Fever 1793

The most important conflict in this novel is the internal conflict that Mattie has to face with death. As the events in the novel clearly demonstrate, humans are very frail creatures who can die...

Fever 1793 takes place in Philadelphia during the yellow fever epidemic of 1793. This was the first major outbreak of yellow fever in the United States. It hit Philadelphia in the summer of 1793,...

After yellow fever strikes and kills Polly, the family's serving girl, Mattie has the following daily routine. She gets up in the morning in her room above the Cook Coffeehouse and comes down to...

In this chapter, Mother takes time out of her busy schedule to accept an invitation for her and Matilda to have tea with the wealthy Ogilvies. This involves digging a better dress for Mattie out of...

The biggest obstacle that Mattie faces in Fever 1793 is the yellow fever epidemic that strikes, causing members of her family to die or become ill. Mattie gets yellow fever but survives.In the...

Over the course of the book, Mattie develops from a regular teenage girl into a mature young woman. When the story begins, Mattie has to be roused out of bed by her mom, who needs her to do some...

Matilda, or "Mattie" does not have much of a conflict with her grandfather in a direct sense. Compared to her relationship with her mother, Mattie's relationship with her grandfather is much more...

Let us remember that the climax of a work of literature is the moment of heighest emotional intensity, which is what the rising action leads up to. If we think about the plot of this novel, then,...

When frost comes, many of the people who fled Philadelphia because of the cholera epidemic feel the cold makes it safe to return. Mattie watches them come back and feels bitter because they are...

Cook Coffeehouse, owned by Mattie's family, is in downtown Philadelphia, on the corner of Seventh and High Street, two blocks from President Washington's Philadelphia home, a central location in...

Mother happens to be at Mrs. Luddington's farm when she comes down with yellow fever. Mrs. Luddington puts her to bed, but Mother is so worried about what has become of Mattie that she takes a...

Dr. Rush believed in purging the sickness from the body by making the person vomit and drawing blood from them. He thought that this would release the illness from them and help heal them. Mattie's...

Grandfather thinks he has been a fool because he failed to see the inherent threat in the yellow fever. In Chapter 5, Lucille (Matilda's mother) wanted to send Matilda to the Ludingtons at Gwynedd....

Mattie's day starts early at the Cook Coffeehouse, just as it does for Mother and the servant, Eliza. Eliza serves Mattie a substantial breakfast of oatmeal, veal, and cornbread, followed by...

Laurie Halse Anderson's historical novel Fever 1793 takes place in Philadelphia. As portrayed in the book, Philadelphia was then the nation's capital. The narrator of the novel mentions the State...

Figurative language adds meaning and interest beyond the merely literal to a written work. In "used the dipper to drink," the factual meaning is that Mattie took a drink of water. However, Anderson...

In Fever 1793, Mattie lives with her mother and grandfather in Philadelphia, where her family runs a coffee house. Initially when her mother falls ill, Mattie, who is fourteen, stays with her and...

When George Washington, the President of the United States, arrives with his entourage and appears in the streets of Philadelphia, it's a very significant moment indeed. It's a sign that the...

In chapter 7, Mattie's mother is quite anxious about having tea at the Ogilvie mansion for a couple of reasons. First of all, the Ogilvies are extremely wealthy and belong to the upper crust of...

Mattie and her mother do not get along. Lucinda, Mattie's mother, has had a hard life raising Mattie alone and running the coffeehouse. She is tough and driven. Mattie is at a time in her life...

Whenever anyone mentions the tolling of church bells, I always think of John Donne's famous Meditation 17, which contains the line "ask not for whom the bell tolls." This gives some indication of...

The cold weather brought about the end of the yellow fever epidemic. Yellow fever is spread by mosquitoes; people continued to get sick as long as mosquitoes proliferated. Mosquitoes thrive in hot,...

It seems that Mattie and her mother were invited for tea at the Ogilvie mansion because Pernilla Ogilvie was feeling starved for conversation. Pernilla tells them that she has invited them over to...

Mother and Matilda have received an invitation to afternoon tea from Mrs. Pernilla Ogilvie, a wealthy resident of Philadelphia. Mother is delighted to be asked to come, calling the invitation "the...

The name of the "hospital" where Mattie wakes up is indeed Bush Hill. Bush Hill is a mansion with a terrible reputation. According to local gossip, "Bush Hill (is) one step away from Hell, filled...

Early on in the novel, death carts holding the corpses of cholera victims begin to pass the coffeehouse. When a cart goes by the coffeehouse holding the dead body of a man with its arm flopping...

The problem in the book Fever 1793 is the outbreak of Yellow Fever in Philadelphia in the year 1793. This epidemic infected and killed about 10% of the population, which at the time was about...

In Chapter 7, Matilda (or "Mattie") visits the Ogilvie mansion with her mother. A maid leads them to a drawing room as large as the coffee shop, and the lengthy windows are dressed with expensive...

Mattie dislikes work and cleaning, though she has to do a great deal of work in her mother's coffeehouse. She particularly dislikes working in the heat and getting up early, and she longs for...

Upon recovering from the yellow fever at Bush Hill, Matilda and her grandfather return to the Cook Coffeehouse, the business run by her family in the heart of Philadelphia. They discover a yellow...

The falling action of Fever 1793, by Laurie Halse Anderson, begins when the cold winter climate sets in and results in the mosquitoes that carry the fever dying off, which signals an end to the...

In chapter 17, Mattie and her grandfather return to the coffeehouse after being in the hospital. They find it totally ransacked and in complete disrepair. With the cupboards raided and the garden...

Paris, the city of lights, is another important symbol in the story. For Mattie Paris represents a dream world full of glamor and excitement. It's a place where she can buy trinkets which she hopes...

The first sign that Grandfather could be ill from yellow fever is in chapter 11, page 78, when he begins coughing in the back of the carriage on the way out of Philadelphia. Initially, he waves off...

At the end of Chapter 3, Mattie likens her mother, Lucille, to the captain of a ship. Life was a battle, and Mother a tired and bitter captain. The captain I had to obey. (17) She describes her...

In chapter 22, Mathilda (a.k.a., "Mattie") returns to Philadelphia and manages to reunite with Eliza. Eliza is surprised to see her. Mattie, however, is mostly concerned about the whereabouts of...

It tells you something about the primitive state of medicine at the time that it was genuinely believed, by a qualified medical practitioner, that African Americans were immune from yellow fever....

This quote illustrates the human impulse for people to try to distance themselves from other people's troubles and say these problems couldn't happen to them. Of course, given the scanty knowledge...

The mockingbird appears to Mattie first on the morning of September 6, 1973, and then again two days later in the afternoon. The first time is the morning of the day that her mother decides to send...

Fever 1793, by Laurie Halse Anderson, was published in 2000. It is a historical novel about the 1793 yellow fever epidemic in Philadelphia, which killed approximately 10% of the city’s population....

Mattie's grandfather, William Farnsworth Cook, served under George Washington in the Pennsylvania Fifth Regiment. He's one of Mattie's mentors and readily passes on some of the skills he learned as...

In Laurie Halse Anderson's Fever 1793, Nell is a young girl who becomes orphaned and homeless after her mother dies of yellow fever. Matilda, the novel's main character, discovers her crying in the...

In chapter 4 of Laurie Anderson's Fever 1793, Mr. Carris asserts that the illness that is beginning to spread around Philadelphia is being caused by "the heap of rotting coffee beans on Ball's...

Mathilda (Mattie) matures greatly as a result of her experiences during Philadelphia's 1793 Yellow Fever epidemic. When the story begins, the teenaged (14-year-old) Mattie depends on her mother and...

This novel is of the genre called historical fiction. Although the main characters and their dialogue is fictional,the story is based on real happenings in history. 1. historical- The city of...

Once a thriving city, Philadelphia has become a place where dead bodies are lying everywhere. There are also trenches that have been dug to place the dead. Thieves are taking advantage of the sick,...