A sense of religiosity is spread as the writer uses words like ‘congregating’, forming a picture in our minds of people attending a religious ceremony. The word congregating also shows unity between the people, that they are all grouping together and “standing side by side” to see the artificial light together.
Mr. Samuel is described as “the great inventor”, he is seen as the one who invented artificial light in Cocoa bottom. How he stood on the verandah, ‘a silhouette […] behind him’, it gives us an image of him standing there, with a “holy” light shining on him. Showing the outline of his body.
Grannie Patterson is also seen as a special character in the poem. She represents the “old ones” of the village. The people who have been there since the beginning, getting on with life the same way generation through generation. Then, suddenly, artificial light reaches Cocoa Bottom. Grannie Patterson’s reaction represents that of all the older generations. Peeping through the door, hiding from the technology, wanting simple and straight-forward life.
I find how Marcia Douglas personifies the nature, making birds and even bamboo sounding like human beings. ‘the long grass bent forward […] like so many bowed heads’. In the poem, it even sounds like the fireflies holding their breath… or even their light, to watch humanity’s progress, like the experts watching amateurs at work, trying to make light.
After the moment is a totally different issue, it even sounds like the people are disappointed. Reflecting one of man’s characteristics, that they are never satisfied. The people walked back again, ‘lit [lighting] their lamps for the dark journey home’. It shows how, after all “miracles” of the electric light, they still turned back to the lanterns with oil. Showing disappointment.
So this is how the writer bring life to people’s feelings about, and reactions to the events described in Marcia Douglas’s poem.
REMEMBER THAT THIS IS THE MOST IMPORATANT PARAGRAPH:
" After the moment is a totally different issue, it even sounds like the people are disappointed. Reflecting one of man’s characteristics, that they are never satisfied. The people walked back again, ‘lit [lighting] their lamps for the dark journey home’. It shows how, after all “miracles” of the electric light, they still turned back to the lanterns with oil. Showing disappointment."
