Me (Moth) Literary Elements

Young Adult Fiction; Verse Novel

The novel is set in the present day in suburban Virginia and the Navajo Nation reservation.

Moth is the narrator; the point of view stays with her.

The tone is poetic and nostalgic; the mood is mournful, eerie and optimistic.

Moth is the protagonist; the primary antagonist is Sani.

The major conflict for Moth is that she cannot enjoy life now that her parents and brother are dead.

The story reaches its climax when Moth learns that she is a ghost, having died in the same car crash as her family. With this knowledge, she can move on from her purgatory-like semi-existence and join her ancestors in the afterlife.

When Moth says that everyone at school ignores her completely, it foreshadows her revelation that she is a ghost and has been invisible to the students.

An example of understatement occurs when Moth says: “It’s fine, I don’t mind being nothing to no one, unrooted on every soil my feet trespass on." Contrary to the literal meaning of her words, Moth's phrasing conveys that it does upset her to be invisible to those around her because it makes her feel as though she has no connection to the place she lives.

Moth's name is an allusion to a character from Shakespeare's play A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Moth uses visual imagery to describe the accident that killed her family members, saying: "[O]ur car broke in half like a candy bar on the freeway & we all spilled onto the pavement as crumbled as sticky caramel-peanut filling."

Moth's statement, “In New York, I used to fracture my toes in pointe shoes six days a week & cherish the bleeding," is an example of paradox. While it seems absurd to claim that she would "cherish" the pain in her feet, the statement proves logical once you consider that Moth's commitment to ballet was so great that she even appreciates the would-be unpleasant aspects.

During one of the conversations Moth and Sani share, McBride mirrors the characters' lines with parallel sentence construction. When Sani says, "You tell stories the same way I think you would dance. Sure & full & alive, alive," Moth replies, "You sing like an oak tree. Slow & strong & measured."

An example of personification arises when Moth describes the thunderstorm "plucking" at the bug screens on the windows of Aunt Jack's house, as though the thunderstorm is a physical being with fingers.