The Master Butcher's Singing Club Literary Elements

Fiction

Argus, North Dakota, early quarter of the Twentieth Century, including World Wars One and Two

Third person narrator from Fidelis' point of view, and more broadly from the perspective of the German American immigrant community

At the same time it is both hopeful and hopeless, reflecting the paradoxical tone of the characters and the plot

Fidelis is the protagonist and the wars in Europe are his antagonist

World War One is the major conflict that Fidelis is a participant in, having been a sniper in the German army, and leaving Germany so poverty stricken that he immigrates to America for a better life. The second major conflict is World War Two which divides his family in half, with two sons fighting with the allies and two fighting with the German army

At the end of the novel we discover that Delphine was not Roy's natural child and that far from being the drunken deadbeat dad that everyone has assumed he stepped up to take care of an abandoned child and raised her as if she was his own. This is not only the climax of the novel but of Delphine's life

The fact that two of Fidelis' sons return to Germany with Tante foreshadows their inevitable joining of the German army and subsequent blind devotion to the Third Reich

Roy is described as "a drunk" which is actually an understatement as he was once so drunk that he locked the Chavers family in the cellar and completely forgot about putting them there in his stupor

The novel constantly alludes to the previous War and the effects that it has on Fidelis and the other members of the German immigrant community

The imagery in much of the book actually calls into play the reader's sense of smell as the author describes the stench emanating from the cellar at Roy's house in detail and also extends the image to describe the difficulty that Delphine and Fidelis have in trying to get rid of it. This creates the image of something so foul that it is impossible to eradicate

Every character has paradox within them. For example, Fidelis is a butcher which implies a certain brutality but he is also a beautiful singer which implies beauty. Similarly Delphine was a motherless child but nonetheless has amazing capacity for mothering other people's children herself.

There is a parallel between the effects that World Wars One and Two have on Fidelis in that they both destroy his life as it is; World War One decimates his town and his country. World War Two decimates and splinters his family.

The German-Americans is a phrase used to include all of the individual immigrants living in the Argus community

There are no particular examples of personification in the novel