Use of Setting and Description in JohnnoThroughout Johnno, setting descriptions of houses and buildings allow the reader to gain insight into Dante's character . Malouf captures images with powerful force, creating depth in the characters. Specific details that might be deemed inappropriate are enhanced to provide meaning and show how the characters respond and feel about the locations. Malouf uses images effectively to reinforce attitudes, feelings and emotions. Although the descriptions are long and detailed, they are useful and evocative. Many of the descriptions are symbolic, such as the garden descriptions. Malouf's use of language is casual, which enhances the story, making it come to life. Through the descriptions of each house, Malouf creates an atmosphere that reflects the characters' feelings. Dante's childhood home was a place of freedom and discovery. With a large garden, there was constant change, with a comfortable and pleasant environment. The next house his family lived in was built based on his father's dreams, modern and superficial. It was full of furniture and materials that were hostile and restrictive, especially for a child. Malouf describes Dante's childhood home with words of freedom, revealing his memories through the eyes of a child. The old house represented a freedom, an informal but organized environment. The old house has been described as mysterious, "a wilderness transformed into a suburban farm." Malouf captures the setting with words that bring to life the description, the thought of an adult, transformed into the active words of a child. Expressing the emotions that a child would feel, grasping the small aspects that struck him....... middle of paper ......and wanting more from his environment and looking at what the rest of the world had to offer him, pushed him to desire change and growth and to seek them. What he had, compared to others, was not satisfactory, not good enough, causing him to despise what he had. Outdoors: River widens into a wide stream, low mudflats on one side, pelicans, native pines, high walls covered in vine. The outside The atmosphere of the house does not give Dante any pleasure, the environment seems just an image, he cannot be part of it. 'It is a house I have never gotten used to'. Dante misses the sounds and the old house atmosphere. The transition to modernity is something he struggles to adapt to. The growing dislike for every home has brought him to the point of hating his entire environment. 'My loyalty remains where my feelings are, in the old home’