The Grave

8 Pages 1923 Words

wild grass". Her reasoning for doing this is to show the polarity between positive and negative, and life and death. Also, this is where the characters are introduced. Miranda and Paul are siblings and they are exploring the empty graves together with their Winchester rifles. It is in this short paragraph where we first hear about their hobby of hunting rabbits and doves. This is also where the writer describes the day as "burning". She does not say that it is "a hot summer's day" but this is what she is alluding to.
As the children begin to explore the empty graves we would expect the children to be afraid and extra careful but they are not. Instead, they experienced "wonder". There was no fear but a "small disappointment at the entire commonplaceness of the actual spectacle". This shows us that they have no respect or fear of the dead; possibly, because they do not comprehend the finality of death. To these children "a grave was just a hole in the ground" after the coffins had been removed. They do not consider the fact that the graves had once contained the rotting bodies of their deceased family members. A few sentences later, Katherine uses negative and positive descriptions again. This time she describes the empty grave of their grandfather as having a "pleasantly sweet, corrupt smell". Once...