Three Lives Literary Elements

A novel

The events of all three stories take place in Bridgepoint. Three different women, the good Anna, Melanctha and Lena, live their lives, cope with different struggles and, eventually, fail to reach happiness. It should be mentioned that they don’t know each other and their stories are not interlinked.

The story is told from the third person point of view by an omniscient narrator.

Tone is thoughtful while mood is depressive.

Anna, Melanctha and Lena are protagonists of the story. The antagonist in Anna’s story is her extreme form of altruism. The antagonist in Melanctha’s story is depression while in Lena’s it is passivity.

Major conflict is person vs. self, for every main character of the story has an inner conflict. Anna can’t stop neglecting her own needs, for she feels that she is obliged to help others. Melanctha can’t get rid of suicidal thoughts and Lena can’t summon up enough strengths to take her own life in her own hands.

Death of a protagonist is a climax of every story.

Every story has a foreshadowing, for the brightest traits of characters of three women are revealed. Readers learn about Anna’s wish to help and save, Melanctha’s blue mood and Lena’s passivity.

Sallie’s chief badness besides forgetting all the time and never washing her hands clean to serve at table, was the butcher boy.
The narrator underestimates importance of the butcher boy comparing him with Sallie’s bad manners.

Baltimore

Imagery is often used to describe the inner worlds of the characters.

She worked away her appetite, her health and strength, and always for the sake of those who begged her not to work so hard.

Many came and many went, and none of them would do.

But you are so good Anna, and got such a feeling heart. A feeling heart is metonymy which stands for compassion.
As long as she could scold it might be just the bad ways of all the thoughtless careless world, but when her glasses broke that made it clear. Glasses are synecdoche which stand for specs.

A lovely silence.