Lessing uses specific words to illustrate the scenery that helps develop the setting throughout the story. In the first page she starts by using “cold, coral claws” to show what the birds were like. The repeated c’s in the phrase helps increase the sense of coldness and you actually get chills after reading the expression. All through the story Lessing goes into detail to describe the habitat and environment that surrounded the house. Again in the first page she uses words like “dark red soil”, “great dusty clods”, and “rich green grass” so that the readers can imagine for themselves what it looked like. By adding more colorful or descriptive words it becomes more effective because now the reader can visualize it more clearly.

Another way Lessing’s choice of words helps the reader unders

Lessing also uses diction to describe and develop the characters throughout the story. In the first page she describes the young granddaughter, Alice, comparing her to a frangipani tree. “Her long bare legs repeated the angles of the frangipani stems,” helps the reader illustrate a picture of how young and beautiful she is. She describes Steven, the granddaughter’s boyfriend as a “red-handed, red throated, violent bodied youth.” This is told from the grandfather’s point of view and from it you can see that he dislikes him and sees Steven as a thief, by stealing his granddaughter. In the second page Lessing describes the mother as “square-fronted, clam-eyed woman,” meaning grown up in her appearance. From Lessing’s choice of words the reader can create their own image of each character and it helps them understand the story more clearly.

From all the characters in the story, the grandfather is the one who is a mystery. Lessing leaves the reader to decide what he’s like, leaving us a few hints here and there to help us. The grandfather is the only one in the story who is left without a name. There could be many reasons why Lessing do

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