Kill the Possum Literary Elements

Fiction

The action described in the novel takes place during present time in a village in Australia.

The action in the novel is told from the perspective of a third-person objective point of view.

The tone and mood in the novel is a violent and tragic one.

The protagonist is Kristy and the antagonist is Ian.

The major conflict is between reality and illusion.

The novel reaches its climax when Ian kills Kristy and then himself.

At the beginning of the novel, Kristy is described as being a destroyed woman, this being the result of her relationship with Ian. This also foreshadows the way in which Ian will destroy Tim and how his presence will ruin Tim's life permanently.

When Tim tells Kristy he will protect her is an understatement because at the end of the novel Kristy dies and Tim loses his mind.

One of the main allusions we find in the novel is the idea that men have extreme power over the women in their lives and that they will always be safe in comparison with their female counterparts.

One of the most important imageries in the novel is that of the children sitting in a corner, holding one another, and trying to protect one another from their father. This image is important because it shows just how much the two children were affected by their father and how truly terrified the two were.

One of the main paradoxical ideas in the novel is the way in which the women, despite being treated in a tyrannical manner by the men in their lives continue to go back to them over and over again.

A parallelism is drawn between Ian and Tim's unnamed father. The two men are both described as tyrannical and extremely dangerous to the people around them. This parallel is also used here to transmit here the idea that men are inherently more dangerous when compared to the female characters.

The gun is used in the novel as a general term to make reference to power.

We have a personification in the sentence "the attic was the only witness to their hushed conversation".