Oliver Rising Structure

The meaning of life from a teenage perspective is explored through Lauren Oliver’s “Before I Fall”. The journey of the main protagonist, Sam Kingston, is one that everyone can relate to in some way. Through continually repeating a day, she learns and gains knowledge of people’s and her own views on life but also loses her superiority to other characters and changes her outlook of life because of death. Through the complicated and brilliant use of literary devices Oliver presents the experience of a typical teenage life, giving an idea and belief to other teenage readers, uses first narration to communicate to the audience from the teenage perspective and also has use of narrative structure which allows Oliver to separate the aspect of teenage life. Conclusively, the narrative techniques of characterisation, foreshadowing and imagery present the ideas …show more content…
The author split the book up into seven headings, seven days and within those days are subheadings which explain the context of that section. The author can concentrate on the thoughts and feelings of Sam in that time which reflects on the way teenagers’ thoughts are processed. These subheadings are also clues to what will happen in that section, foreshadowing, such as ‘And On the seventh day’ is a reference to ‘God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done.’ This predicts that Sam has finally finished what she needed to do and will conclude her life in that chapter. Other subheadings ‘Popularity: An Analysis’ (pg. 12) and ‘Math Class: Further Lessons in Chemistry’ (pg. 18) explain what is about to be talked about in that chapter. This is a useful technique used to help separate time and have only important and interesting parts involved. Therefore, the narrative structure allows Oliver to separate the aspect of a teenager’s life and provides insight into a teenager’s