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. The narrator’s fifth-grade self also seems noticeably impressionable as she relates all her quotes to either parents, “which my mother said”, “Daddy-said-so” and “my father said.” She seems as if she does not have her own ideas and lacks thinking for herself. She simply echoes what her parents mention. This connection, however, suggests that the narrator’s childhood was very intertwined with her family. The narrator also makes use of hyphens such as …show more content…
It characterizes the narrator's energetic and lively self as she remembers the details that stuck out the most. The narrator illustrates the environment around her in the first paragraph, the locust, the heat, and the greenery and represents her summers with the statement, “Life was measured in summers,”. The second paragraph quickly introduces the cherry bomb, which is also the title of the story, but swiftly changes the subject to the Hairy Man. The third paragraph discusses her hiding spot for her box and the fourth illustrates Eddy’s injury with the cherry bomb. The last paragraph pulls the story together and explains the significance of the cherry bomb. “It was the first thing anybody ever gave me.” It creates a bittersweet memory as even though there were bad times, there was always a optimistic side to everything. It is ironic that the cherry bomb, although it caused some damage, was “a sort of memento of good