The Linnaeus of the story has loved the natural world so much that it has embedded itself in his thinking and the way he uses language. When he expresses his thoughts to himself or when the narrator explains his state of mind, it is through metaphors and similes drawn from the natural world. The erosion of his memory, for example, is conveyed by a metaphor of a gradually expanding dark lake: “His mind, which had once seemed to hold the whole world, had been occupied by a great dark lake that spread farther every day and around which he tiptoed gingerly.” Similarly, the facts that were once at his command now “darted like minnows across the water and could only be captured by cunning and indirection.”

Because he can no longer recognize people or be fully aware of what is going on around him...