As the novel progresses, part of what it tries to summon is the sense that while things can and will change and loss will inevitably ensue, we shouldn't resist transience, but rather, accept it, embrace it.
As the novel progresses, the figure of the snowman becomes symbolic of a naïve belief in the sanctity of marriage.
But as the novel progresses the patterns of the plot become tighter, and threaten to drain the life out of the characters.
As the novel progresses, the odysseys of the two principal characters become much more difficult than they had ever imagined possible.
Jack hears the voice of the Overlook as the novel progresses – his own touch of the shining – and it gnaws at him, turning him away from his family.
I had incorrectly thought I would remain cool as this dark novel progressed, but when one of the main characters finally breaks down, I lost it, too.
As the novel progresses and the survivors of the flu are forced to pick sides – drawn through their dreams to the darkness or the light, to Randall Flagg or Mother Abigail – Harold shows his true colours.
Taylor deftly illustrates the dynamics at play between these three characters: Cressy becomes slighter and more insubstantial as the novel progresses, her early edge of wilfulness almost totally blunted, while Midge becomes increasingly dominant.
As the novel progresses, however, a variety of male characters – a local farmer who invites himself into her house and sits eating her cake while she bristles with barely concealed anger, a young man who claims to be mapping a scenic pathway through the north Wales countryside, a local doctor, her abandoned husband – intrude upon her silence.
The ironic tone increases in severity as the novel progresses, especially in terms of the ironic distance between the narrator and protagonist.
