Genre
Novel
Setting and Context
Fingerbone and Boston during the 20th century
Narrator and Point of View
Ruth is the first-person narrator
Tone and Mood
Reminiscent, critical, and hectic
Protagonist and Antagonist
Ruth and Lucille are the protagonists.
Major Conflict
Ruth and Lucille coming of age and gaining stability after being orphaned.
Climax
The climax ensues when Lucille separates from Slyvia and Ruth.
Foreshadowing
Ruth mostly employs flashbacks in describing the lives of different generations of her family, starting with her grandparents.
Understatement
N/A
Allusions
Allusions to art such as paintings and “lithograph of a Japanese painting.” Molly’s missionary work is a religious allusion.
Imagery
Black is emblematic of mourning: “One day my grandmother must have carried out a basket of sheets to hang in the spring sunlight, wearing her widow’s black.”
Paradox
The poems which Ruth’s grandmother sends to missionaries are paradoxical: “The second (poem) speaks very warmly of pagans.” Ruth’s grandmother exhibits immense religiosity at the time of mailing the poems.
Parallelism
Ruth employs parallelism in some paragraphs: “ Perhaps from a sense of delicacy my grandmother never asked us anything…Perhaps she was not curious…Perhaps she was so affronted by Helen’s secretive behaviour…Perhaps she did not wish to learn.” The parallel sentence structures create rhythm and emphasis.
Metonymy and Synecdoche
N/A
Personification
The ground is personified: “When the ground is plowed in the spring, cut and laid open, what exhales from the furrow but that same, sharp, watery smell.” Exhaling is an attribute of human beings.
