Literary Techniques Exposed In Maxine Clair's Cherry Bomb

In the passage from Maxine Clair’s “Cherry Bomb,” the adult narrator shares her memories of her fifth-grade summer world. Through the use of literary techniques, Clair clearly depicts the naivety and youthfulness of the adult narrator’s fifth-grade summer.
In the first paragraph, the narrator’s feelings of naive and youthfulness about their childhood summer are highlighted through her memories of an expression, and an ice truck. The narrator uses the appeal of the expression “‘I am in this world, but not of it’” to express the youthfulness of her fifth-grade self. Many children at that age do not know who they are and what they will do in the world; this comes with age and time. Unsure of exactly what the expression means, the narrator is still intrigued by the “lofty statement”. This integument in the statement shows the youthfulness of her fifth-grade summers because most children are drawn to statements that they do not necessarily fully understand; they are just intrigued by the sound of the statement. In the paragraph the narrator also describes her memories of an ice truck. Her memory of “licking and sitting on the ice” symbolizes the naivety and youthfulness of her summer. Licking ice is an especially childish thing to do because most adults know better than to lick ice. Much like the ice truck, the memory

Childish in manner, the memories of a hidden box of private things, a locked diary, a Hairy Man, and a cherry bomb are characterized as youthful and naive. These memories value and embrace the importance of childhood summers, and this is emphasized when the narrator symbolizes her cherry bomb as a “memento of good times”. The narrator’s childhood was a good time full of youthfulness and naivety, and all she worried about was the dangers of an exploding cherry bomb, and all her good times were tucked away into a simple cigar-smelling