The Last Keeper

Text 1: The Light, by Margaret Tullochan

An original novel extract.

On his last night at the light, Angus climbed the hundred and twelve steps for the final time and polished the lens, though it did not need polishing, though from tomorrow no one would polish it again. A machine in a grey box would do his job now. It would never be tired. It would never be lonely. It would never stand at the gallery rail at three in the morning to watch the herring boats go out.

He wiped each prism slowly, as if he were memorising it. Through the glass the beam swung out over the sea, white, then gone, then white again, the way it had swung every night of his twenty-two years. Below him the waves broke on the rocks with the same old sound, a long hush and a crash.

At dawn the helicopter came. He carried his one suitcase down to the pad without looking back at the tower. Only when they were up and banking away did he turn to the window. The lighthouse was already small, a white finger on a black rock, and its beam had gone out for the morning. He watched it until the cloud closed over, and then he watched the cloud.

How does Margaret Tullochan use language and structure to show Angus’s sadness at leaving the lighthouse?

You should use relevant subject terminology to support your answer.