Opening Scene
The novel opens on a scene brought to life through imagery. Setting will be of significant important to the story throughout and that significance is established immediately within the very first paragraph on the opening page:
It was summer, and below him the rocks were alive with seabirds. The tide, coming to the full, swept in over the pebbled shore to break in mild thunder on the base of the cliffs. Out beyond the foam-veined shallows the sea deepened in colour to the darkest indigo blue, with, here and there, fangs of rock where the water frothed in angry white. It was easy to believe...that the old land of Lyonesse lay drowned out yonder, fathoms deep, and that the people of that doomed land still walked – or rather floated, like the ghosts they were...
Color
The exploitation of the enormous spectrum along which colors, hues and shades stretch is an invaluable tool for writers. The imagery which can be extricated from just the right color reference when applied to a precise object carries the wondrous power of bringing a scene to vivid life:
The sun was just on setting, in a floating veil of thing, saffron-colored cloud. No less brilliant were the trees and water-meadows of the valley, their summer richness lit to green-bronze and golden-broonze, with here and there the black glint of holly or fir, and everything, forest and hedge and dry-stone dyke, sharply outlined by the low sun with shadows of violet and deepest indigo.
Facial Recognition
Facial recognition has been a mechanism for individual identification since long before the development of technology. The human mind is hardwired to see faces everywhere and within those faces to detect even the slightest of alterations and changes. This is doubtlessly acquired by necessity: people’s looks change throughout life and we need to be able to identify them as a matter of trust. The original mechanics of facial recognition becomes imagery in this example:
It was like seeing Theudovald again, a fair boy, slight built but whippy and quick-moving, with the same proud carriage. There were the wide-set blue eyes and jutting nose that would, in adulthood, be aquiline, but the mouth showed a sweet line than the elder boy’s, and this child, understandably enough, displaying nothing of his brother’s mischievous self-assurance.
The Grail
The story eventually becomes one of the quest for the Grail. Though not specifically replied to as holy, the imagery introduced to initially describe it leaves little question of whether it is intended to be that particular Grail or not:
A goblet, more golden than the gold hair, with gems glittering crimson and green and primrose yellow in the handles. A beautiful thing, certainly very precious, but seemingly more than that. As he unveiled the thing from the enwrapping silk, the boy crossed himself, then turned, eyes shining to Alice and the duke.
