Genre
Memoir
Setting and Context
The action takes place in America during the 1950s but many of the events descried were set in Armenia in the 1920s.
Narrator and Point of View
The action is told from the perspective of a first-person subjective point of view.
Tone and Mood
The tone and mood used in the memoir is a neutral one.
Protagonist and Antagonist
The protagonist is the narrator and his family and the antagonists are the government and the military forces who backed the Armenian genocide.
Major Conflict
The major conflict is an internal one and is between the need to move on and forget the traumatic events from the past and the desire to raise awareness and stop other similar events from taking place in the future.
Climax
The memoir reaches its climax when the narrator embraces his heritage and acknowledges the trauma his parents and family had to deal with.
Foreshadowing
N/A
Understatement
When the grandma claims that she was not affected by the events which she experienced is an understatement because she later exhibits behaviors that imply she suffers from PTSD.
Allusions
The main allusion we find here is the idea that it is better to forget the past and focus on the present especially when not giving up on the past may hinder a person from reaching their true potential.
Imagery
In the third part of the memoir, the narrator starts t investigate the Armenian genocide on his own, digging up pictures and documents related to the event. One picture, in particular, namely one depicting young naked women nailed to crosses, made a great impact on the narrator. The reason why this image is important is that it transmits the idea that those who suffered the most were the innocent and that the brutality with which the Armenian population was treated was extremely cruel and brutal.
Paradox
One of the main paradoxes presented by the narrator is the idea that the Armenian people refused to acknowledge their painful past while at the same time becoming unable to move on from it and live their lives as best as they could.
Parallelism
A parallel is drawn between the Armenian genocide and the Nazi one. This parallel is used here to point out the idea that the two events were almost identical.
Metonymy and Synecdoche
The dead dog is used here as a general term to make reference to the idea of change.
Personification
We have a personification in the sentence "when reality came knocking, we all had to flee as far away as possible".
