Annabel- Kathleen Winter

Select either the excerpt from Monkey Beach or Annabel and write a blog entry in which you comment on the use of landscape to enhance character and theme. Quote directly from the excerpt to support your point.

This entire section was written using the description of, or mention to, places in almost every paragraph. The piece gives a very clear sense of separation between the men and women of Croyden Harbour. The women are shown as a romanticized but tough group. "Then came brief blasts of summer, when fireweed and pitcher plants and bog sundews burst open and gave the air one puff, one tantalizing scented breath that signalled life could now begin, but it did not begin. The plants were carnivorous. That moment of summer contained desire and fruition and death all in one ravenous gulp, and the women did not jump in." Summer has denied these women and the women shrug it off as if it isn't a big deal. The men, and specifically Treadway, needed to be out of their homes because to them it was a way of life. There is a stress and a confinement that we feel with Treadway his house is described. "This was how he lived, by the nuances of wild birds over land and water, and by the footprints and marks of branches in the snow on his trapline, and the part of him that understood these languages detested him in his house. Clocks ticked, and doilies sat on furniture, and stagnant air rushed into his pores and suffocated him. It was not air at all, but suffocating gauze crammed with dust motes, and it was always too warm."