Determination in The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie Determination, perseverance, and intelligence. These are all exhibited by Flavia de Luce in The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, by Alan Bradley. By successfully solving the case and exonerating her father, she proves that you are never too young to achieve something. The outstanding theme in this novel is that if you face obstacles head on and power through them, you can achieve your goals. In Flavia’s case, her main obstacle is her age, and her goal is to prove her father's innocence. Her motivation is apparent: her strong love for her only living parent. Throughout the course of this novel, the theme develops by showing us Flavia’s obstacles and how she is able to overcome them. …show more content…
Being bound up and thrown in a dark closet is not something that all 11-year-olds experience, yet Flavia has to undergo them. These experiences expose her to challenging situations, and give her wisdom beyond her years. When locked in a closet by her older siblings, Flavia is easily able to escape. “A bit of judicious fishing and fiddling yielded a gratifying click. It was almost too easy,” Flavia says (Bradley 2). She is able to keep herself calm and figure out what to do to escape. Any regular 11-year-old would not be able to achieve this. This develops the theme by showing that Flavia’s main obstacle is her age, but she is able to power through that and accomplish great tasks. She is severely underestimated due to her age, and no one is aware of how she is an incredible problem solver. Whether that problem is getting out of a locked closet or solving a murder case, Flavia has motivation to achieve what she
In the short story "Eleven" by Sandra Cisneros, a young girl named Rachel is characterized. Through a specific incident, Cisneros shows how Rachel does not act as old as eleven ideally should. Through repetition and metaphor, Cisneros alludes to Rachel?s personality and childish views.
Displaying one's emotions in public is often not planned nor wanted especially when it comes to crying due to humiliation and shame. In the short story “Eleven” by Sandra Cisneros, literary terms such as simile, diction, and repetition are utilized in characterizing emotional “eleven” year old Rachel. The figurative language used, support the images that were intended for the reader to perceive. Diction and repetition help guide the audience with a certain point of view towards the characters. Not only does Cisneros exploit these literary terms to explain and characterize Rachel's feelings but to exhibit how one may not always have the courage, personal strength, or maturity to handle certain situations.
In his wickedly clever debut mystery, Alan Bradley introduces the one and only Flavia de Luce: a refreshingly precocious, sharp, and impertinent 11-year old heroine who goes through a bizarre maze of mystery and deception. Bradley designs Bishop’s Lacey, a 1950s village, Buckshaw, the de Luce’s crumbling Gothic mansion, and reproduces the hedges, gently rolling hills, and battered lanes of the countryside with explicit detail. Suspense mounts up as Flavia digs up long-buried secrets after the corpse of an ominous stranger emerges in the cucumber patch of her country estate. Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie features a plethora of unforeseen twists and turns; it is surely a rich literary delight.
The short story Eleven by Sandra Cisneros, focuses around the main character Rachel as an insecure developing girl who lacks the experience to handle everyday encounters. Rachel, an eleven year old girl truly encapsulates the thoughts that are present within an adolescent. The lack of confidence in herself, excessive fear of being judged, and ideas of growing up are ideals that are relevant within each and every one of us. The reader is able to relate to Rachel because her feelings and experiences that are described by the author are similar to what most people have been through and are currently experiencing. The characterization of Rachel is expressed through the author’s usage of point of view, imagery, and repetition.
Though she is in no way a stereotype, you cannot say that Flavia is a realistic character either. How many young girls have you seen who can spout facts about chemistry better than a high-schooler? Sure, Flavia presents some characteristics of a typical 11-year-old: though she is mature for her age, her actions can be very irrational at times, such as scaling the tower of Greyminster. But even reader reviews agree that Flave seems more like a teenager than a...
Through much self examination and reliving her pains and life until her current age of twenty, Delores Price finds herself to be a kind hearted, passionate young woman. A great shock to her indeed. Her relationships that have fizzled in the past have made her who she is today. Without them, she would not be as strong as she is now. Self discovery, a major theme of the novel, bares the underline theme of her relationships with others. Through the influence of those that have been around her for the duration of her entire life and the ones that are only passing through, Delores becomes a strong, independent woman with a colored background.
It is culturally expected that as a human being’s age increases, so does the amount of control they have over their own lives. However, when adolescents are allowed to have too little or too little great amount during their formative years, it can adversely affect their decision making process. In The Walls Around Us, Nova Ren Suma crafted young adult characters who, due to either having not enough or too much control over their own lives, react violently when placed in stressful situations. Nova Ren Suma’s novel centers around three main characters, two of whom had violent outbursts that shaped the events of the novel: Amber Smith and Violet Dumont. While Amber consistently lived in environments that heavily limited her control over her own life, Violet in contrast received relatively little supervision at home and instead governed her actions with an inordinate amount of self-control.
...ured the reason she could deal with it was because she was just an observer, but one day, she tells Kevin, “But now and then,.. I can’t maintain the distance. I’m drawn all the way into eighteen nineteen, and I don’t know what to do… I never realized how easily people could be trained to accept slavery”(101). She and Kevin even develop a view of Rufus’ house as their home. Their present becomes their past and readers can effortlessly visualize the predicament.
In “Eleven”, written by Sandra Cisneros, Cisneros uses literary techniques such as diction and imagery to characterize Rachel’s character during her transition from age ten to age 11. These literary techniques help to describe how Rachel feels in certain situations while also explaining her qualities and traits. Through the use of these literary techniques Cisneros also collaborated on Rachel’s feelings when she was other ages and how she felt at that time during her life.
‘The Kiss of Decption’ is a profound novel that was written by Mary E. Pearson, published in 2014. The book tells the story of a princess, named Lia, who fled on her wedding day, to the village of Terravin. When two handsome strangers arrive in the village, she is unaware that one is the jilted prince, while the other is an assassin set to kill her. Betrayal is shown through the difficult relationship between Lia and her parents. Betrayal and deceptions is illustaited through the unrequited love of Pauline and Mikael. The book further shows a tragic romance, between Lia and Rafe, that was based on facades. One of the book’s setting is the repudiated kingdom of Vanda, abandoned by her sisters, killed by her husband, which contributes to Pearson’s theme of
Inevitably, her escape was against her father’s wish as he believed that she would not be capable of successfully making through this trip by herself. However, she shows autonomy after being left alone by a guardian set up by her father, half way through the journey, she was able to, she was able to fix this situation on her own. With minimal help, she makes it to the cottagers defining that she set her own path for the continuity of her life. This independence is also expressed in such ways where she teaches herself social and language aspects of the cottagers. She did not rely on Felix to help her make it through this new life. Therefore, giving herself the freedom to educate herself in order to survive in this new
The story is told by the main character Vanessa who is reflecting back on a memory of when she was ten. Throughout the short story plot, conflict, character, theme, and symbol, which are all extremely important elements of fiction, are depicted. The plot of the short
Sandra Cisneros writes a memoir through the eyes of an eleven year old. Turning eleven happens to be a tragic day for the main character, Rachel. Through various literary techniques such as hyperbole, simile, and syntax, Rachel is characterized. Rachel is a fresh turning eleven year old who finds herself in an awful situation on her birthday. Forced to wear a raggedy old sweater that doesn’t belong to her, she makes it defiantly clear her feelings towards the clothing item, and we see this through use of hyperboles. Rachel describes the sweater as ugly and too “stretched out like you could use it for a jump rope.” This extreme exaggeration demonstrates the fire within Rachel. She is a defiant and pouty little girl who out of stubbornness has to defy the sweater in her mind. “It’s maybe a thousand years old”, she says to herself in act to degrade the filthy red sweater even more. The sweater to Rachel has become an eternal battle of ages. She is torn on whether or not to stand up and act bigger th...
Innocence is something always expected to be lost sooner or later in life, an inevitable event that comes of growing up and realizing the world for what it truly is. Alice Walker’s “The Flowers” portrays an event in which a ten year old girl’s loss of innocence after unveiling a relatively shocking towards the end of the story. Set in post-Civil War America, the literary piece holds very particular fragments of imagery and symbolism that describe the ultimate maturing of Myop, the young female protagonist of the story. In “The Flowers” by Alice Walker, the literary elements of imagery, symbolism, and setting “The Flowers” help to set up a reasonably surprising unveiling of the gruesome ending, as well as to convey the theme of how innocence disappears as a result of facing the harsh reality of this world.
The story, “A Simple Heart” focuses on the life of a naive, simple-minded underclass maid, Félicité and her