Alice Hoffman’s Craft

Angela Andrews

Ms. Andrews

Pre-AP English I

2 March 2015

Alice Hoffman’s Craft

This passage from Incantation by Alice Hoffman illustrates several aspects of an author’s craft. The writer uses diction, imagery, details, and syntax to create a passage that invites the reader to experience the life of the character on many levels. This multi-faceted reading creates a deeper connection between the reader and the writer.

A turning point occurs in the middle of the book when the main character, Estrella deMadrigal, is thinking to herself as she is returning home with her mother after an intense conversation about the family’s past. This passage contains several words that have been chosen with specific purpose. The words “silence,” “horizon,” “hawk,” and “remembered” have significance throughout the entire novel. Estrella has parents who have protected her with silence her whole life. The denotations of muteness, concealment, and secrecy emphasize the need to stay silent to protect the family from the torture and death of the Spanish Inquisition. Estrella’s parents do share pieces of her heritage, culture, and religion but they always remind her to keep them a secret: she is to remain silent. The passage also references “hawk” and along with the mention of the sky, she sees the “horizon.”  A hawk, while a bird of prey that hunts chickens, is also a person who preys on others. This person “advocates war or a belligerent national attitude” and reflects the efforts of the religious leaders in the novel to bully those of a different religion into submission. (dictionary.com) The horizon is the dividing line between the earth and sky, and could also represent the dividing line between the earth and heaven. Estrella has a new awareness of the world, and she is beginning to recognize the evil in the people in her community. The last important diction in this passage is “remembered,” and the ability to retain people and events in her memory and to remain aware of the value of those who have died becomes extremely important to Estrella. She learns to keep them alive by telling their story and accepting the richness of her past.

        Alice Hoffman also uses imagery effectively in this passage. She keeps a simple vocabulary, but creates strong organic images that stay with the reader. Estrella muses on the idea of carrying “the dead” in memory and thought. The repetition of “…same fields every day…same olive and almond trees, the same horizon,” builds a sense of being bonded to a country and home in a way that emphasizes an emotional connection with the reader. By ending the passage with the idea that “everything we needed was contained in who we were” and “what we remembered,” the author stresses that it is not the place where a person is from that matters, but it is the memories and ancestral heritage that creates the idea of home.