3rd Post - Sam Martin

TONE CCQC
      As Lakshmi's time at the Happiness House grows, the fourteen year old's desperation grows with it. The tone for the final third of the novel is desperate; frenzied yet determined. I can tell that the tone is desperate beacause of the diction and images that McCormick displays. Lakshmi gets several sparks of hope throughout, with the American man showing her a cleaner place, with Harish, filling her life with the possibility of someting better. With a cleaner, younger, better man coming to her room and holding her, Lakshmi wishes for something better, and that wish turns into desperation. But after every spark of hope comes the disapointment of a blank outcome. When the hugging man does not return, Lakshmi thinks, "It has been thirty days since the hugging man came. I have decided that he is not coming back" (pg.185). She desperately gives up hope for the future. Once again Lakshmi abandons herself and thinks, "I cannot smile. Even if there is a reason"(pg. 201). Here, the sentence structure, the syntax, hints on despair, when the author uses short simple sentences, as if representing the fact that Lakshmi can hardly put effort into anything now. Then Lakshmi completely shuts down from the world, thinking, "And so Mumtaz sends the men up to me. They come, a parade of them, and I simply lie here unmoving" (pg. 219). When she uses a word like "unmoving," the diction itself sounds desperate. Towards the end, the author's tone changes to a determined tenacity for Lakshmi's escape. Lakshmi thinks, "I will become Monica. I will do whatever it takes to get out of here" (pg. 227). Evidently, Lakshmi's determination pulls through, because she does get out. 

MY FAVORITE PART
      The author of Sold, Patricia McCormick, expresses a unique and poetic style of writing throughout the novel. She uses short simple sentences, indents often, and usually writes chapters that are less than a page long. However, McCormick practices extremely poetic syntax, filled with details that leave vivid imagery behind. When Lakshmi describes her jouney to the city, I was able to completely capture the image McCormick left for the reader. Lakshmi describes, 
"As our cart shoulders its way along the road,
I crane my neck this way,
then that, 
looking at
a man scooping popcorn into a paper cone, next to…"(pg. 65). (This passage was way to long to type out the whole thing, but it finishes at the end of the chapter.)
This was my favorite part because when I read, I like to be able to see what is happening. I always create some kind of picture in my head, and this makes it easy. I also enjoyed how at the end of the passage, the author created a fufilling ending by closing her description with the same line about the man selling popcorn. I thouroghly enjoyed the autor's creative writing style.