Cherry bomb essay

“The voice of the intellect is a soft one, but it does not rest until it has gained a hearing.” (Freud) A writer’s main objective is for their readers to experience every sense and emotion throughthe words they have written. Their choice of techniques to achieve this objective makes them individualistic and gives them their voice as authors. In her story “Cherry Bomb”
Maxine Clair makes thereader relive the memories of her fifth-grade summer by presenting the story in the voice of an innocent 5th grader. Her use of extensive images, fast-paced passages, oblivious comments, figures ofspeech and comical scenarios allow the reader to pilot back in time. In doing so, they experience the innocence and revive the adventures of this 5th grade girl.

One of the reasons why Claire is ableto transmit the full experience of the summer is because of her extensive images. At the beginning of the excerpt for instance, the narrator does not stop to say the summer was hot, but extends theimage of the day by saying her mother “bought a help-him-out block of ice to leave in the background for [them] to lick.” Later in the passage by describing her tardiness during the school year shelengthens the description by explaining “if [they] were so late that the patrol boys had gone inside, [they] would see [the Hairy Man] in his fenced-in-yard, wooly-headed and bearded”. In both examplesof lengthened images there is an evident use of hyphenated words which connect back to a child’s limited vocabulary and consequently her use of comparisons in order to depict her meaning. The extendedimages and her descriptive endeavors not only invite the reader to be part of the experience but are also a gateway to the child-like way this memory is presented. The long and fast-paced passagesfor instance, adapt the structure of the excerpt to a child’s train of thought. While describing her “cave-like closet” she mixed the description with outside comments such as the “putrid-colored...