Spectrum Hall Academy for Challenging Children
The story opens inside a room inside a school for special needs students. It only takes a few paragraphs to get to the imagery which illuminates for the reader that this “Academy” is a lot less like a school and a lot more like something else:
“The room is locked shut and you need an electronic keycard to open the door. If you could open it, you would be in a long corridor with absolutely nothing in it apart from cameras in the ceiling and a fat man in a purple jacket and trousers sitting opposite on a plastic chair. Sleeping, most likely. This fat man is called a warden.”
Fellow Students
Imagery is put to effective use by the first-person narrator in describing his fellow students locked inside Spectrum Hall. The choice of imagery is efficient because it provides a quick overall sense of what is meant by “Challenging Children” within an economy of description:
“That’s why he’s called Wavy – he’s always at the front of every line, waving. I don’t even know his real name. Behind him is Big Brenda, a fat girl with hair in bunches who has to sleep on a reinforced bed. She’s here because she ate her mum and dad out of house and home – even during the food shortage – and got so big they couldn’t look after her any more. That pale-faced kid with bags under his eyes is Tony – who got in trouble for stealing tins of food.”
The Plague
The foundation of the narrative is that a plague has wiped out entire species of animals and plant. This plague has been given the named “Red Eye” by the humans, but the narrator finds himself capable of communicating with animals. They have named “Berry-Eye.” Regardless of what it is called, the plague is relentless and shortly after being told how the animals respond to it, the narrator witnesses an event in which the imagery endows the horror of its spread with what is almost a sentience and purpose:
“As if the virus itself is listening, the she-deer standing in front of him is racked by a huge cough, her skinny body spasming and shuddering before her legs give way and she collapses on to the ground. The other deer crowd round, nudging her back up again while the stag watches.”
The Pigeons
Coincidentally enough, one of the various names used to describe a flock of pigeons—besides the commonly used flock, of course—is “a plague of pigeons.” Whether flock or plague, a group of pigeons is integral to the storyline as they become almost constant companions of the narrator/protagonist, often being of essential assistance on his hero’s journey. Much imagery is devoted to describing these birds in flight, including the following example:
“the pigeons flock together and launch straight up into the sky. There’s no panic – just a calm power into the air, more like they’re floating up through water. Just above tree height they join up into a circle of dots far above my head. As their wing tips meet up, the circle begins to spiral slowly and they start making a noise I’ve never heard the pigeons make before."
