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Most of the novel is narrated in the historic present, a form that allows the reader to experience events as unfolding dramatically while simultaneously confirming that what we read about has already happened. But there are a number of points in the narrative where the reader experiences an unexpected shift into the present tense. In chapter 43, for example, we are told of Easton’s terrifying experience when at the top of a long ladder (used because it is cheaper than erecting a proper scaffold). A dangerously long way from the ground, he suddenly feels the pinnacle to which he is gripping start to give way. Frightened such that he feels that his heart has nearly stopped beating, he steadies himself as best he can on the ladder and manages to descend safely. When the loose pinnacle is reported, the “coddy” is afraid that if they pass on the information they will be blamed for breaking it, and so they decide to say nothing. The final sentence in the paragraph reads: “The pinnacle is still on the apex of the steeple waiting for a sufficiently strong wind to blow it down on somebody’s head” (413). The shift of tense takes us not just into the “now” of the telling, but also, the reader surely feels, into the now of the nonfictional world of the novel’s author. Such shifts take place regularly in the novel: “And there it hangs until this day” (418); “This document is usually handed to the friends of the deceased” (536)—these examples of the present tense link the world of the telling not only to Tressell’s historical reality but also to our own, and they deny the reader the comfort of being able to confine the injustices and suffering described in the novel between the closed covers of the book once we have finished reading it. We are confronted with a “present” that spills out of Owen’s world and out of Tressell’s world—and into our own.