The central idea of this passage is ‘’the aftermath of a storm’ or ‘life after a death.’ The author uses a number of literary devices and techniques to help us really feel the pain of the survivors. The first sentence of this passage is a simile: ‘the air smelled like diamonds’ which conveys to the reader the sharpness and the piercing pain that the girls had to go through just to breathe. Personification is also used when the author tries to describe the subconscious state that the survivors are in by saying ‘colors swam.’ The question technique is also used in this passage, which indicates that the girls are coming back to their senses. There are alliterations in a few places in order emphasize their subconscious state.
The characters in the passage are not given separate identities and we only see them as ‘orange forms.’ Each girl has a different amount of pain to go through and ‘no one was glad to discover that she was still alive.’ The writer compares the girls to worms ‘crawling out of the earth’, which emphasizes that no one was spared by the storm and that after the storm, all of nature has been reduced to an elementary level.
In the stages of awakening that the girls are in, Amanda is the most awake and aware of her surroundings as ‘she had been sitting and staring for hours, waiting for help.’ Amanda seems to take on the role of a leader in this small group of girls. We get the impression that Oopi is the youngest of the girls because she is not able to comprehend the situation that she is in and also she is asking many questions, even if they are only to herself. She is only worried about the ‘orange thing’ that is bothering her. Her wounds, it seems, are bleeding because carrion eaters ‘stalked around Oopi testing her palatability.’
Gaby is also one of the girls that is addressed in this passage. She seems to be dazed because ‘things that could not swim were swimming: trees, the horizon, a bee.’ Her knees are also badly grazed by the corals. Another girl who had definitely survived but could not even move is Jane. These girls were so lost that they could not even mourn for the losses that they had gone through.
The main mood of the passage is that of confusion, despair and uncertainty. Every character in the passage is confused and uncertain about where they are and how they got there. They are not in the state of mind to actually think about their future except for Amanda. The mood of loss, grief and despair is very dominant. The author uses smells, visuals and colors to emphasize the atmosphere of the passage.
