The Salt Path

“I was in awe. This man, who only two months earlier had struggled to put his on his coat without help, was standing on a beach in his underpants, holding an erect tent above his head with a rucksack on his back, saying, run.”

This scene foreshadows how Moth and Raynor will work to overcome impossible odds. In the first part of the book, the numerous obstacles they confront seem nearly impossible to overcome, but here they are confronting a difficult situation head-on and overcoming it with relative ease. Winn uses extreme juxtaposition to highlight the change in Moth.

“It’s all right, I know you’re only doing your job, but it was the wrong decision, you do know that, don’t you?”

For the first part of the book, Moth is broken and despondent, but this moment illustrates an important quality of his character. Despite the circumstances, he calmly approaches the lawyer who worked against him and confronts him in open dialogue.

“What was he talking about? This wasn’t how we would die. It wasn’t Moth’s life; it was our life. We were one, fused, enmeshed, molecular. Not his life, not my life; our life.”

Raynor tries to make sense of the doctor’s diagnosis that Moth has a degenerative disorder. Here she uses two literary techniques that she turns to often, amplification and repetition, to highlight her state of mind. Amplification occurs when she describes them as “fused, enmeshed, molecular,” using this hyperbolic imagery to convey her love for Moth. She repeats “our life” to reinforce the height of her feelings.