Perilousness of Milo's Journey
"All that he would have to do is travel through miles of harrowing and hazardous countryside, into unknown valleys and uncharted forests, past yawning chasms and trackless wastes, until he reached Digitopolis." (96)
This description of the journey to free the princesses uses language that emphasizes hardship, struggle, and difficulty. It also shows that because the route is "uncharted," nobody has completed it successfully, which is why it has never been charted. The terrain is vast, with so many different types of topical variation, and hard to traverse because it is seemingly endless, with peaks and valleys and a route that is very easy to get lost along.
Perilousness of Milo's Journey
"From there it's a simple matter of entering the Mountains of Ignorance, full of perilous pitfalls and ominous overtones - a land to which many venture but few return and whose evil demons slither slowly from peak to peak in search of prey." (97)
The author uses both descriptions of the monsters Milo will encounter and continuous alliteration to emphasize the ominous and frightening nature of them. They are described as having overtones, which means that not only are their actions evil, but also their intentions and very aura. This emphasizes that not only will the terrain be almost impossible to traverse, but also the route will be fraught with danger from malevolent creatures.
Colors of Milo's Orchestra
"But instead of stopping, they continued to play even louder than before, until each color became more brilliant than he thought possible. Milo shielded his eyes with one hand and waved the other desperately, but the colors continues to grow brighter and brighter and brighter until an even more curious thing began to happen.
As Milo frantically conducted, the sky changes slowly from blue to tan and then to a rich magenta red. Flurries of light-green snow began to fall, and the leaves on the trees and bushes turned a vivid orange." (129)
Chroma the Great magnificently conducts the orchestra that colors the entire world, but when Milo tries to conduct himself, the colors are upside down and nothing is the color it should be. To emphasize the brightness, the author uses repetition to dazzle the reader and highlights the fact that Milo needs to shield his eyes. The description also uses strong, vivid, and unusual colors such as magenta to illustrate the strength and depth of the colors that, although beautiful and strong, are also the contrary colors for what they should be.
Hills and Valleys
"The easily rolling countryside now stretched before them in a series of dips and rises that leaped up one side of each crest and slid gently down the other in a way that made stomachs laugh and faces frown. As they topped the brow of the highest hill, a deep valley appeared high hill, a deep valley appeared ahead. The road, finally making up its mind, plummeted down, as if anxious to renew its acquaintance with the sparkling blue stream that flowed below." (132)
In this description, the author again returns to the peaks and valleys theme of the journey, which in this case is a softer and more undulating countryside rather than the frightening and unfriendly terrain from earlier chapters. The author uses a description of the undulation, the colors, and the sparkling water in the stream to create an image that is bright, shiny, and positive, rather like an oil painting in words. The hills hold promise of the delights beyond them.
The Threatening Fog
"Like a giant corkscrew, the stairway twisted through the darkness, steep and narrow, and with no rail to guide them. The wind howled cruelly in an effort to tear them loose and the dog dragged clammy fingers down their backs." (231)
Humanizing the fog enables the author to chill the reader as the description again puts Milo against the elements that are trying to harm him and prevent him from reaching his destination. The clammy fingers of the fog are easy to imagine on the reader's own back and the addition of the twisting, spiraling corkscrew of the staircase adds to the image of being trapped and plummeting into the thick fog below.
Milo's first impression of his journey.
"The sun sparkled, the sky was clear, and l the colors he saw seemed to be richer and brighter than he could ever remember. The flowers shone as if they'd been cleaned and polished, and the tall trees that lined the road shimmered in silvery green." (16-17)
This image starts the book off on a happy, light-hearted note. It is in contrast to some of the dangerous moments Milo has.
