Moon Tiger: Sibling Rivalry

In the excerpt from Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively, a brother and sister are searching for fossils while their mother waitsaid nearby. Claudia always wants to outdo her brother, Gordon, at everything he does at their trip to the beach. Lively's Monday Tiger illustrates that sibling rivalry gets the best out of each person involved. Lively's use of word choice, tone, and dialogue shoes readers how the siblings act towards each other and how their mother deals with her children fighting.

Claudia's curiosity gets the best of her throughout the excerpt. "All the time out of the corner of her eye she watchesaid Gordon, who is higher yet, tap-tapping at an outcrop." Gordon's tap-tapping makes Claudia's suspensions rise and she has to investigate. When Claudia thinks Gordon is in a better place to find ammonites than she does she jumps in to steal whatever she can get to be better than her brother. "[Gordon] can feel her getting closer, encroaching, she is coming on his bit, she will take all the best fossils." Gordon is feeling intruded by his sister and doesn't like the fact that she wants all his fossils. Also when Claudia falls Gordon looks at his sister "in horror and satisfaction." He feels bad that his sister gets hurt, but he also felt that she had it coming to her the way she was acting. "Even amid the commotion- the clucking mothers and nurses, the improvised sling, the
After Claudia's hurts her arm, she says to her mother "those are my ammonites. Don't let him get them, mother." Gordon answers back by saying "I don't want your ammonites." Their mother is tired of the arguing at this point and she says "Gordon, be quiet!" She is tired of her children fighting and she is embarrassed that they have argued so much and we're so loud and she wants them to just get along for a little while so she can have