All good pieces of fiction use literary elements to create a riveting story. Short stories such as “Ashes” by Susan Pfeffer and “Abuela Invents the Zero” by Judith Ortiz Cofer use literary elements to help progress the story. “Ashes” is a story about a young girl named Ashes who is forced to choose between her two divorced parents. “Abuela Invents the Zero” is about a teenager who doesn’t want to be associated with her grandma, and therefore makes her feel worthless. The elements of literature such as POV, conflict, and symbols allows the reader to get engaged with the story. “I try to explain what happened. ‘I don’t understand why she’s so upset. She just got lost and wandered around for a while,’ I tell them…She comes out with tears in …show more content…
This shows why the main character, Connie, makes the choice to ditch her Abuela based off of her judgements on her. The author uses this point of view so you can understand the feelings Connie is going through rather than just believing she is a rude teen . The short story Ashes states, “‘You’re one in a million,’ he said to me. ‘The best daughter a man could dream of.’ I got out of the car and ran over to the apartment. I took the elevator to the tenth floor and unlocked the door. The apartment was quiet. It always felt a little colder when Mom wasn’t there. Even with the lights turned on, it seemed a little darker” CPfeffer). This quote shows how the author uses first person so the reader can understand what Ashes was going through while she was deciding whether to steal the money. In addition, it displays Ashes' biased opinion of thinking that the right thing to do was to steal the money for her dad because of how his love influences her. Besides, you can tell Ashes does not just love her dad the most because of the thoughts of loneliness and unright feelings she gets as she is about to steal the money for