Opening Line
The novel opens on a metaphorical image. The opening line is one single sentence and it is set apart as a self-contained paragraph. What follows next is descriptive prose that is mostly free of any figurative language and simply gets down to the brass tacks. It is easy to imagine an editor existing somewhere who advise cutting the opening line and starting out the book by diving right into the descriptive exposition. To do so would be literary crime:
“Like silent, hungry sharks that swim in the darkness of the sea, the German submarines arrived in the middle of the night.”
Timothy
The protagonist and narrator of the tale is a young white boy. The narrative itself tells of the relationship which develops between this somewhat privileged boy and an older black man when they become stranded on a small deserted island. That man is named Timothy and his speech is conveyed within the narration through the use of dialect which can be take some getting used to on the part of the reader. Philip, however, uses metaphor to indicate the way in which his dialogue should be sound. Tough work for the average audiobook guy:
“His voice was rich calypso, soft and musical, the words rubbing off like velvet.”
Blindness
Though not born so, at one point during the narrative, young Philip loses his sight. On top of everything else going against him, he must also learn to navigate the strange new world he finds himself in without the benefit of being able to see. This situation makes for one of the most poignant uses of simile in the book:
“In my world of darkness, I had learned that holding a hand could be like medicine.”
The Island
Most of the action takes place on the titular island. The cay is described in some detail over the course of the narrative, but Timothy’s dialect gives the sharpest definition of its basic geographical detail:
“D’islan’ is ’bout one mile long, an’ a half wide, shaped like d’melon.”
Malaria
One of the most emotionally taxing moments in the story is when Timothy is overcome by a recurrence of malaria. The very thought of the young blind boy suddenly losing his companion in an instant is almost too much tension to bear. The simile which he uses to describe the most prominent feature of the condition—an absurdly intense fever—is appropriately visceral:
“His breath was like air from a furnace.”
