Reconstructing Amelia Character Analysis

Joseph Pulitzer believed that for a piece of writing to be effective the selection had to follow four main principles to present the story; briefly, clearly, picturesquely and accurately.Reconstructing Amelia,the first novel by Kimberly McCreight , utilized these principles quite effectively in the development of the novel as a whole. The novel focuses in on the life of Kate Baron whose daughter, Amelia, supposedly committed suicide the previous month. McCreight takes the reader through Amelia’s final days alive as well as Kate’s journey to find the truth of her daughter's death. Her use of characters that originally present as flat character but developed into dynamic ones shows that there were no unused elements in the novel and as the story …show more content…
“ “Seriously. I’ve never even met him in real life.” “What do you mean?” “ He applied to the Princeton summer program, too.” I said, already bracing myself for how Sylvia was going to respond. “We email and text and whatever. That's all.” “ That's all?” Sylvia's mouth was open. “Are you messaging other kids who applied to that geekfest?” “No.” I rolled my eyes. “Ben’s the one who contacted me. I think he asked the program for the names of the other people who applied from New York.”(McCreight …show more content…
The story is told to readers through multiple perspectives but with all of them focusing on Amelia and Kate. In the story Amelia attends a private school located in Brooklyn with many students from upper class families. McCreight develops these characters and situations through the first person perspective of Amelia. As her last few months alive is recounted Amelia is caught in a secret club -the Magpies-that was created by the upperclass students as a form of entertainment. The bullying that Amelia is subjected to from this club is one of the factors in Amelia’s supposed suicide. Additionally, the reader is given the third person perspective of Kate’s journey to learn if her daughter really did jump or is she was pushed. McCreight was able to present these altering perspectives in a manner that blended well and did not add confusion for the reader. Along with her timing of when to reveal certain aspects of the story she used different mediums that the characters would have used as communication platforms to develop their emotions. For Kate it was journal entries as well as emails that she sent when she was first pregnant and it was anonymous blog post about herself and classmates, text messages and facebook post-similar to the example from the novel below- that helped McCreight to convey Ameilia’s