A Doll's House
This is the gift Nora gives her children before leaving.
What is her decision to find herself / her independence?
This town is where Janie first asserts her independence after Joe Starks’ death.
What is Eatonville?
Ada Limón often blends personal experience with this larger force.
What is nature?
This literary technique allows us intimate access to the protagonist’s unraveling.
What is stream-of-consciousness?
This is the real-life institution that inspired the novel.
What is the Dozier School for Boys?
This character’s dying letter reveals the full truth of Krogstad’s past.
Who is Mrs. Linde?
This fruit is a symbol of Janie's early awakening to desire and self-awareness.
What is the pear?
This recurring image in The Carrying symbolizes both fragility and resilience.
What is the body?
The story critiques this traditional social role, which has become Monique’s prison.
What is wife / mother / caregiver?
This character represents idealism and clings to moral integrity despite abuse.
Who is Elwood Curtis?
“I believe that before all else I am a reasonable human being, just as you are…”
Who is Nora?
This is the item Janie wears at the novel’s beginning and end, showing her cyclical journey.
What are overalls?
This poetic form, used in several poems, mimics breath and intimacy.
What is the free verse / lyric poem?
“I am not old, but I am no longer young.” This line shows this major theme.
What is aging and female invisibility?
This opening historical event helps shape Elwood’s idealism.
What is Martin Luther King Jr.'s speech / the Civil Rights Movement?
This is the ‘miracle’ Nora waits for that never comes.
What is Torvald taking responsibility for her actions?
Janie kills him in self-defense when he becomes violent due to rabies.
Who is Tea Cake?
The speaker often contrasts natural imagery with this kind of emotional or physical struggle.
What is chronic illness or grief?
Beauvoir’s work critiques this aspect of traditional gender roles.
What is women’s dependence on male validation / motherhood as sole identity?
The field with hidden graves at Nickel represents this theme.
What is institutional cover-up / buried truth?
This name of the performance Nora puts on for her husband.
What is the tarantella?
This natural event catalyzes tragedy near the end of the novel.
What is the hurricane?
This poem reflects on pregnancy, loss, and choosing life in its raw form.
What is “The Carrying”?
This emotion marks the final tone of Monique’s narrative.
What is despair / tragic resignation?
This narrative twist involving Elwood and Turner reframes the novel’s timeline.
What is Turner assumed Elwood’s identity after Elwood’s death?