Ascension in the Moonlight Analysis

Unlike "Bicycle Love," Simon Winchester's "Ascension in the Moonlight" is less direct in portraying its theme and instead focuses more on strong imagery and diction to vividly retail his experience for the audience. For example, Winchester doesn't simply watch sea-turtles lay their eggs in the sand, he describes the eggs as "glistening wetly in the moonlight." In addition, he doesn't just observe a lunar eclipse, he feels a "sudden coldness in the air, as though a cloud had materialized from the tropical sky, and blanketed everything in its chill." This narrative emphasis underlines the beautiful payoff at the end of his journey. After Winchester encounters "perhaps the greatest wealth of experience that any one individual could ever know in one moment," he realizes that this incredible blessing has derived solely "because one man and one woman... had decided to offer me... no more and no less than their kindness." Admitting that this incredible occurrence was only made possible by the grace of strangers, Winchester thereby contributes the credit of his spectacular journey to the virtue of kindness, reinforcing this principal as the theme of the story.