Rules Literary Elements

Children’s Literature

Modern-day America

First-person narration from the perspective of Catherine.

Warm-hearted, Innocent and Supportive, Joyful but occasionally sad

Protagonist: Catherine; Antagonist: The challenges and rules in taking care of David.

The major conflict is Catherine’s desire to live a normal life but David’s autism makes it impossible for her. To avoid embarrassments Catherine makes up rules to govern David’s behavior whenever she is around friends with him. Moreover, her brother’s condition requires extra attention from the parents hence she feels overlooked in the household.

The climax occurs at Jason’s party where Catherine makes up with him and also feels that David is embarrassing her throughout the party.

The rules Catherine sets for David foreshadow an event related to the mentioned rule. For instance the rule “Don’t run down the clinic hallway” foreshadows David running away down the clinic during his occupational therapy.

“Sometimes people laugh when they like you. But sometimes they laugh to hurt you.”

In the statement, Catherine understates the complex social cues that David might miss due to his condition.

Catherine often reads Arnold Lobel’s Frog and Toad Are Friends to David and they refer to each other as frog and toad.

“I love the road between our house and the clinic. It follows the ocean’s shoreline, and I look for snowy egrets standing stick-still in the salt marshes and osprey circling, hunting fish. At high tide, waves sparkle under the wooden bridges, and I can guess the tide before I even see the water, just by closing my eyes and breathing the air through the open car windows. Low tide smells mud-black and tangy, but high tide smells clean and salty.”

Though David and Jason’s conditions hinder Catherine from making new friends she finds true friendship in both Jason and her brother.

N/A

“My hands tremble, trying to zip my backpack.”

Backpack is a metonymy for a bag.

“My wrist kills from being curled backward.”