Imagination allows people to transform our experiences in new and exciting ways. Thomas imagines everyday moments during Christmas time in a fantastical way that makes the story more engaging and interesting. Through our imagination we can create whatever world we want to live in. The narrator and his friend Jim are waiting to hit domesticated cats with snowballs in their backyard garden. Thomas writes:

Sleek and long as jaguars and horrible-whiskered, spitting and snarling, they would slink and sidle over the white back-garden walls, and the lynx-eyed hunters.

Thomas makes simple domesticated cats sound like large wild cats in the Eskimo territory. A simple snowball fight turns into a journey into uncharted Eskimo wilderness. Imagination allows us to visit places and meet others we might not normally run into in our life. We can go anywhere with our imagination. Thomas uses sentence building techniques to bring his imagination to life.

    A story without vivid action is hardly a story. Thomas uses sentence building techniques help develop a stronger scene for the reader with clear and concise detail. With both muscular verbs and similes and metaphors Thomas changes our view of what could be just a simple event. One example of Thomas using muscular verbs is when he was talking about running home for Christmas dinner. He writes,“Then I would be slap-dashing home.” The reader gets insight into the action of the narrator with the word slap-dashing which is much more vivid than just using the word run. Thomas uses metaphors and similes everywhere in his writing. They help him describe things. He writes:

Some few small aunts, not wanted in the kitchen, nor anywhere else for that matter, sat on the very edge of their chairs, poised and brittle, afraid to break, like faded cups and saucers.

The simile here is that he compares aunts not wanted in the kitchen to faded cups and saucers. The author shows us so much about the character through the use of the techniques. He uses these techniques to transform experiences such as turning cats into jaguars and dogs into hippos.

 

    A story is build out the power of imagination and Thomas uses his imagination to design a story. He also uses muscular verbs and similes and metaphors to glue it altogether.