I Ll Give You The Sun Literary Analysis

It is often argued that the five most important elements of each and every story ever told are character, setting, plot, theme, and conflict. All of these components work in harmony to come together and convey stories to readers, giving tales the backbones they need in order to exist. However, there is one more element of a story that can play just as crucial a role in effectively expressing a narrative: the point of view in which the story is told. In Jandy Nelson’s I’ll Give You the Sun, readers are introduced to two different narrators, twins Noah and Jude, whose accounts take place at two different points in time. However, these two separate narratives come together to form one cohesive story, which would not be pieced together without …show more content…
This is due to the fact that, over time in the story, powerful changes occurred in each narrator’s life. Noah, heartbroken by his mother’s death and rejection from CSA, retreats into himself and represses key aspects of his personality. Jude, on the other hand, abandons her outgoing ways, traumatized by sexual abuse and feeling guilty for her mother’s death. As a result, the two characters are almost unrecognizable across the two accounts, with Noah transforming from an artistic recluse to a jock, and Jude from a wild, popular girl to a freak. However, it is imperative to receive the stories from thirteen-year-old Noah and sixteen-year-old Jude because both ages are when the characters are most sincere and honest about themselves and the events of the story. When Noah is thirteen, he is still true to himself and his passions, and when Jude is sixteen, she has matured and finally gotten one step closer to figuring out who Jude Sweetwine really is. If the story was told vice versa, readers would be met with unreliable narrators who aren’t true to themselves nor their