Bournehills
The story is set in a fictional island in the Caribbean and, as the title suggests, setting is every bit as essential and significant to narrative as the characters populating. The character of Bournehills is situated very early on within the perception of a native returning home:
“she saw in the near distance the ravage sea bottom that was Bournehillls…Because of the shadows Bournehills scarcely seemed a physical place to her, but some mysterious and obscured region of the mind which ordinary consciousness did not dare admit to light.”
Darkness
Imagery of darkness to which light is forbidden admittance permeates the story, sometimes directly and sometimes more obliquely in a metaphorical form. One memorable engagement combines the literal with the figurative to create an impressive metaphorical image that transforms the darkness almost into a character itself:
“Dusk had fallen sometime ago, the abrupt topical darkness rushing out from the folds of the hills where it had been waiting all day to overwhelm the land. It moved now, a sentient, breathing presence, around the two men, almost like another companion who had decided to accompany them into the village proper.”
The Sea
Taking place on island, one sure bet is that metaphorical imagery will be used for the purpose of describing the sea around the land. What is an island without the significance of the waters around it, after all? It isn’t the land that makes the island different from the landlocked location, it is the borders:
“The water, a clear, deep-toned blue that absorbed the sunlight to a depth far below its surface, looked as though it had been endlessly filtered to remove every impurity. All trace of the unsightly seaweed it had sloughed off like so much dead skin over the weeks was gone.”
Character Introspection
The introspective contemplation of one’s self-identity makes for excellent utilization of metaphor. Most people prefer to view themselves through the prism of external objectivity and so the elements of comparison inherent in similes and direct metaphors prove endlessly useful:
“It might even have annoyed her had it not been for the feeling that had remained with her since Merle’s party, that sense of being a spectator on a stage during the performance of a play, someone virtually right in the middle of the swirling action yet apart, an onlooker.”
Carnival
The big social even on the island is Carnival. It is a great big party with a reputation for bringing together all strata of society together. The reality of this amalgamation of the culturally and economically differing is place into dramatic cinematic metaphor:
“Viewed from the jumbled squalor of Harlem Heights the carnival band parade resembled a river with its main body along Queen Street and innumerable streams and tributaries feeing into it from the sides…The dark tide moved undeterred through the cramped town—slowly because of the colorful freight it bore, swaying heavily as it went, and everywhere taking its shape from the twisting street.”
