Symbolism In Smile By Raina Telgemeier

In my book, “Smile” by Raina Telgemeier is a story about a girl who had an accident that lead her to get her two front permanent teeth knocked out. She goes through 4 years with headgear, braces, surgeries, and a retainer with two fake front teeth on them. Throughout those 4 years she had been through confusing people, an earthquake and friends that turned out in the end to not be so friendly. The three craft moves that I saw in my story was Symbolism, a Flashback and short and long sentences. I will be write about these three moves how they play a role in the story and how they connect with the main theme. One of the main craft moves that I keeped running into that connected to the theme was Symbolism. I realize when looking that the biggest symbol in the story is Raina’s braces/teeth. I determine that it is a symbol of the start of friends becoming jerks. I see this when Raina came to school a couple of days after the incident and her friends started asking mean questions about her with …show more content…
One example of this in the book is where Raina and her “boyfriend” broke up because she didn’t show up at a dance. “Just forget about it”. The goal I believe the author was going for is Build the mood and understand what was going on in the character heads. By that quote, readers understand how Raina feels guilty and how her “boyfriend” felt betrayed by her and probably got teased. Another example in the text that I saw was when she was with her family at a diner and how she said that she tried out for the basketball team and how she didn’t make it. Her dad was saying that it was a good thing that she didn’t because she would probably have another accident with her teeth. “We wouldn’t want the same accident to happen again”. The goal that the author was probably going for was to stir empathy for Raina because she just wants to be a normal teen and realizes that her teeth come