? Given the fact that a diamond holds a large economical value, and the depiction of the character as someone with a greed for money, it would be interesting to see how the diamond fell in Mr.Franklin’s hands and what are his plans and motives later on in the book.

Again, we see the word ‘unlucky’ here, reminding us of curse of the three guardians on the stone, and setting the tone for the subsequent events on Mr.Betteredge’s narrative.

I wonder if the are somehow the ancestors of the three guardians that we saw before and if the will play a big role later on

This part of the text seems to have the role of foreshadowing a certain kind event that will follow later on in the chapters. It would be interesting to see how this prediction turns out as the story unfolds itself, and how the ‘magical/sacred’ nature of the moonstone gets interpreted from a pragmatic point of view in the narrative. Also, I wonder if there we will learn the succession of ownership of the stone and how it affected the fate of it’s previous owners, as the text seems to suggest that the moonstone will pass over to many people.