McKinsey Schmahlenberger

Mrs. Bernhard
AP English
24 November 2015
Literary Analysis
Cherry Bomb is a story written by Maxine Clair about her own childhood summertime
adventures. It is written in first person from the girls point of view. Memories are something that
everyone has and looks back on for a laugh here and there. Memories are told in different,
creative ways to emphasize the story to make it more interesting. In this story, Maxine Clair
uses personification, symbol and point of view to characterize the narrators memories of her
fifth-grade summer world.
Personification is when a writer gives an inanimate object human-like features. By doing
so, the writer can add meaning and even interest to the work that is being written. In Cherry
Bomb Clair uses personification to describe setting. The story quotes that Evening sighed its
own relief in line 14. Lines 14-15 also say that there was a ...locust hum that swelled from
the cattails Maxine, in the beginning of the story, describes that the summer heat broke
records for how hot it had been outside. This use of personification characterizes her summer
memories by describing the kind of place she was in and how well she remembers the setting;
adding this sense of personification may make one feel as they themselves are in the story.
A symbol is something used in a story that can signify something important. Using
symbols in a text add meaning and may even help add a sense of understanding. A symbol
used in this story would be the cherry bomb itself. The story is titled Cherry Bomb which can
already give a clue that the story will have something to do with that specific item. In the story
the narrator tells a story of how one cherry bomb once exploded too soon and injured a friend of
hers. After this moment, he gave her his last cherry bomb as a memory of these summer days.
She keeps it in her box of private things. She compares the giving of the cherry bomb as a

special gift because Except for Christmas presents, it was the first thing anybody ever gave
me. The symbol of this story characterizes the narrators memories by using the cherry bomb
as something important that still remains in her mind today. It shows the importance that the
cherry bomb had during her childhood and how the memory has continued to stay with her
throughout the years..
The last way the author characterizes the adults memories of summer is point of view.
Point of view is the person that is telling the story. This story is written in first person by the
author of this story. By using point of view, she can tell the summer story as she remembers it
and add meaning to the text. Because the author used first person point of view, it gives the
reader a sense of truth in the story. Point of view in Cherry Bomb emphasizes summer
memories by using her exact memories and her own view of things.
Cherry Bomb is a story written by Maxine Clair about her fifth-grade summer world.
Throughout the text, there are descriptions of what happened throughout the summer and the
significance of the cherry bomb. The author uses different literary devices to show importance in
the text. In this story, Clair uses personification, symbol and point of view to characterize the
narrators memories of her past summer.