Descriptive Writing: The Universe

Please read the following essay in preparation for tomorrow's lesson. I wrote it as an exemplar. Focus on the adjectives, similes, metaphors and on the mood and setting.

Imagine you are a space tourist in space for the first time. Describe what you see and feel.

I stared out the porthole of my space shuttle. Blackness. Infinite blackness. Pitch-blackness sprinkled with ebony, wrapped in a sable shroud, hidden in a dark, sooty corner of a coal room in a forgotten cellar of the universe. There before me, the universe stretched into the distance, a blanket of blackness—blacker than suspicion, blacker than hate, and blacker still than illicit desire. The universe looked back upon me with a terrible and indifferent frankness. It seemed to seduce and repulse, invite and repel. It flowed silently like an endless sable shroud that concealed an eternal secret. Like a mysterious, melanised mask, it spread out before me—dark, stolid, and impassive. But hiding beneath it was an orgy of horror—a vague and ineffable horror; like the loss of consciousness in deep sleep or the extinction of a species. The blackness was right there in front of me and yet it seemed so execrably remote—so utterly removed from the cares and concerns of people. All that the universe betrayed was wave upon silent wave of apathy.

Gradually, I began to perceive something. As my eyes got used to the feeble light, I could discern spots of light. Millions of specks—above—below—all around—everywhere. I was surrounded by starlight. And there in the distance, lost among the teeming constellations of stars, I noticed a blue speck—my home world. Everything and everyone I ever knew existed on the speck. Every dream, every thought, every idea, every hope, and every emotion I or anyone else had ever experienced took place on that speck. Earth seemed so touchingly fragile, so delicate against the monstrous blackness of space. A wandering comet or a renegade meteor could so easily smite it out of existence. And yet life has thrived for millions of years on that refulgent blue gem.

In the distance, the blurry image of the moon glistened hauntingly on the glass surface of the porthole like a treacherous conspiracy. A deathly stillness pervaded my shuttle, and all sound ceased. I felt truly alone. I contemplated the mysteries of the universe: countless stars, powerful novas, distant nebulae, planets locked in a gravitational dance with their parent star… and the most mysterious object of all—a black hole.

I knew lurking in the depths of deep space was a monster to beat all monsters, a celestial bogeyman, a million times more perplexing than the sphinx and infinitely scarier than the basilisk. Hovering somewhere out there was a cosmic black hole: a black fruit dangling on a nonexistent chord from the supernal boughs of some unfathomable astronomical tree.

The thought that nothing could escape the clutches of a black hole filled me with an appalling sense of terror. There could be nothing more horrifying, even in the darkest corners of Hell. I began to feel hideously claustrophobic. I felt like I was in some cosmic coffin. My palms grew sweaty. The smell of mortality clung to my clothes. My bones throbbed. My muscles quivered. I felt an odd sensation in my feet—and then in my head. At that moment I felt more lost, isolated, and vulnerable than I had ever felt before.