Genre
Short story (fiction)
Setting and Context
Time and place are not indicated, although the details and events point indicate that this is a modern big city.
Narrator and Point of View
The story is told from the 3rd person (only a few cues occurs), the narrator is not taking part in the events.
Tone and Mood
R. Coover is economical with words and the story is quite predictable, so that the tone is calm through all the story; the mood is mostly conveyed by the manner of narration and story setting, it includes ‘the boring rhythm of a big city’ (at the first paragraphs), the rising interest when the events happen, noticeably accelerates and gets tensed in the moment of climax.
Protagonist and Antagonist
The waitress is a protagonist; the city is in opposition to her.
Major Conflict
The external conflict happens between the waitress and the city (though it isn’t easy visible: we see it clearly after the waitress gets some freedom after the 1st wish). A kind of internal conflict we can find in the moment of the 3rd wish accomplishing when the waitress chooses to take money.
Climax
Money stealing and escaping are the moments of the highest tension.
Foreshadowing
It is connected with the image of godmother and the moments the old lady-godmother appear (or disappear) – then the waitress’ adventures start.
Understatement
N/A
Allusions
Fairy godmother – it is an allusion to the fairy stories with the three wishes. It brings the foreshadowing into the story, but also asks the author for the interpretation in the context of modern literary process.
Imagery
Mostly used in appearance and environment descriptions, some vivid nature descriptions might be overlooked
Paradox
N/A
Parallelism
She likes to stroll through busy department stores, city parks, and railway stations at rush hour
She has no job now and two mouths to feed, two bodies to clothe and care for.
Her guy is ducking, dodging, cursing.
The parallelism adds to the imagery in the story, provide with quick describing the situation and in such way to preserve the authors style of partially restrained narration.
Metonymy and Synecdoche
“the sweet old thing” and “the old bird” are the synecdoches describing the fairy godmother.
Personification
A couple of large grimy shopping bags come floating past on a sudden breeze, dancing to the tune of the wailing sirens.
Bags get personified: they not just move, but dance.
She looks up and sees that the security cameras have snapped away from her and hang by their wires.
No one could see the waitress, but cameras are not alive. Still they are personified and act as all the people seeing her.
the mannequins stare icily, straight at her
Mannequins become personified.
