One Child Literary Elements

Autobiographical, Psychological novel.

The setting of the novel is an elementary school in 1980.

The novel has been written from first person's point of view and it has been narrated from Torey Hayden's point of view, who gives insight into the psychology of different characters and promulgates patience and empathy as necessary virtues throughout the novel.

Empathetic, Optimistic, Hopeful.

The protagonist in the novel is Torae Hayden who is a teacher and the society and Sheila's uncle have been portrayed as the antagonists in the novel.

The major conflict in the novel is between the society and the teacher of Sheila i.e. Torey Hayden. The society believes that the children, who depict abnormal behavior, because of unknown disabilities, should be treated as garbage and they should be thrown to mental asylum like trash while Toray Hayden believes that we should understand them and try our best to make them normal human beings. Furthermore, she is against the societal trend of treating them as trash instead she treats the abnormal children in the best possible way.

The climax comes in the novel when Toray meets Sheila and Sheila pulls the eye balls of a fish.

Sheila's act of snatching the eyeballs out of the eyes of a goldfish foreshadows her mental illness and her hatred for the world and the attention of the people.

The understatement in the novel is that we should be patient if we ever encounter a person with unknown disabilities and we should empathize with them. Patience and empathy have been described as great virtues in the novel.

There are allusions to psychological disorders, fishes, death, suicide and garbage.

The grotesque imagery has been presented in the novel, through the character of Sheila, when she pulls the eyeball of a goldfish. The images of garbage, torture, sexual abuse and sainthood are also present in the novel.

The paradox in the novel is that Sheila is portrayed as an abnormal child but at the same time she is an incredibly intelligent child. She possess more knowledge than a normal student of her grade level.

There is a parallelism between Sheila's story and her recovery. As she begins narrating her story to Toray, she starts healing and it proves to be cathartic for her.

The term garbage class is an example of metonymy because it includes all the special children in it. An example of synecdoche is 'class' which represents school.

Horror, mental illness and abuse have been personified in the novel.