The Moonstone in Harper's Weekly

This first page of The Moonstone helps support this idea that anything is possible by leaning into the supernatural. The first image shows a richly detailed statue that Indian priests are bowing in front of. From the viewpoint of Western Civilizations, the Eastern religions have often seemed mysterious, strange, and exotic compared to their own. Before even a single word of the story has been printed, this image is what the readers see, setting the stage for the story. On this page, we also see Sir John Herncastle killing the priests with the last one saying, “The Moonstone will have its vengeance yet on you and yours!”. It is not the people of Seringapatam, nor even the gods, but this mysterious stone that will have its vengeance. It gives life to an inanimate object, filling the reader with awe. The third image shows a strange ritual which Franklin Blake describes, wherein a young boy has his hand filled with ink and is seemingly able to see something in the ink, almost a kind of divination. These images highlight the supernatural elements of this story. There is no image of the Verinder’s country home or other elements of normal ‘western’ civilization depicted on this page. This seems to be done deliberately to “represent a world that does not resemble the world as we experience it” allowing the readers to fully engage with this story and leave behind the worries of their reality.