ipl-logo

Cherry Bomb Maxine Clair Analysis

406 Words2 Pages

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

Show More
Related
432 Words | 2 Pages

In the excerpt from “Cherry Bomb” by Maxine Clair, the narrator makes use of diction, imagery and structure to characterize her naivety and innocent memories of her fifth-grade summer world. The diction employed throughout the passage signifies the narrator’s background and setting. The narrator’s choice of words illustrates how significant those memories were to her. Specific words help build the narrator’s Midwestern background with items like the locust, cattails and the Bible.

Read More
982 Words | 4 Pages

Sarah Vowell and Annie Dillard both wrote essays about their youth with nostalgia, highlighting the significance of childhood as an innocent and mischievous time in their lives. In Sarah Vowell’s essay “Shooting Dad,” Vowell realizes that despite their hostility at home and conflicting ideologies concerning guns and politics, she finds that her obsessions, projects, and mannerisms are reflective of her father ’s. On the other hand in Annie Dillard’s essay “An American Childhood” Dillard runs away from a man after throwing a snowball at his car, after getting caught she realizes that what matters most in life is to try her best at every challenge she faces no matter the end result. Sarah Vowell’s essay is more effective than Annie Dillard’s because she includes allusions and tones, which juxtaposes warfare and religion with the innocent

Read More
1032 Words | 5 Pages

Journal Two Madison Loberg Pages Read Since Last Journal: 42 Pages for the quarter: 47 I am reading To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, and I am on page 42. This book is about a girl who starts school in a southern, rural town. Along the journey of the book, she meets some crazy people including a boy from her school, and learns more superstitions about the Radley Family. In this journal I will be predicting and evaluating.

Read More
534 Words | 3 Pages

I gave the shoe on more hard tug and it popped loose from a frilly white sock. I got real scared. I walked as slowly and as quietly as I could out of the church.” Because of the bombing is the symbol of fear and death, the reader can better understand that the bombing was scary thus meaning morality was in the book and that it took a huge part of the book. This illustrates that the author’s message that there has been bad things in our history just like the bombing of the birmingham church.

Read More
763 Words | 4 Pages

Mastery Assignment 2: Literary Analysis Essay Lee Maracle’s “Charlie” goes through multiple shifts in mood over the course of the story. These mood are ones of hope and excitement as Charlie and his classmates escape the residential school to fear of the unknown and melancholy as Charlie sets off alone for home ending with despair and insidiousness when Charlie finally succumbs to the elements . Lee highlights these shifts in mood with the use of imagery and symbolism in her descriptions of nature.

Read More
901 Words | 4 Pages

Kelley’s diction adds a tone to the piece and allows her to get her message across with helping the reader understand more deeply . Kelley’s use of imagery, appeal to logic,

Read More
810 Words | 4 Pages

In a simile, she compares gardening to “boxing… The wins versus the losses” (Hudes 16). Through this comparison, Hudes conveys Ginny’s deep desire for a sense of control and success in her life. This desire is fed by the memory of her father, who was only bearable when he was gardening. Specifically, the assertion of this desire for control is evident as she recalls that her father “was a mean bastard…” but “became a saint if you put a flower in his hand” (Hudes 15). From those experiences of dealing with her father, a psychological analogy between nature and peace was instilled in Ginny’s mind at a young age, and is what she relies on as an adult to handle her emotional trauma.

Read More
1294 Words | 6 Pages

The poem begins by the speaker telling the reader that the story that would now be told is told annually, emphasizing the significance of the story to “we”, presumably a family, based on clues given later in the poem. Then, using the verse “how we peered from the windows, shades drawn” (Trethewey 2), it immediately puts us in the place of the figures in the poem, by the usage of the imagery about the shades being drawn, as if hiding from something to be scared of, and by the careful choice of the word “peering”, instead of simply “looking” or “staring”, which gives us the sense that the figures are afraid of being seen. Then, despite having set up this mood of fear, the speaker takes a step back, and seems to be trying to calm us, the readers, down by reminding us that nothing really happened and that even the environment around the incident has now returned to its original, vivid colors. Following that, however, we are put back into the mood of fear by the repetition of the verse about peering, which is a benefit the form of a pantoum provides to the poem. Writing the

Read More
1121 Words | 5 Pages

Murder becomes a touchy subject to the college students; the author mixes together a suspenseful atmosphere throughout the community college the protagonist attends as the short story progresses. It almost feels like one is on the edge of their seat when reading it. William Faulkner’s short story, “A Rose for Emily,” displays suspense and tones of slight insanity, but it cannot compare to the undertones that lay beneath Stephen King’s work. The narrator’s foreshadowing of uncovering the truth through his own detailed point of view creates a well written short story dubbed “Strawberry Spring.” Skimming through the literary work, foreshadowing is an obvious detail that appears in the work several times.

Read More
159 Words | 1 Pages

In line 9, the author says that the summer is everlasting and that it will never go away. Looking through a metaphorical sense, we can translate this to mean that certain characteristics that the young boy has will never go away. The summer will not lose beauty that it owns, says line 10. This furthers the metaphor of the boy never losing certain lovable characteristics. Death will not be able to brag about the death of the young man.

Read More
455 Words | 2 Pages

In the short story “The Flowers”, Alice Walker sufficiently prepares the reader for the texts surprise ending while also displaying the gradual loss of Myop’s innocence. The author uses literary devices like imagery, setting, and diction to convey her overall theme of coming of age because of the awareness of society's behavior.     At the beguining of the story the author makes use of proper and necessary diction to create a euphoric and blissful aura. The character Myop “skipped lightly” while walker describes the harvests and how is causes “excited little tremors to run up her jaws.”. This is an introduction of the childlike innocence present in the main character.

Read More
524 Words | 3 Pages

Alice Walker uses imagery and diction throughout her short story to tell the reader the meaning of “The Flowers”. The meaning of innocence lost and people growing up being changed by the harshness of reality. The author is able to use the imagery to show the difference between innocence and the loss of it. The setting is also used to show this as well.

Read More
809 Words | 4 Pages

Imagery, syntax, and irony are all used to create this horrific story. Jackson vividly describes the day in which this story takes place giving it a specific date, and describing it as a nice and full-summer day where “the flowers were blossoming profusely and the grass was richly green” (539). Imagery helps to set a positive mood, and suspend reality to draw the reader into the story. The syntax evolves over the course of the story as the tone of the story changes. The story starts off with longer descriptive

Read More
1056 Words | 5 Pages

However, the description of the poppies’ become negative as we see that the bright red colour of the poppies swaying in the wind. This reminds the poet of the flames flickering in the fires of hell: "little hell flames" She cannot touch the poppies and it frustrates her. She then wonders whether or not these poppies are dangerous. It drains her to watch the poppies, yet she continues to carefully observe them. She calls them as “hell flames,”She seems to refer to self harm multiple times in this poem.

Read More
2217 Words | 9 Pages

These sections set themselves apart from others by their use of imagery: “... and I planted carrot seed that never came up, for the wind breathed a blow-away spell; the wind is warm, was warm, and the days above burst unheeded, explode their atoms of snow-black beanflower and white rose, mock the last intuitive who-dunnit, who-dunnit of the summer thrush...” (Frame 3). These passages serve to highlight how Daphne 's mind deviates from the norm. She has an unusually vivid imagination that seems almost childlike at times. The use of personification puts further emphasis on her childishness, but her overactive imagination is not always harmless and sometimes takes a darker turn, revealing fears that appear to be deeply

Read More

More about Cherry Bomb Maxine Clair Analysis

Related Topics

Open Document