The elements of literature in Heroes by Festus Iyayi.

GradeSaver has a number of literary elements available in its study guide for the unit. The examples below can be found in GradeSaver's study guide, in addition to many other.

Symbolism:

The Lost Mother

The primary symbol coloring Georgie's character is the loss of her mother. She can't fathom it. She doesn't understand why the universe needs to have death, and all this can be viewed as a symbol. Without a mother, this woman is in existential panic, symbolizing the problem of mortality. Instead of knowing death in some abstract way, she knows it concretely, and the panic it induces is truly mortifying, because she now knows that she is not immune from death herself.

Francesco del Cossa's Art

The art of her mother is a symbol in Georgie's life for the way that, through mourning her mother, she tries to rescue some of her mother from obscurity by accepting her ideas as her own. She struggles to identify with the art that her mother loved, and through the journey, she invokes the spirit of the painter to help her mourn; now she is able to appreciate the art in a spiritual way, thus awakening a piece of her mother in herself, she feels.

Incomprehensible Death

Death is an incomprehensible problem that Georgie can only seem to understand indirectly, because it feels impossible for her to believe her mother could die. This misunderstanding is symbolic. It shows that to Georgie, her mother was godlike and eternal, and the suspicion that she were immortal was wrong, but now Georgie has to wonder why nature made her feel that way about her mother in the first place. She is in the territory of religious philosophy, approaching either some euphoric breakthrough or some breakdown where she will panic and suffer—probably she will encounter both.