Images of nature
The novel is abundant in images of nature. For example, “the bus drove away in a blue haze of fumes and heat”; “the pale winter sky an even paler cloud floated overhead, as white and soft as a little lamb”. The images of nature are often in the novel to let the reader absorb the information already imposed. It seems that these images tend to be the seconds for the reader’s mind to relax.
The image of smell
Joanna’s father used to tell his wife that she “smelled of soot”, while she replied that he “smelled of failure”. It was their little battle of words, but Joanna herself remembered that her mother “smelled of all kinds of interesting things, paint and turpentine and tobacco and the Je Reviens perfume”. The image of smell appeals to the reader’s imagination and conveys a picture of Joanna’s childhood.
The image of a shepherd
When Jackson got lost, he saw a sheep on the field and assumed that somewhere near must be a shepherd. “Jackson’s ides of a shepherd was a rough-bearded man, wearing a home-made sheepskin jerkin, seated on a grassy hillside on a starlit night, a ram’s-horn crook in hand as he watched for the wolves creeping on their bellies towards his flock”. Besides being poetic, the image represents what stereotypes city dwellers have about life in the country.
The image of hell
Jackson Brodie was an accident victim of a dreadful train crash. He witnessed an awful scene in the train that he assumed was hell: “people started to cry out, groaning, and screaming. Darkness, smell of burning, children crying for their mothers, mothers crying for their children, general lamenting and weeping”. The image appeals to the emotions of readers.
