Amlcbs1956cs
Amlcbs1956cs
LA 3- #7
21 September 2010
If you want a book to be loved by people (the readers) you have to have great figurative
language. The language has to describe what is going on and help the reader picture the image in
her mind. Gary Paulsen’s book, Harris and Me, does an excellent job of this because of all the
similes, foreshadowing, and personification in his book. Every chapter is filled with amazing
examples of figurative language, causing a movie in my (the readers) mind.
Similes are a comparison of two things that are completely different, though the two
things are completely different there must have one thing in common. An example of a simile in
Harris and Me, when Harris peed on the electric fence and got electrocuted. Then he started
running around saying oh God, oh God. Gary Paulsen chooses this simile to describe Harris, “He
was stiff as a poker” (132). In this simile he, the narrator, is comparing the way Harris body
stiffened when he peed on the electric fence to a poker stick. This is one of the many similes in
Gary Paulson’s novel, Harris and Me.
Foreshadowing is to give hint to what will happen next in the book. In the novel Harris
and Me, Gary Paulsen uses foreshadowing at the beginning of each chapter, in the epigraph. In
chapter one it goes, “In which I meet Harris and am exposed for the first time to the vagaries of
inflation.” (1) The epigraph for chapter one foreshadows the narrator’s first day on the Larson
farm. It is setting up for what Harris teaches the narrator, or me, on that very, very special day.
This is one of the many examples of foreshadows in the novel.
The last example of figurative language is personification. Personification describes an
inanimate object with an animate object’s trait. In the novel, Harris and Me, there are many cases
in which personification is used in this novel. One example occurs at the Larson’s dinner table.
The narrator was eating with the Larson family for the first time and he was very nervous, so he
was sitting there picking at is food under a lantern. He describes the lantern with this use of
personification, “I picked at it in the hissing light of an overhead Coleman lantern” (13). This is
an example of personification because a lantern can’t really hiss like a snake. This is one
example of personification in this novel.
If this novel did not use any figurative language it would be dull and boring, but with it
the novel is like a movie in your head. With all the figurative language in Harris and Me, by
Gary Paulsen, I believe I have actually been to the Larson farm, watched Harris’ body stiffen up
when he got electrocuted, and played Harris and the narrator. It is filled with so much figurative
language reading it is like watching a movie of this novel in my head. I just wish I knew what
happens next summer.