Ascension in the Moonlight

I believe the theme of Winchester's essay is that beauty can be found anywhere. The island is consistently described as a place that is "...hot, lonely and exceptionally boring" (267). Even though it seems that there is nothing remarkable or exciting to be found on the island, the narrator still gets to see the breathtaking sea turtles and comet. This shows that even a desolate location such as Ascension Island can hold beauty. I really enjoyed the line, "Enormous swells and rollers crashed over these steps at regular intervals, completely immersing them, then draining away again in a rush of wild whitewater and fronds of streaming weed" (264). The line established a strong sense of imagery. I could really picture the perilous waves, the seaweed, and the frothy water. Another one of my favorite sentences was Winchester wrote, "It was far too hot today, and there was no one about--just a few donkeys, now wild animals that plagued the island just like the feral cats the local people had tried to eliminate some years before. The donkeys chewed the wing mirrors off the local cars, and everybody loathed them" (265). Winchester really captured the character of the island, and I found myself comparing the feral cats on Ascension Island to those in Puerto Rico and Pakistan.