Abstractly expressed, the theme of unfulfilled expectations becomes gradually clear.
During the first few weeks of pregnancy, the shape of the uterus is unchanged, but the organ becomes gradually softer.
Slowly but surely, so the reasoning goes, there is a trickle-down effect and fur becomes gradually more acceptable to a whole new generation of potential customers.
"As Hong Kong becomes gradually more democratic, the divisions between the rich and poor are no longer tenable," Mr. Dodwell said.
He even gave his own idea for a wallpaper design: "a hanging which, being dark near the floor, becomes gradually lighter towards the ceiling.
The peninsular region north of Auckland, called Northland, becomes gradually subtropical in character, marked generally by numerous deep-encroaching inlets of the sea bordered by mangrove swamps.
It becomes gradually apparent that he is absent from nearly all the key scenes, as though the book is enacting his own exclusion from the community to which he believes he belongs.
The gentle acoustic strum of My Big Nurse ends with a weird solo that seems to be part organ, part feedback; the rhythm track on Home becomes gradually drowned in reverb and other electronic effects.
What's fascinating about the novel is that the "self-criticism" becomes — gradually and perhaps not entirely consciously — something else, a subtle but devastating criticism of the reality to which the Cuban self has for so long been subject.
As Richard encounters more of the underworld's savage exotica – Rat-speakers, heat-vampires, the Black Friars who guard a certain crucial key – he becomes gradually accustomed to a weapons-toting, insecure, swashbuckling life of bartering.
In London in 1906, a fiercely scientific hypnotist becomes gradually unhinged as he does battle with a charming spiritualist to save a hysterical teenage girl whose invisible companion is a demigoddess from an Atlantis-like kingdom.
