M. C. Higgins, the Great Literary Elements

Children’s fiction/Coming-of-Age novel

The fictional Sarah’s Mountain in the Appalachians, located three miles from the Ohio River. The story is set in the mid-1960’s at some indeterminate point following the Beatles’ release of their single “Ticket to Ride.’

The story is narrative in the third-person point of view with an objective outside observational perspective, but the events of the story are mostly seen though the eyes of the title character.

Varies wildly from chapter to chapter, but for the most part the tone is rather serious and the mood somewhat downbeat with a noticeable attempt by the characters at trying to convey a sense of optimism.

Protagonist: M.C. Higgins. Antagonist: Jones Higgins, M.C.’s father and, less personally, the strip-mining company.

The conflict is internal within M.C. Higgins: should he stay or should he go? His home is facing a busload of potential trouble and he must decide whether to stay and fight and give up and run.

The story climaxes with M.C. accepting his fate but deciding there are things he can change: going public with his friendship with Ben, standing up to this bullying father, and commence the process of trying to save his home from destruction.

The dramatic swim through the underwater tunnel in chapter 9 mirrors through metaphor the journey that M.C. is making through the entire narrative and the successful arrival out of the darkness foreshadows the ending of the book.

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An allusion to the Beatles when M.C. sings the lyrics to “Ticket to Ride” is useful for locating a point in time at which the events could not have taken place beforehand.

The devastating effect of the technological innovation in the mining industry known as strip-mining is made clear in simple yet vivid imagery: “Where M.C. and his father had once hunted wild game, there was no longer a tree left standing. Trucks and mining cats had stripped and flattened the summit until it was bald, like the gully.”

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Mr. Killburn seems to get carried away with parallelism in his lecture on the subject of how vegetables and the human form correlate so well: vegetables is part of the human form.” He looked around to make sure everyone was listening. “Piece of the body you pull up by the root. Or piece that you cut away when it get the blight. Or heal it, depending on how bad it is…Or eat it, it’s still body,”

References are continually made to “the mountain” which precisely refers to Sarah’s Mountain, but metonymically refers to an entire way of life associated with calling Sarah’s Mountain home.

Setting is of prime importance to this story and so it only make sense that personification is one of the tools the author uses to bring the setting to life: “And as they began to climb the foothills, Grey Mountain and Hall Mountain came into view like swollen, smoky giants. Black with trees, they looked rolling cushion soft and belly full.”