Contrast & juxtaposition

Landscape and environment

Contrast and juxtaposition can vividly render aspects of the landscape or environment in a story.

Photo of volcano erupting in Chile with smoke plume contrasting with volcano
Contrast and juxtaposition can make details stand out vividly.

What are the contrasting features in the landscape in this snippet from My Family and Other Animals?

For a week or so the wind played with the island, patting it, stroking it, humming to itself among the bare branches. Then there was a lull, a few days' strange calm; suddenly, when you least expected it, the wind would be back. But it was a changed wind, a mad, hooting, bellowing wind that leaped down on the island and tried to blow it into the sea.

My Family and Other Animals(1956)

The contrast is in the wind:

  • At times it is playful and gentle.
  • At other times it is wild and aggressive.

Can you see the contrasts in the environment in each of these examples?

They started in the Baltic Sea, flat and dull as a plate. Sailing over to the Kattegat Strait was about as exciting as crossing an IKEA carpark half an hour after closing time. But when they entered the North Sea the fun began, and they wrestled the ship against howling winds, bitter rain, and jagged black waves that patrolled the water like sharks. 

My aisle was neat and tidy. The shelves were straight, the boxes crisply folded and stacked square in the cart, loose tape in the garbage bag that hung off the side. Ainsley’s aisle was a wreck. Torn up cardboard scattered everywhere, tape stuck to the products, the cart turned out so it blocked the way for customers, and to top it off she'd dropped a bottle of chocolate syrup on the floor and the lid had exploded and now there was a shiny brown pool on the white floor, oozing under the shelf. 

You have a few options:

  • Focus on one aspect of the environment and change it over time (as with the wind in the source snippet).
  • Juxtapose two distinctly different environments (as with the Baltic/North Atlantic and supermarket aisle examples).

Either works, but we will look at changes over time a little later in this lesson, so for this activity you might prefer to juxtapose two environments.

Describe a landscape or environment using contrast and juxtaposition.

So far we've looked at physical contrasts.

What about social and psychological contrasts?

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