The Leap

Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1990

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Summary

Background

Story Analysis

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

Discussion Questions

Literary Devices

Foreshadowing

Both the title of the story and the narrator’s assertion that she “owe[s] [her] existence to [Anna] three times” are examples of foreshadowing (Paragraph 3)—places where the author hints about what will occur later in the story. Together with her mother’s history as a trapeze artist, the title and the narrator’s words nudge the reader to expect that the mother will leap to save her daughter’s life. It is a certainty that the mother and daughter will survive, so the narrative tension hinges on learning why and how the leap comes about.

Flashback

A flashback interrupts the present flow of the narrative to show the reader events or images from the past. In “The Leap,” the narrator notes:

Sometimes, as I sit sewing in the room of the rebuilt house in which I slept as a child, I hear the crackle, catch a whiff of smoke from the stove downstairs and suddenly the room goes dark, the stitches burn beneath my fingers, and I am sewing with a needle of hot silver, a thread of

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