Events that make a conflict more difficult are called

"the sandy walls seemed to collapse in on themselves"

and

"the bloodshot waters seemed to have no bottom"

the narrator is a first person, participant one, who describes in the simple past tense important and difficult events in his earlier life. he also provides temporal markers as the month (january) and the time (12: 30 pm). finally the account of his experience is very detailed, to the extent that a participant narrator would talk the same way about his experiences. a good example of such detail is the mention of the “bovril ration” which historically was a native american food adopted by european explorers in arctic and antarctic regions due to its high level of calories.

sentences vary by structure as well as by function. there are compound, complex, and compound-complex sentences.

simple sentence

i like to read.

a simple sentence has one independent clause.

compound sentence

i like to read, and i also like to write.

a compound sentence includes more than one independent clause, connected by a coordinating conjunction (and, but, for, nor, or, so, or yet).

complex sentence

i prefer to read books that are bestsellers.

a complex sentence includes one independent clause and one or more dependent clauses. (a dependent clause is one that cannot stand alone.) types of dependent clauses include relative clauses (i kicked the boy who pinched me), adverb clauses (i am going home now because i have a curfew), and noun clauses (i don't know what to do next).

compound-complex sentence

although i prefer to read current bestsellers, i do like to read old agatha christie mysteries, and i also like some 20th-century science fiction.

compound-complex sentences take a bunch of clauses (multiple independent clauses, and one or more dependent clauses) and toss them together like a salad. although these sentences take practice to write in a grammatically correct fashion, they can hold a tremendous amount of meaning, and are common in academic writing.

her eyes water as she let her go

her mothers hand goes limp

face white and pale

lips blue and stale

she is gone

sadness fills her body

she collapses to her knees

as her mothers disease leaves the girl alone