Between the Acts Literary Elements

Fictional novel

The action takes place in 1939 at Poyntz Hall.

The story is told from the perspective of a third-person objective point of view.

The tone and mood in the story are neutral.

The protagonists are the members of the Oliver family and the antagonists are the antagonists are the outside forces which try to destroy the family.

The major conflict is an internal one and is between Ilsa's desire to be happy and her need to remain faithful to her husband and her beliefs.

The story reaches its climax when the play put by Miss La Trobe ends and life goes back to normal.

The chaotic circus scene described at the beginning of the story foreshadows the apparent mindless and unreasonable play which will be played for the characters at the end of the novel.

When the narrator claims at the beginning of the story that all the characters depicted are good Christians is an understatement because throughout the novel all the characters get involved in some type of behavior that makes them commit capital sins.

The main allusion we find here is the idea that the image most portray while they are in public is an untrue one and has the purpose of making the rest of the world believe that they are happy and content.

No important imagery which has not yet been analyzed can be found here.

The main paradox we find here is the idea that all the characters put a lot of effort and resources into putting up the play even though none of them were really interested in it.

A parallel is drawn between Miss La Trobe's family and the Oliver family. This parallel is used here to show the differences between someone who is extremely rational and someone who is more artistic.

The obsession the characters have with the idea that things must be just right is used here as a general term to show that for many perceptions is more important than the concept of reality.

We have a personification in the line "the ground swallowed every drop of moisture from the sky".