Author: Amalia Reyes, Union High School
📍Vancouver, Washington

In this passage from the novel Moon Tiger, the author uses violent diction when describing the children to show the childrens’ viciousness towards each other and varying perspectives, which is caused by the sense of rivalry they feel between themselves, and how the mother’s lack of involvement in their relationship and in each of th lives of the kids exacerbates this.  

The relationship between the sister and the brother is characterized by an intense rivalry between the two to be better than the other. Lively conveys this through the use of violent diction when she describes the interactions between the two siblings. For example, the sister, Claudia, is trying to climb higher up the mountain, through what Gordon, the brother, had claimed as his “bit”, Gordon’s leg gets in the way of Claudia. When describing this interaction, Lively writes “it [Gorson’s leg] thrashes, she [Claudia] thrusts…” The use of the words “thrashes” and “thrusts” are very intense and work to contribute to the violent and tense atmosphere Lively creates when the siblings are interacting. These words are further contrasted by the setting the two children are in. Currently, the children are on the beach. The typical image that readers would likely think of when imagining two young siblings spending their time at the beach would likely be one marked with laughter, and youthful joy. Instead, Claudia and Gordon spend their time at the beach being viciously competitive with one another. The use of such words also prevent the readers form seeing their rivalry as an arbitrary and usual argument between siblings, and instead, a deep-seated rivalry that exists between these two children. Another example of this is when the author, writing from Claudia’s perspective, describes the sounds of the beach. She writes “its shrill cries [the beach’s] its barkings, its calls are clear and loud but from another world, of no account.” Once again, this description of the beach is far more violent than the description of a beach a reader would likely expect from a young girl like Claudia. This shows how ingrained her competition with her brother is into Claudia’s life, as it affects her perception of reality and causes her to think of a beach, which children usually associate with joy, freedom and play, as something of a battlefield, where she must assert her competence over her brother’s.

Next, Lively includes multiple perspectives from the different characters to convey how the children’s rivalry is exacerbated by their mother’s lack of involvement in their lives. This can be seen after the altercation between Claudia and Gordon, as a result of which Claudia ends up “sliding and hurtling down” the hill. When she is falling, the passage cuts to Gordon’s perspective, where it is implied that Claudia threw herself down the hill to make it look like Gordon pushed her. This occurs while the mother is peacefully sitting on the sand. The mother is not only physically away from her children, but also emotionally detached from them. The above scene implies that the children likely began pitting themselves against each other to compete for their mother’s attention, and yet, the mother “blames the perilous world, so unreliable, so malevolent,” for instilling her children with the intense rivalry that exists between them, when likely, she, and her lack of involvement in the lives of her children is the cause of their rivalry. This shows how little she understands her children. Another detail that shows this is the lack of care in the mother for her children’s safety. The mother’s perspective is brought in last in this passage, and she doesn’t interject at all before Claudia comes up and addresses her directly, which shows how detached she is, not only physically, but also emotionally, not batting an eye while her children scramble to collect fossils and “thrash” and “thrust” against each other. Additionally, the mother likely knows of how intense the two children feel the competition is between each other, and how they’ll go to great lengths to assert their competence over the other, yet she allows them to climb a cliff and insert themselves into an extremely dangerous situation, showing how uninvolved she is in the lives of her children and how little she actually thinks about them. Finally, the use of the word “clucking” in the mother’s perspective to describe the mothers and nurses she sees on the beach also show how detached Edith Hampton is from motherhood. Another example of this is the use of the word “offspring” the author uses when referring to her children from her perspective. Offspring, as opposed to children or kids, is markedly impersonal and scientific, and does not indicate motherly love. 

To characterize the rivalry between the siblings and show how the mother’s lack of involvement in the lives of her children exacerbates their rivalry, Lively uses vicious diction and includes the perspectives of many characters.