Procession with the Watts
Matilda very vividly depicts Mr. Watts’ walking with his wife: children climbed trees to see them, while their parents looked away, “they would rather stare at a colony of ants moving over a rotting pawpaw.” Thus the author helps the reader make some conclusion concerning the villagers’ attitude to this couple, the couple’s alliance in that social environment.
Coming of white people
When the white people came to the island and when Matilda’s ancestors saw them for the first time “they thought they were looking at ghosts or maybe some people who had just fallen into bad luck. Dogs sat on their tails and opened their jaws to await the spectacle…” Thus the author helps the reader imagine how the locals “welcomed” the white people, how they treated them.
Mouse in the sea
The author describes colorfully the landscape of the island:” beach palms spreading up to a blue sky”, “turquoise sea so still we hardly noticed it…” and a redskins’ gunboat, which was “like a grey sea mouse – it crawled along with its guns aimed to us.” The author intentionally depicts nature in a calm and colorful way in order to contrast it with “grey mouse”: thus he shows how impertinent the war is to life, how much it “hurts the eye”.
Mr Pip
Matilda very vividly describes Pip in her fantasies. Actually, he is just a character of the book, but she imagines him so clearly and lively that it seems that reader sees him as well: “I had come to know this Pip as if he were real and I could feel his breath on my cheek”, etc.
