Genre
Memoir
Setting and Context
Kansas, 1980/1990
Narrator and Point of View
Sarah Smarsh
Tone and Mood
Explanatory, distressed
Protagonist and Antagonist
Protagonist: Sarah Smarsh; Antagonist: Poverty
Major Conflict
Sarah Smarsh grew up in a poor family that worked very hard for the little they had, and had to fight for every grain of rice they ate.
Climax
Sarah Smarsh gets away from the poverty.
Foreshadowing
Sarah Smarsh having a stable and constant home foreshadows that she would not be a teenage mom.
Understatement
The fact that Sarah didn't become a teenage mom was an understatement, as it led her to get out of the poverty the generations before her had been plagued by.
Allusions
The reader might have allusions to books like "Oliver Twist" and other books starring people born into poverty.
Imagery
The image of the poor people in the city voting against their own interest, because of the prejudice they have against themselves.
Paradox
N/A
Parallelism
There can be a parallel line drawn between both Sarah's life during and after poverty, as well as her though-pattern before and after poverty.
Metonymy and Synecdoche
N/A
Personification
N/A
