Strength in What Remains Literary Elements

Strength in What Remains Literary Elements

Genre

Biography

Setting and Context

The story is set in America, Rwanda, and Burundi.

Narrator and Point of View

Tracy Kidder narrates Deo's story in the third person.

Tone and Mood

Sympathetic, poignant, resilient, emotional, dreadful, and motivational.

Protagonist and Antagonist

Deo is the protagonist. Antagonists comprise the sponsors of the civil war and racist individuals whom Deo encounters in America.

Major Conflict

Deo finding the strength to proceed with his life and to overcome trauma in the aftermath of the civil war in his country.

Climax

Deo's admission at Columbia University and his attainment of a degree

Foreshadowing

Flashbacks about Deo’s life in Burundi are incorporated into the novel.

Understatement

N/A

Allusions

Historical allusions and Biblical allusions are used to expound Deo’s experiences.

Imagery

Deo’s struggles with communication mirror the realities and obstacles of immigrants from non-English speaking countries such as Rwanda.

Paradox

When a woman assaults Deo at a phone station, a bystander, who is Senegalese, advises, "Here in the U.S., you don't touch a woman. It didn't matter whether you are the victim or not. If a woman attacked you like that, the best thing to do was to leave." The paradoxical advice underscores the intersection between racism and gender in America, whereby black men are automatically deemed villains by virtue of their gender and race.

Parallelism

N/A

Metonymy and Synecdoche

“Genocidaires” denotes the sponsors of the Rwandan genocide.

Personification

Deo's appetite is personified by being portrayed as having physiology.

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