[Post A Week 4]

VOCABULARY:

viscerally(96): proceeding from instinct rather than intellect

harlequin (97): fancifully varied in color, decoration



FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE:

"Her sharp blue eyes met mine, as if she were looking for something."(88)
Claire is describing Kate's eyes, and the adjective "sharp" doesnt mean "pointy". It means more of a direct, or intense, blue-eyed look.

"Night hovered just over the horizon, the thick dark hesitating at the edge of town." (93)
This sentence gives night a little bit of human characteristics, because night cannot acutally hover, and dark cannot be thick or cannot hesitate. The author chooses to give the night and dark human characteristics so the reader can more easily imagine the night.

"Then you disperse like a shattered atom." (96)
This is an example of a similie, used at Mr. Schiller's funeral. Claire feels amost disbelief that her husband is in a box at the front of a church, and as she walks down the aisle to her husband's casket, talks about "dispersing like a shattered atom".

PROBABLE THEME:

The way one death has a complte ripple effect, as well as the way ecach individual grieves.