The passage “Cherry Bomb” by Maxine Clair is the recollection of the young adult narrator’s summer in the fifth grade. Clair set a youthful,jovial and carefree tone that depicts the narrator’s summer as innocent and filled with memories. Clair employs a variety of literary techniques ranging from informal and almost like child like diction to visual imagery and biblical references , in order to illustrate the youthful reality of the narrator’s summer. Clair clearly depicts the juvenileness of the narrator early in the passage with a statement like “life was measure in summers” which shows the immaturity of the narrator as they didn’t experience the day to day stresses of a normal adult. In the beginning of the passage Clair attempts to characterize the …show more content…
Clair does this to portray the immaturity of the narrator, Demdemyanos 2 statements like “Daddy-said so” and “God- is- whipping-you straight” are examples of the informal and childlike diction and portray the innocence and juvenile nature of the narrator. Throughout of the passage Clair alludes to a biblical reference about the locust, Clair states “ the summer that the Bible’s plague of locusts. Evening signed its own relief in a locusts hum that swelled from the cattails....” in the bible the locusts eats all of the plants desolating the area and leaving it dry. Clair alludes to the locusts and uses it as visual imagery for the empty and dry summer. Maxine Clair’s passage “Cherry Bomb” is about an adult narrator’s reminiscence of her fifth grade summer. Clair develops a lighthearted tone to portray the young and innocent narrator. As the passage develops Clair manipulates a multitude of literary devices like imagery,diction, and alludes to biblical stories to illustrate the experiences of the