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Imagery
Explanation and Analysis—Querig's Appearance:
When the characters finally reach Querig's pit in Chapter 15, a long passage of visual imagery describes the dragon in surprising language:
As for the dragon, it was hardly clear at first she was alive. Her posture—prone, head twisted to one side, limbs outspread—might easily have resulted from her corpse being hurled into the pit from a height [...] Her skin, which should have appeared oiled and of a color not unlike bronze, was instead a yellowing white, reminiscent of the underside of certain fish [...] This movement, and the faintest rise and fall along the creature's backbone, were the only indicators that Querig was still alive.
This image of the dying Querig connects a number of important motifs from across The Buried Giant. For example, Querig is shown as aged and dying, just like Axl, Beatrice, and Gawain. Querig, along with the other elderly characters, represents the end of the Briton age in England. Her death and the end of her mist will restore memory across the country and cause the ultimate victory of the Saxons over the Britons.
Moreover, this startling description of Querig contributes to the motif of companionship longed for at death. She, too, seeks comfort in the hawthorn bush as the only living being beside her. Throughout the novel, Axl and Beatrice carry similar fears about staying reunited at their dying moments when they cross the river.
Ultimately, this imagery casts the dying figure in a sympathetic light for Axl and Beatrice. As the speaker mentions at the start of the novel, monsters were little cause for astonishment and coexisted to some degree alongside humans. Querig lives, longs for companionship, weakens, and dies alongside Axl, Beatrice, and Gawain.
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