Rain
It’s in the title, so rain is obviously an important element of the book. Thematically speaking, it is a climate event which occurs only after prolonged period of heat and drought. Rain takes on the essence of a spiritual regeneration and as such the imagery veers over the line into religious experience:
“Later, stimulated by alcohol and the overpowering force of unuttered prayer craving utterance, most of them wandered down to the beach where forest crowded the water. Rain crashed through leaves, pocked sand, bit skin. No one care. They rollicked, singing and calling in the release of rain, right down the beach to its north end.”
The Massacre
Imagery is palpably horrific with the full terror of what is being witness conveyed without the need for words from witnesses. The aftermath of a massacre is situated matter-of-factly without lapsing into the temptation to intensify the scene with poetry or overstrained metaphor:
“stopping to relieve himself behind a hump of boulders, found there a bonefield where the half-rotted bodies of a dozen black men lay in a fly-swarming putrescence. Above his head a hand stuck up from a crevice in the rock, bit of drying skin flapping from the outthrust fingers. Stalking plump birds screeched into a high circle and George wet his pants in his bubbling terror as he fled back down the hillside, bobbling with incoherence and pointing”
The Cyclone
Rain is not just spiritually regenerative, it is also destructive. A cyclone hits two after Christmas and the effect of the devastation is forwarded through imagery described the effects of the storm on the town, as the fierce winds and rain:
“tore roofs off like wrapping paper, uprooted trees, flung boats about like driftwood and swung out to sea again. The Wet settled in. Mango’s streets ran like drains. The shacks at the settlements leaked, dripped with damp and the timbers swelled.”
Chant
Chant is a charismatic and natural-born leader. It is all too easy to fall under his sway and become a follower. The narrative interrupt to ponder “Chant?” And then, laden with imagery, a paragraph that begins “Examine Chant.”
“He sings, leading full-voiced, Adam’s apple wobbling in Marian hymns. Ignore that. He preaches—gutfuls of hokum—fulsomely. Ignore. Because the very emphases breed a verbal phoniness, the listener tends to suspect content as well. His ferocious commitment makes him, publicly at least, suave with hippies, straights, junkies and prosperous farmers.”
