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The following passage is taken from the story “Cherry Bomb” by Maxine Clair. Read the passage carefully. Analyze how Clair uses literary techniques such as allusion, colloquialisms, rhetorical fragments, and selection of detail to characterize the narrator in her fifth-grade summer world.





It was two summers before I would put my thin-




If you parted the heavy coats between the raggedy




penny bus token in the slot and ride the Fifth Street

35 mouton that once belonged to my father’s mother,




trolley all the way to the end of the line to junior high.




who, my father said, was his Heart when she died, and

Line

Life was measured in summers then, and the




the putrid-colored jacket my father wore when he got

5

expression “I am in this world, but not of it” appealed




shipped out to the dot in the Pacific Ocean where, he




to me. I wasn’t sure what it meant, but it had just the




said, the women wore one piece of cloth and looked




right ring for a lofty statement I should adopt. That

40 as fine as wine in the summertime, you would find




Midwest summer broke records for straight over-one-




yourself right in the middle of our cave-dark closet.




hundred-degree days in July, and Mr. Calhoun still




Then, if you closed your eyes, held your hands up

10

came around with that-old-thing of an ice truck. Our




over your head, placed one foot in front of the other,




mother still bought a help-him-out block of ice to




walked until the tips of your fingers touched the




leave in the backyard for us to lick or sit on. It was

45 smooth cool of slanted plaster all the way down to




the summer that the Bible’s plague of locusts came.




where you had to slue your feet and walk squat-




Evening sighed its own relief in a locust hum that




legged, fell to your knees and felt around on the floor

15

swelled from the cattails next to the cemetery, from




—then you would hit the strong-smelling cigar box.




the bridal wreath shrubs and the pickle grass that my




My box of private things.




younger cousin, Bea, combed and braided on our side

50

From time to time my cousins, Bea and Eddy, stayed




of the alley.




with us, and on the Fourth of July the year before,




I kept a cherry bomb and a locked diary in the




Eddy had lit a cherry bomb in a Libby’s corn can and

20

closet under the back steps where Bea, restrained by




tried to lob it over the house into the alley. Before it




my suggestion that the Hairy Man hid there, wouldn’t




reached the top of the porch it went off, and a piece




try to find them. It was an established, Daddy-said-so

55 of tin shot God-is-whipping-you straight for Eddy’s




fact that at night the Hairy Man went anywhere he




eye. By the time school started that year, Eddy had a




wanted to go but in the daytime he stayed inside the




keloid* like a piece of twine down the side of his face

25

yellow house on Sherman Avenue near our school.




and a black patch he had to wear until he got his glass




During the school year if we were so late that the




eye that stared in a fixed angle at the sky. Nick,




patrol boys had gone inside, we would see him in his

60 Eddy’s friend, began calling Eddy “Black-Eyed Pea.”




fenced-in yard, wooly-headed and bearded, hollering




After Eddy’s accident, he gave me a cherry bomb.




things we dared not repeat until a nurse kind of




His last. I kept it in my cigar box as a sort of memento

30

woman in a bandanna came out and took him back




of good times. Even if I had wanted to explode it, my




inside the house with the windows painted light blue,




mother had threatened to do worse to us if we so




which my mother said was a peaceful color for

65 much as looked at fireworks again. Except for




somebody shell-shocked.




Christmas presents, it was the first thing anybody










ever gave me.




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