Genre
Fiction
Setting and Context
Green Town, Illinois; summer of 1928
Narrator and Point of View
Third-person omniscient
Tone and Mood
The mood of the story is happy and optimistic overall. The events like Douglas’ illness and Grandma’s quarrels with Aunt Rosa add some sadness to the narration, but do not spoil it, since the story is an embodiment of happiness.
Protagonist and Antagonist
Protagonist: Douglas; Antagonist: The ravine, the Lonely One, and more poetically, time and change
Major Conflict
There are a few conflicts in the various stories in the novel, but a main one is whether or not Douglas will come to terms with what life and death mean.
Climax
Douglas gets very sick and decides he does not want to live.
Foreshadowing
- Douglas shivers and thinks today is going to be an important day; it turns out to be the day that he has his epiphany of being alive (4).
- The various deaths in the novel foreshadow Douglas's own brush with death.
Understatement
N/A
Allusions
- Tom reads popular books like "The Phantom of the Opera" and looks at "Felix the Cat" cartoons (7).
- Grandfather is compared to Ahab from "Moby Dick" as he surveys his lawn (29).
- Grandfather references the philosophers Plato and Socrates as he thinks about gardening (51).
- Leo's children fall silent as if "the Red Death had entered at the chiming of the clock" (55), which is a reference to Edgar Allen Poe's story "The Masque of the Red Death."
- Lena hears the strains of the "Blue Danube" in the machine; this is a Gershwin piece (59).
Imagery
Imagery is widely used in descriptions of nature, weather, and many other things of everyday use. Imagery is the most frequently used stylistic device in the novel.
Paradox
Mrs. Bentley ruminates on the paradox of past, present, and future, realizing "You were always in the present" (75).
Parallelism
- The clock moon parallels the actual moon, both marking the passage of time (158).
- The beginning of the novel, where Douglas uses "magic" to wake the town, is paralleled in the end when he puts everyone to sleep.
Metonymy and Synecdoche
N/A
Personification
- "The male voices invaded the old house timbers" (30).
- "The echoes paid no attention" (39).
- "The darkness pulled back, startled, shocked, angry. Pulled back, losing its appetite at being so rudely interrupted as it prepared to feed" (44).
