Naïve (Metaphor)
Nicholas acquired “expensive habits” and “affected manners.” He got “a third-class degree” and “a first-class illusion” that he was a poet. However, nothing could have been less poetic than his “pseudo-aristocratic, seeing through all boredom with life in general and with making a living in particular.” Nicholas was “too green” to know that his beloved mask of cynicism was just an attempt to hide the failure to cope. But there was at least one good trait he acquired at Oxford: Socratic honesty. He was a cynic but not a liar.
Breathtaking beauty (Simile)
Phraxos lay “eight dazzling hours” in a small steamer south of Athens, about six miles off the mainland of the Peloponnesus and “in the center of a landscape as memorable as itself.” The island stood “in the crook” of “a great flexed arm of mountains.” Phraxos was “beautiful,” it was “simply and effortlessly beautiful.” Its beauty was rare even in the Aegean, because its hills were covered “with pine trees, Mediterranean pines as light as greenfish feathers. “Nine-tenths of the island” was “uninhabited” and “uncultivated,” nothing but “pines, coves, Silence, sea.”
Disappearing (Metaphor)
Nicholas stopped enjoying solitude a long time ago. Boredom and loneliness were almost unbearable. Rare letters from Alison stopped coming at all and “the two or three Oxford friends” he kept up “a spasmodic correspondence” with “sank beneath the horizon.” That was complete and utter isolation. Even the news broadcasts seemed “to come from the moon.” What was more, “the whole island” seemed to feel that “exile” from “contemporary reality.” There was no escape. Nicholas didn’t have any other choice but take a hard look at oneself. Self-reflecting became his new favorite pastime.
Truth (Metaphor)
He had begun to write poems about the island, about Greece, that seemed to him “philosophically profound and technically exciting.” Nicholas dream “more and more” of literary success. The young man spent hours “staring at the wall” of his room, “imagining reviews,” and “letters” written to him by “celebrated fellow poets.” But then, “one bleak March Sunday,” “scales dropped” from his eyes. The truth rushed down on him like “a burying avalanche.” Nicholas was not a poet.
The past (Simile)
Conchis had an impressive library where he spent almost all his free time, reading poetry or just thinking. Thus, he couldn’t miss a chance to talk with an Oxford alumnus about the future of literature. According to the older man, the novel as a genre was “as dead” as “alchemy.” To prove his point of view, Conchis burned every novel he possessed. “Dickens, Cervantes, Dostoyevsky, Flaubert.” “All the great and the small.” He even burnt something he “wrote” himself. The sky “took their smoke”, the earth their “aches.” The man claimed he had been “happier and healthier” ever since.
Exploration (Simile)
The village doctor confirmed the diagnosis: that was syphilis. However, there was still a chance that the drugs “smuggled into Greece” would work and Nicholas would be fine again. “To get through the anxious wait for the secondary stage not to develop,” he began “quietly to rape the island.” He always went “over the central crest to the south side of the island,” “away from the village and the school.” There, was “absolute solitude: three hidden cottages at one small bay.” The surrounding area was “sublimely peaceful,” “as potential as a clean canvas, a site for myth.”
