The excerpt from “Cherry Bomb” by Maxine Clair is about an adult narrator’s memory of her fifth-grade summer. The narrator describes several events from the summer, specifically an incident in which her cousin loses his eye. The author uses syntax, imagery, and diction to characterize the adult narrator’s thoughts about her childhood. Clair uses syntax to depict the childlike quality of the narrator’s memories. In two long sentences and one very short one, the narrator describes the retrieval of a box of “private things” from the back of the closet. The journey seems complicated and difficult, but in reality, the box was merely at the back of the closet. This shows childish thoughts and speech, by turning the simple hiding place into a drawn
Setting expatiates the theme of loss of innocence. For example, the four major characters in this story are sixteen and seventeen years old, which is the age when teenagers prepare to end their childhood and become adults. Also, the Devon school, where the story takes place, is a place where boys make the transition to full adulthood, and so this setting shows more clearly the boys' own growth. Finally, World War II, which in 1942 is raging in Europe, forces these teenage boys to grow up fast; during their seventeenth year they must evaluate everything that the war means to them and decide whether to take an active ...
Ten year old Esther Burr creates a cheerful, reminiscent journal entry describing her day out with her father by using sophisticated word choice and an informal sentence structure. Burr’s purpose is to reveal her adoration for her father with flattering words and to also describe her day with such detail that she won’t forget it. She develops a complimentary tone in order to not only have a good memory of her father later in life, but also to appeal to her mother, who regularly reads her diary.
The girl's mother is associated with comfort and nurturing, embodied in a "honeyed edge of light." As she puts her daughter to bed, she doesn't shut the door, she "close[s] the door to." There are no harsh sounds, compared to the "buzz-saw whine" of the father, as the mother is portrayed in a gentle, positive figure in whom the girl finds solace. However, this "honeyed edge of li...
While staying at Mel’s home, the adolescent female narrator personifies the butterfly paperweight. The life cycle begins with the narrator “hearing” the butterfly sounds, and believing the butterfly is alive. The butterfly mirrors the narrator’s feelings of alienation and immobility amongst her ‘new family’ in America. She is convinced the butterfly is alive, although trapped inside thick glass (le 25). The thick glass mirrors the image of clear, still water. To the adolescent girl, the thick glass doesn’t stop the sounds of the butterfly from coming through; however, her father counteracts this with the idea of death, “…can’t do much for a dead butterfly” (le 31). In order to free the butterfly, the narrator throws the disk at a cabinet of glass animals, shattering the paperweight, as well as the glass animals. The shattering of the glass connects to the shattering of her being, and her experience in fragility. The idea of bringing the butterfly back to life was useless, as the motionless butterfly laid there “like someone expert at holding his breath or playing dead” (le 34). This sense of rebirth becomes ironic as the butterfly did not come back to life as either being reborn or as the manifestation of a ghostly spirit; instead its cyclic existence permeates through the narrator creating a transformative
In the story, "Cherry Bomb" by Maxine Clair the author uses many literary devices to characterize the adult narrator’s memories of her fifth-grade summer world. One of the literary devices used constantly in the passage was imagery. Imagery is used to give readers insight of how summer felt to the fifth-grader of the story and helps understand the tone of the adult. “Life was measured in summers then, and the expression “I am in this world, but not of it” appealed to me. I wasn’t sure what it meant, but it had just the right ring for a lofty statement I should adopt” (Line 4-7). This quote from the passage best represents how the adult memories are reflected to the summer of her fifth-grade self. This passage gives imagery to the readers of a naïve character who believes everything that is said to her. The quote also let us know that
Misery, trauma, and isolation all have connections to the war time settings in “The Thing in the Forest.” In the short story, A.S. Byatt depicts elements captured from both fairy tale and horror genres in war times. During World War II, the two young girls Penny and Primrose endure the 1940s Blitz together but in different psychological ways. In their childhood, they learn how to use gas masks and carry their belongings in oversized suitcases. Both Penny and Primrose suffer psychologically effects by being isolated from their families’ before and after the war. Byatt depicts haunting effects in her short story by placing graphic details on the girls’ childhood experiences. Maria Margaronis, an author of a critical essay entitled “Where the Wild Things Are,” states that “Byatt’s tales of the supernatural depend on an almost hallucinatory precision for their haunting effects.” The hallucinatory details Byatt displays in her story have an almost unbelievable psychological reality for the girls. Penny and Primrose endure the psychological consequences and horrifying times during the Blitz along with the magical ideas they encounter as children. As adults they must return to the forest of their childhood and as individuals and take separate paths to confront the Thing, acknowledge its significance in their childhoods, and release themselves from the grip of the psychological trauma of war.
A breathtaking saga of a young girl’s tragic memories of her childhood. As with Ellen, Gibbons’ parents both died before she was twelve-years-old, forming the family. basis of the plot and themes of this novel. The fond memories she possessed of her mother and the harsh ones of her father are reflected in the thoughts and actions of Ellen. The simplistic and humble attitude that both Gibbons and Ellen epitomizes in the novel is portrayed through diction and dialogue.
Milloy draws his audiences' attentions by retelling a tragic story of a 1st grader named Maurice getting run over in a school zone. He describes the driver as "barreling through...and not even slowing down after striking the boy" who "suffered serious head injuries." Milloy's story wins sympathy from the readers. The boy was just beginning to learn the complexities of life when he was forced to start all over again because of a reckless driver. Fatal injuries, especially those effecting children, touch the hearts of most adults. Parents of any social status wonder is this could ever happen to their kids and how devastating an event like this would be. In response to the young boy's accident, volunteers sympathized fore the inner city school and built a playground to replace the concrete slab the kids used to play on. Most intended readers can relate to not having play grounds for their kids to enjoy. Parents almost always want nice facilities for their kids to play on whether it be a stick with a ball attached, a local park, a school playground, or an extravagant sports court in their back yard, depending on social class. Sympathy extends to children who are deprived of recreational facilities
This shows the reader the creativeness in how she put together her chapbook. She did not stay in the conventional mode and snuck a subtle final poem into her piece of art. There were many times as I read through her words that I would utter to myself sounds of astonishment as I was taken aback by the brashness
First and foremost, imagery is utilized by Clair to guide us to comprehend that the narrator’s flashbacks aren’t all innocent and jubilant. The phrase, “the putrid-colored jacket my father wore when he got shipped out to the dot in the Pacific Ocean”, paints the picture that her father had worn a military badge at one point in time. By the word-choice of putrid and shipped out, it alludes to the fact that the girl despises how her
“The Pain Tree” written by Olive Senior tells the story of a woman who comes back home after many years and begins to think about her childhood in a new light, which changes much of what she thought she knew of her family and childhood. The story shows the main character, Lorraine, revisiting the memories of her family and the woman who had taken care of her as a child, Larissa. Children mainly focus on the happy memories which may be tied to more important topics that they do not understand until they are older. Most children do not pick up on many of the complicated things happening around them. Lorraine can now see the bigger picture of her relationship with Larissa and how large the divides were between Lorraine’s family and Larissa’s
The first picture of the story is drawn with straight lines that reassure the child that everything is in its place to promote the feeling of safety; children would assume that everything is how it should be at first glance. The use of lighter colours here contrast with the remaining pages of the story therefore giving the child the sense of impending doom as the story continues. The only shadows used on the first page are around Simon's bed allowing the child to imagine what lies there. Howe uses simple sentences here to emphasize the idea of fright. The fact that he uses one word sentences such as "Listen."(1), helps the child understand the intensity of fear the character is feeling. The boy in the story is lying in the middle of his bed on the first page and his face is coated with terror. A child's eyes would be drawn to the boy quickly because he is wearing a bright yellow shirt that contrasts with the surrounding room.
The state of childhood, in much of literature, is portrayed as the ultimate in innocence, both in character and of perceptions of the world. The shattering of this innocence is often used in writing as a plot device for character development. At times it seems that the extent to which the child’s pure outlook has been destroyed is a measure of how dire a situation can be. As with many autobiographical works that deal with lives of strife, Baldwin also repeatedly returns to moments of his childhood. These moments are often visited through anecdote, and capitalize on various aspects of his personality, his opinions, and his career as an author.
Walker uses the positive imagery of “The Flowers” at the beginning of the novel to set up a naïve, sweet world in which a gruesome appearance of the lynched victim turns out to a reasonably unexpected, shocking event that robs Myop of her innocence. The first half of the text focuses on Myop’s childlike innocence with sweet kinesthetic imagery of Myop feeling “good and warm in the sun” to hit specifically on Myop’s childlike inhibitions. In the same case, sweet and gentle visual imagery continues to play in the first few paragraphs of a happy agricultural lifestyle where “each day a golden surprise” and a ten year old girl like Myop could “skip lightly from her house to pigpen” and bounce “this way and that way”. Myop’s joyful rapping of the stick that goes “tat-de-ta-ta-ta” enables auditory imagery to play on a merry sort of onomatopoeia that goes strongly with Myop’s innocence. Imagery had little direct prepa...
The boy tends to magnify every little detail intricately and though he may have unrealistic wishes and desires he still gains great satisfaction out of them. Joyce writes of the seemingly unimportant details within the story that trul...