English 2610

Daniel Defoe has a style of writing that clearly reveals a "journalistic" background, yet what I appreciated most, was that it read like a story. That may sound overly-simplified, however, it is no simple task to write about a historical event without either focusing on the story itself, or the minutiae. Defoe managed both.
The details, and there were many, served to fill cruriousity gaps for the reader... at least they did for me. We are assuming that the narrator was a real person who was actually there, and in order for Defoe to convince us of that, he needed to include details that only someone who had really lived through the Plague would have known. The narrator explains in great detail exactly how many bodies could fit in a "40 foot in length, and about 15 or 16 foot broad" hole. He includes dates, names, dimensions, locations, clothing, numbers, the duties of the town (those who weren't boarded up), - all journalistic details but carried along with the narrator's feelings, sights, sounds, relationships (however brief).