In addition to having the older Latha tell a story about an experience of her youth, Harington also enhances the narration's double perspective by entitling the alternating chapters "On" and "Off." These words, suggesting the power of electricity, contrast the electricity, the vitality, of storytelling with the electric chair, the novel's emblem of death. The contrasting chapter titles also demonstrate the contrast explicit in the pastoral. The "On" chapters tend to be fairly brief, intense, and they deal, usually, with scenes in the urban prison. The "Off" chapters are usually, explanatory, relaxed, and set in Stay More. The first three "On" chapters depict Nail's and Viridis's experiences at the first attempt to execute Nail. The first "Off" chapter explains how Nail came to be in the electric chair, and the second explains how Viridis came to be in the death chamber sketching Nail's portrait for the newspaper.

In...