Diction And Imagery In Elizabeth Strout's Olive Kitteridge

Throughout the book, Olive Kitteridge, Elizabeth Strout uses diction and imagery to establish the overall themes. Although when the reader reads this book they discern the main themes, close reading helps them to better understand the themes’ effect on the entire book. The paragraph after the first page break on page 40 strongly illustrates this. The main theme emphasized in this paragraph is loss, especially the loss of hope. Strout illustrates the many sides of depression and how each person who deals with mental illness has many conflicting factors in their life. In this paragraph one character, Patty, decides to pick some flowers but they are located on the side of a cliff with a dangerous path. Throughout this section there are conflicting