Childhood directly influences adult life as demonstrated by brilliant psychologists such as Piget and his studies on the stages of development. But childhood is a phase that all adults must go through, some of them to stay young and carefree, as the narrator of Maxine Clair's “Cherry Bomb” does. The author uses literary techniques such as changing tone, childish descriptors, and introducing symbolic characters to portray the theme that childhood is wonderful, but it is not the end of a good life and if adults do not go through this phase they will not they never will. see the world fully the way adults see it. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Tone is a powerful technique used in almost all literature. The absence of one may indicate that a narrator is emotionally disconnected from the work, while a joyful attitude may attribute to a desire to return somewhere. In "Cherry Bomb" the tone is rather reminiscent of the childish things the narrator is engaged in, but in the last paragraph the tone changes and becomes, although still written in the past tense, more hopeful for a future. The reminiscent tone can be seen when the narrator describes the cherry bomb as a “moment of good times.” That doesn't mean her life isn't good at the time of this writing, just that she enjoyed that phase. But the tone of the last paragraph seems to shift towards one that doesn't just look to the past but looks to the future, as can be seen from "Except for Christmas presents, it was the first thing anyone ever gave me" which leads to a belief that, in the future, she will be given more things even if they are not materialistic that have the same effect of making the narrator happy. But tone is not the only element that characterizes childhood memories. The author also uses childish descriptors as a technique to portray the girl's mentality and create an image. Throughout the excerpt, hyphenated descriptors such as “that old ice truck thing,” “help him get out of the block of ice,” “fact daddy said so,” “God is whipping you straight” appear throughout the excerpt indicating how young the girl is because either her vocabulary is not yet developed to describe these things in one word or she is naive, as in the "daddy told it" scenario, and believes everything she hears. Additionally, these are used to create a picture of how fast the can was moving or how damaged the truck was. Although many more techniques are used in the piece, a symbolic character was used to convey the theme. The "Hairy Man" is a character that symbolizes the narrator had never grown out of childhood. At the beginning of the passage, the narrator mentions the expression “ 'I am in this world, but not of it'”. Which, combined with the character of the Hairy Man, shows what the narrator would have been like if it hadn't been for the cherry bomb that divided his childhood from the rest of his life, if it hadn't been for Eddy's accident he might not have had mentally surpassed her days as a child, so she was "in the world" of childhood, but not of it because she would become an adult. The "upset" Hairy Man represents her without the cherry bomb. This technique is used to convey the theme that childhood is pleasant and carefree, but must be overcome otherwise there may be consequences. Please note: this is just an example. Get a custom paper from our expert writers now. Get Custom Essay “Cherry Bomb” author Maxine Clair uses many techniques to characterize the narrator's childhood memories.