Genre
A collection of essays
Setting and Context
The author ponders on literature, family life, politics, and art.
Narrator and Point of View
The story is written from the first point of view. Zadie Smith is the narrator.
Tone and Mood
The tone changes from humorous and light to serious and thoughtful. However it is often just conversational. The mood is often nostalgic, hopeful, but always sincere.
Protagonist and Antagonist
The author herself is the protagonist.
Major Conflict
It is mostly person vs. self, for Zadie analyzes her attitude towards various subjects.
Climax
N/A
Foreshadowing
“These are “occasional essays” in that they were written for particular occasions, particular editors”.
This is how we learn that these essays are not directly interrelated.
Understatement
“I knew my father had “stormed the beach at Normandy.”
Harvey makes it sound as if the Invasion of Normandy was an easy thing, but it is far from the reality of the situation.
Allusions
The essays allude to Nabokov, Modernism, and the First Liberian Civil War.
Imagery
Various images of personal observation are presented in the essays.
Paradox
“I returned home, full of journalistic zeal. I bought a Dictaphone. This seemed like half the job done already. I was the gutsy truth seeker, uncovering the poignant war story of a man who found it all too painful to talk about. Except I found my father not especially resistant to the idea. True, he had never really spoken about it—then again, I had never really asked”.
The paradox is that no one has ever asked Harvey about Normandy. Everyone assumed he wouldn’t want to talk about it.
Parallelism
N/A
Metonymy and Synecdoche
“He’s a rare fine hand at that”. (A hand is metonymy that means a talent).
“Liberia is having its female moment”. (Liberia is synecdoche which means that population of Liberia sees how feminist movement starts turning into real force.)
Personification
“The panting breath of breeze”
