the importance of cougars

"My trepidations were not speedily quieted. I looked back with wonder on my hair-breadth escape, and on that singular concurrence of events, which had placed me, in so short a period, in absolute security. Had the trunk fallen a moment earlier, I should have been imprisoned on the hill or thrown headlong. Had its fall been delayed another moment I should have been pursued; for the beast now issued from his den, and testified his surprise and disappointment by tokens the sight of which made my blood run cold."
-pg. 121

This passage comes at the end of Edgar's near miss with the "grey Cougar," immediately following the cougar's surprising fall into the pit. Here, Brown is using the cougar as a neat symbol for the misty, foreboding qualities of the wilderness. We get little description of the cougar itself (on page 118, we are given a physical sketch, as Edgar says the cougar had a "grey coat, extended claws, fiery eyes"), and Edgar seems more frightened in the passage above than in the scene where the cougar is pursuing him. In this passage, Edgar is consumed by what could have been (feeling terror, as opposed to horror, as I examined in my previous post). We understand his panic because we can relate, perhaps more empathetically than if Brown had described each snarl of the cougar, and each misstep that Edgar took. This passage is also a fine example of how solidly the wilderness has cemented itself in Edgar's consciousness. Whereas, in the early chapters of the book, Edgar would be fine with following Clithero through dark passages and into caves, Edgar now spends more time thinking than acting.

Brown manages to bring the reader into Edgar's mindset primarily through sentence structure and word choice. The sentences, replete with repetition, are long and seem to mimic breathlessness. Read aloud, they seem to be straight from the center of a panic attack, when ones syntax is of little importance. Also interesting is Brown's (apparently marked) lack of specificity. For a moment, when Edgar remarks about the "beast issued from his den," we forget whether we are supposed to be reading about the cougar, or about Clithero, holed away in his mountain cave.