Literary Analysis #1

The Memory Keeper's Daughter
Written by Kim Edwards

1. The story was honestly very backwards and twisted and made me think twice. The father, Dr. David Henry, is forced to deliver his own twins due to a blizzard in 1964. The only other person in the delivery room, besides his wife, is the nurse Caroline. His son is perfectly healthy but when his daughter comes out, he immediately notices something wrong with her. She has Down Syndrome. Remembering his childhood and his own sister dying of mental illness, he quickly decides to give his daughter up. He asks to the nurse to take ehr a special home and tells his wife, she died. Except the nurse doesn't have the strength to give up a baby girl like that and keeps her and continues to raise her as her own child. The father knows about this and sends quite a bit of money to them each month. David, dying from guilt, can't stand to make love to his wife in fear of inpregnanting her. She then becomes tired of this and  over a century, she begins having random affairs. Their son, Paul discovers this and this forces Norah to confess to David. Years after their divorce, Paul is now 18 and in college. David dies of a heart attack and left all of his inheritance to his son. As Paul and Norah are looking through all of David's pictures they come across a locked drawer that has pictures of a little girl throughout her childhood and into her teen years. They also fin letter from Caroline that describes everything about the hand off. Norah is furious and tracks down Caroline and then confronts her about it and meets her long lost daughter, Phoebe.

2. As any good novel, they're many themes. For this particular novel, the themes could be argued as the burden of secrets, heartaches and heart warmth of raising children, and the need for mentally disabled children to be accepted into society. If i had to choose just one theme i would have choice the need for mentally disabled children to be accepted into society because kids back then didn't have the opportunity to get the education they needed to succeed. Instead they were either forced to go to public school and fall behind in class or have to stay home and not learn anything because their parents are too busy to teach them or just don't know how to teach them.

3. The author has a soft, gentle tone to her. Everything that is read makes you feel like you could relate and feel the emotion within the story. She uses a lot of adjectives and many specific words to describe a scene. For example, the chapter when Dr. Henry is in bed with his wife and she tells him he doesn't want another child and she's surprised because it's been so long. You would think that section of the chapter would be slightly awkward to experience, but it feels so real and inviting.

4. Obviously diction and syntax played a big role in my understanding of every part of this book. Onomatopoeia was used in the novel especially when Paul fell off the wall and broke his arm. The way the author described it was very vigorous and surreal. Norah also used many hyperboles when her character described things because most of them were suppose to come off as tragedy's but were just bad luck. This story is also a tragedy in some ways because Norah lives her life wondering what could be if she had a daughter yet not realizing that her husband is living with a different kind of guilt. The readers understand what is really going on and continue to read about Norah's sad life without her baby girl, while her husband is living with that guilt of basically killing his own daughter.