Edgar Sawtelle Analysis

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski is filled with a copious amount literary patterns; simply like the ones discussed in How to Read Literature Like a Professor. Within this coming of age novel, the occurring indicative of weather commonly takes place throughout Edgar’s life. Fundamentally, rain is never just rain in a story. Usually, it can be used as an indication for something. At the very beginning of the book, inside the prologue, it begins with, “After dark the rain began to fall again” (1). This scene is when the man in an olive coat, who later is found out to be Claude, is seen buying a very suspicious looking poison from an old man in South Korea. The indication given here is the showing of a bad omen. The reader is given
This comes in the form of a similar occurrence with Essay as she stood in front of the storm-like waterspout bursting out of the lake; facing it just as Gar faced the storm in an earlier chapter. As “The steam at its base dropped into the lake as if a spell had been broken,” (450) Edgar had finally recognized what he had to be doing instead of literally running away from his problems. This weatherly occurrence made him have this epiphany that he must face his dilemmas; he has to face the storm which had been constantly brewing throughout the novel. The waterspout became the physical embodiment of his fear of Claude, returning home, and the consequences of killing Dr. Papineau. Many novels use drastic changes of weather like this in order to put the main character into a situation where they must grow in order to move on. So in the end of Sawtelle, the literary device of weather is shown to be a way in which matters would be displayed. Whether it symbolize foreshadowing or the illustrative representation of an ongoing conflict, weather can be used to further emphasize on a subject the author wants the reader to consider as something very