BNW Journal 1

"The enormous room on the ground floor faced towards the north. Cold for all the summer beyond the panes, for all the tropical heat of the room itself, a harsh thin light glared through the windows, hungrily seeking some draped lay figure, some pallid shape of academic goose-flesh, but finding only the glass and nickel and bleakly shining porcelain of a laboratory. Wintriness responded to wintriness. The overalls of the workers were white, their hands gloved with a pale corpse-coloured rubber. The light was frozen, dead, a ghost."

            “The enormous room on the ground floor faced towards the north”. The fact that this sentence states that a specific room that is located on the ground floor faces the north, questions the facing location of the other rooms within the building. By the room facing north it suggest the room is very important. Compasses always point towards the north, and compasses are used for direction, so the “enormous room […] faced towards the north” indicates that this room is pointing towards progression. This room is contains “tropical heat” and is “cold for all the summer beyond the panes”. The words “cold” and “summer” contradict each other due to its contrasting temperatures, but since the words are combined, it suggests an intense heat temperature within the room. This heat is emphasized through the “harsh thin light” that “glared through the windows”. The light “hungrily seeking some draped lay figure, some pallid shape of academic goose-flesh” suggest the importance of this progression, and the need to identify everyone and everything. Personification arises in a menacing fashion: “hungrily seeking” as though to emphasize this need of this progression by abolishing any unknown threats. “But finding only the glass and nickel and bleakly shining porcelain of a laboratory”. This quote introduces the reader to the main factor of the book, and allows the reader to imagine the appearance of the laboratory. A “wintriness” is something relating to winter, which adds onto: “the overalls of the workers were white”, this suggests that the workers embody either the appearance of winter, or the characteristics of winter. Winter can either be beautiful or deadly, the fact that “their hands gloved with a pale corpse-coloured rubber” concludes that these workers embody the harsh characteristics of winter with their “corpse” colored clothing. “The light was frozen, dead, a ghost”. This metaphor creates an eerie view on this laboratory.