Figurative Language In The Yearling

What constitutes exceptional writing? In 1939, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings’s work, The Yearling won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, a prize given once a year for outstanding achievements in literature. Set in the scrub forest of Northern Florida in the 1800s, The Yearling tells the story of the daily life of a family making sacrifices to survive and a boy who finds unexpected companionship in an orphaned fawn. What elevates this novel from a simple tale of a struggling family into a beloved classic that has endured the times is Rawlings’s brilliant use of sensory details, syntax, and figurative language.
Notably, Rawlings’s skills as a writer are conveyed through her utilization of sensory details. For example, “He was in another world, so that for an instant he thought he might still be dreaming. The sun was gone, and all the light and shadow. There were no black boles of live oaks, no glossy green of magnolia leaves, no pattern of gold lace where the sun had sifted through the branches of the wild cherry.” The sensory details Rawlings provides are picturesque and effective at creating an association for the reader to the lush forest environment of the Baxter property. The intricate detail with which Rawlings describes the unique elements of the novel’s rich surroundings are due to her Florida roots. Additionally, Rawlings includes,
For example, Rawlings uses personification to give the wind a personality throughout the writing. She describes that the wind, “slammed both doors” and that the wind “tried to strangle him” exhibiting the angry and malevolent nature of wind during a storm. Also, Rawlings uses simile to describe the sky. She writes, “The morning, however, was clear, but the east was the color of blood.” The color red often is represented by danger and intensity, similar to the storm that Rawlings foreshadows with this simile. Add