Moonstone Commentary

In life there is no turning back into the past to try to change what could have happened, for it is physically impossible, and the future will always be affected by the choices we made in the past. Wilkie Collins main focus was to show that even through all the mistakes we made in the past and how hard we try to forget and cover them up, they will still remain a part of us forever. In the beginning of the Moonstone a brief but very detailed description of the setting is given, establishing a well based focus for the story. The way the sea is elaborated upon with such words makes you feel like you are in the story. Yorkshire coast has many magnificent walks except for one direction, which Wilkie calls the horrid walk. This walk leads to a field fully covered in firs transferring energy of sadness. Walking through this area the protagonist stumbles across low cliffs leading to the loneliest and ugliest part of the bay. The lonely part of the bay is supposed to resemble the part in people’s life where they overcame a hardship, however they do not want to endure such a thing again so they try to forget what happened leaving the feelings trapped to a certain place. This bay is never visited by strangers because if they were to enter such an atmosphere it would bring back old memories that can cause pain, and so therefore it is avoided by everyone. No one wants to have to deal with things from the past, because it never does them any good, trying to fix things that already happened only cause more destruction. Wilkie describes the area of this bay to be haunted especially in the sense that the quicksand shivers and trembles. This relates to the idea that all the trapped things people bottle up and try to conceal forever from the rest of the world are trembling to break free and escape just like the quicksand. From this part of the passage “No boat ever ventures into this bay. No children from our fishing-village, called Cobb’s Hole, ever come here to play, and the very