“The road ahead tapered to infinity, in stages. Hill led to hill led to hill, and at each summit the road abruptly shrank to half its width, then half its width again, until it became a hairline crack in the land, then a faint wobble in the haze then nothing.” This extract is from the last paragraph and gives a great sense of the vasity of the landscape.

The extract is structured into four distinct paragraphs that combine to develop a strong image of the American Midwest. The first paragraph gives a descriptive overview of setting and the natural land features.

“The surface of the land was as busy as a rough sea-it broke into sandstone outcrops, low buttes, a ragged bluff, hollow combers broke into bleached clay, and was fissured with waterless creek beds, ash white, littered with boulders.”

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