Genre
Fiction
Setting and Context
Modern times
Narrator and Point of View
Third-person narrator
Tone and Mood
Grotesque, demeaning, disconcerting, toxic, wounding, inequality, and misogynistic
Protagonist and Antagonist
Teena Maguire is the protagonist. Her rapists and their attorney are the antagonists.
Major Conflict
Teena Maguire’s search for justice after her atrocious sexual assault.
Climax
Teena Maguire’s day in court and the passionate recollection of her tribulation.
Foreshadowing
The title foreshadows that the core happening is sexual assault.
Understatement
N/A
Allusions
The date of the rape 4th of July, which commemorates America's Independence Day, is a covert allusion to the women's privation of independence.
Historical allusion to the Iraqi War.
Imagery
Teena Maguire’s outrageous rape is mentally upsetting for her and her daughter.
Paradox
The pairing of the words ‘rape’ and ‘love’ in the title is paradoxical.
Parallelism
The delineating of the various forms of luck that regulate one’s life follows a parallel structure.
Also, the explanation for the cop’s partiality for guns utilizes a parallel format.
Metonymy and Synecdoche
‘Eye-for-an-eye’ designates reprisal.
Personification
Dogs are personified.
