Techniques of the Author

After reading Dark Tide, by Stephen Puleo, I fully understood the disaster that was the Boston Molasses Flood of 1919. But looking further over my notes and the book I noticed some techniques the author used to get his point across. Puleo used techniques to bring the book from simple facts and weave a story that lets the reader become immersed in the history of the flood. Keeping them guessing and thinking what might happen next.  Two of these main techniques were foreshadowing along with giving a real life and emotions to the characters to those who perished.

The first technique, foreshadowing, is displayed through out the book but the most prominent one occurs in the prologue of the the book. Puleo foreshadows very strongly with the character of Issac Gonzales, a worker for the United States Industrial Alcohol Company, and a man who worried his night life away over a molasses tank. The foreshadowing comes into play when when Issac checks on the tank in the middle of the night and releases some of the molasses into the harbor next to the tank. He says he has, "semi-consuous mind pictures," of the tanking collapsing and flooding Commercial Street killing many. He agonizes over the small openings dotted over the tank letting the molasses flow free. He even goes as far as to tell the boss, Mr.Jell, about his worries but the man does nothing. This gives the reader the idea that the tank has the greatest possibility of collapsing and flooding the streets. How clique is it anyway, a man warns a group but all of them skeptical deny his claim later to perish at the same fate the man warned them about? Issac Gonzales speaks the future from his agonizing fears. 

The other technique would be Puleo giving emotions to those static figures in history who just died as a consequence of the flood. These characters lives are laid out before the incident to draw the reader into wondering about the future of the character. What role do they play in the disaster that was the molasses flood? Some of these characters would include George Layhe, Martin Clougherty, and small Pasquale Iantosca. George Lahye was a fireman of engine 31 whose life was going well at the age of 38 and died as a result of the flood. He was trapped under a pool table and was only able to hold his up out of the molasses for three hours before his muscles succumbed and he drown. Martin Clougherty was a survivor of the flood who had a good establishment called the Pen and Pencil Club and holding onto a bed-frame survived the flow of molasses. Lastly small Pasquale was a young boy of the age of ten who would take a bucket down to the tank to collect some of the dripping molasses for his low income family. He was swept right away and crushed under the weight of a freight car crushing every bone in his body so he was unrecognizable. By Puleo telling us the background of these characters we become emotionally invested because the reader knows they truly lived and wants to see what fate brought them. 

Overall Puleo techniques kept me reading the book. I was first frightened with the thought of reading non-fiction but it was pleasing and easy to read. The fact that there were real characters with a story made it flow and the foreshadowing kept me in to see if I predicted right.