Opening Lines
The opening lines of the novel are an interesting way to use imagery to situate the fundamental mechanics of a story. The opening image is startling because of its unlikelihood. The next line offers an explanation and one most likely not considered by most readers. These two aspects—strangeness followed by an unconventional explanation—become hallmarks of the narrative trek:
“The island rose and sank. Twice. During periods in which history was recorded by indentations on rock and shell.”
Fruits of Racism
This is a story of two close friends. Clare sports a lighter pigmentation than the darker-skinned Zoe and though this difference seems hardly worth noticing, it reveals itself to be every bit as much an obstacle to human connection as the more extreme divergences in pigmentation between so-called “races.” Also appearing right at the beginning of the novel is this imagery which seems to little more than a catalogue of the difference types of fruit native to the story’s setting. Notice the color imagery, however, as it is an expression of some much more significant than the skin of sweet natural goodness:
“There was a splendid profusion of fruit…Round and pink Bombays seemed to be everywhere—brimming calabashes in the middle of dining tables, pouring out of crates and tumbling onto sidewalks...Green and spotted Black mangoes dotted the ground at bus stops, schoolyards, country stores—these were only to be gathered, not sold.”
The Harpsichord
The insistence upon the playing of Presbyterian hymns on a harpsichord becomes a metaphor for the stubborn rejection by the British to assimilate into the native culture and instead demand that the native culture adopt their cultures and traditions. Imagery helps to convey this division:
“The instrument had never adjusted to the climate. The schoolteacher explained to the congregation that a harpsichord has to be tuned each time it was to be played, even so…tuning never made the instrument sound quite right. There was gravelly tinkle in its voice, far more than a harpsichord is supposed to have, and it was easily drowned out by the passing traffic, the voices of the congregation, the pair of croaking lizards who lived behind the cross of Godwood.”
Sugar, Sugar
When Americans consider crops in relation to slave labor, they automatically think cotton. Though cotton was king above the Gulf of Mexico, it was another crop which was intricately tied to slavery elsewhere. The full dimension of the immorality of this connection is made sadly evident through imagery:
“Sugar was never a very profitable enterprise. It required an unending supply of unpaid labor…but sugar was a necessity of western civilization…Those who took these products at their leisure—to finish a meal, begin a day, to stimulate them, keep them awake, as they considered fashion or poetry or politics or family, sitting around their cherrywood tables or relaxing in their wingback chairs.”
Abeng horn
The Abeng horn's intricate description highlights both its historical significance and cultural relevance. The horn's resonant sound and carved images are connected to the Maroon people's history and continued resistance.
“The Abeng was a horn, its surface intricately carved with symbols of the Maroons’ resistance. It sounded like a call from the past, echoing through the dense forest.”
