Genre
Short story
Setting and Context
Set in 2010 at a basement apartment in Bath, England.
Narrator and Point of View
Third-person point of view
Tone and Mood
The tone is accusatory, and the mood is whimsical.
Protagonist and Antagonist
The novel's central character is the girl, and the antagonist is the mother.
Major Conflict
The conflict is between the mother and her husband. The mother thinks the husband plans to harm her, but she has no evidence.
Climax
The story's climax comes when the girl overturns everything in the lounge, including furniture.
Foreshadowing
The girl's dream at night foreshadows mysterious actions, including rearranging the lounge while her parents are asleep.
Understatement
The girl downplays the moon's effect on the room when she says the light makes objects seem monstrous.
Allusions
n/a
Imagery
The description of the girl sitting in her bedroom depicts a sense of sight. The narrator says, "The girl was sitting on the edge of her brother’s bunk, trying to pull on her knee-length socks with one hand while she held a book open in front of her eyes with the other.”
Paradox
The primary paradox is that the mother accuses her husband of disarranging the lounge without evidence.
Parallelism
The parallelism is between the voice that tells the girl to disarrange the lounge and the mother’s conclusion that her husband is responsible for the mess.
Metonymy and Synecdoche
n/a
Personification
The book the girl reads is personified when the mother says it is holding her back from going to school.
