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Who's Irish By Gish Jen Summary

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There are many literary devices that are covered in “Literature Craft and Voice”. One of the literary devices is character. Character plays a major role in any type of story. Character helps the readers to understand many things about a character, what they expect, what they are going through, why they act the way they do, among many, many other things. It can also be used to describe many different characters throughout the novel or story. It almost seems like without character there wouldn’t seemingly be a story to tell nor write about. In, “Who’s Irish?” by Gish Jen the text introduces the character who is a Grandmother from China whose daughter lived and grew up in the United States after they immigrated there. A “character” is defined as the people who live in the story (Cheuse, Delbanco, 235). In the short story, “Who’s Irish?” the main character is made up of many characteristics. The text defines these characteristics as characterization, or, “the way a writer …show more content…

The author used character by making the character be the first-person narrator, also another literary device. By using character and characterization, another facet of character, you learn that the author is obviously foreign from the way she speaks and narrates the short story, “In China, daughter take care of mother. Here it is the other way around. Mother help daughter, mother ask, Anything else I can do?” (Literature Craft and Voice, p. 224). Character is used in this story to help the reader understand, therefore, that the main character is foreign which helps you to understand the story as it goes on. She also is a rounded character. This facet of the literary device, character, is used in the story to help the reader connect with the character by making her seem real. This is used in the short story, “Who’s Irish?” to make the story and narrator seem real and therefore make the reader feel more connected to the

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