When I started to read this book in 8th grade grade I didn't finish it. I thought it was to long and I really didn't understand. You should never put a book down without finishing it, so I decided to finish it. Now since I am in a older grade I was able to comprehend and enjoy the story. The Color of Water is a memorable story of a the life of James McBride a half white half black boy trying to find out his roots. His mother is a white Jew who fell in love with a black man which her family disowned her from straying away from her Jewish faith. As he talks about himself and his brothers and sisters life, he also talks about his mother and her past.
Some literary devices in this book would be the fact that the story goes back and forth to past and present. In this story the author tells the story of his mothers past and also of his life. He goes back and forth in the stories, although it does get confusing you are able to tell when he is about to talk about his mother because its in italicized so its easy to see transition with his story. I like the fact that he did that because it actually made me want read more of her story seeing that she went through all that so I think that is very useful literary device to use.
Another important literary device in this book would be symbol. Out all of the symbols the one that I saw in the story was "Black Power" or race. This book is mostly about race and self acceptance. As I began to get deeper in the book I saw that in both Ruth's, James mother and his own, they both had trouble with race. Getting to Black Power, when James was young Black power was everywhere especially since the death of Malcolm X. People where putting them on the hood of their cars as I read on page 26. Since Ruth was a white woman living in a time when Blacks and Whites didn't get along it was hard for her and her 12 children. Another incident which happened was a time where he and his mother was on a trolley with food that his sister cooked, when two black men took her purse with the food left on the ground. That shows her strength and her resilience. Although James was always afriad of the black Panthers this triggered something which made him fear them for his mothers life. One more incident that happened was when James went off to a camp as he was looking through the window he saw a boy and his farther doing a handshake he thought was cool, when the boy was asked where he learned the hand shake from he said his taught him it. Fearing that his mother was in trouble since the boys farther was next to her try to warn her, even though she was in no danger he still takes things in his on hands and punches the little boy in the face. I definatley think Black Power is important symbol in this book.
The last literary device that I saw in the book was characterization/character. In this book there were alot of characters some characters that I thought that was important, that without them they wouldn't be a story would be James Mcbride, Ruth Mcbride, (tateh) Fishel Shilsky, and Peter. They were the ones that stuck out to me as important to me. I think Tateh and Peter are important characters in the story because In Ruth's life Tateh her farther sexually abused her when she was younger which led away from her family. Peter would be an important character in the story because it was ruth's first boyfriend and farther to her first child which she ended up not having, this caused much controversey because he was also black.
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