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What are the literary devices used in Everything, Everything?
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In Everything, Everything, Nicola Yoon employs several literary devices, including first-person point of view, symbolism, similes, metaphors, personification, hyperbole, idioms, and allusions. The first-person perspective immerses readers in Maddy's confined life. Her sterile, white room symbolizes her restricted existence, contrasted by the colorful books that offer her an escape. Various figurative language elements, like similes and metaphors, enrich the narrative's descriptive quality.
Literary devices are narrative techniques that help the author show instead of tell. They add to the imagery of the story. Common literary devices include symbolism, allusion, and metaphor.
In Everything, Everything by Nicola Yoon, Maddie is diagnosed with a rare disease by her doctor mother and must stay inside to prevent infection. Maddie's room is symbolic of her life and condition. The room is white, symbolizing how everything in her life must be disinfected. It also reflects the plainness of her life and her boredom. The only color comes from her books that line the white bookshelf. The books are the only thing that color her room and also her life. Maddie is able to live vicariously through the books she reads.
Authors often use similes and metaphors as descriptions. These are both comparisons, but similes use "like" or "as." Below are some examples from the novel:
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Authors often use similes and metaphors as descriptions. These are both comparisons, but similes use "like" or "as." Below are some examples from the novel:
The rooms decors is like a movie set of a tropical rain forest. (71)
Her pain is a dead sea. (278)
Other examples of figurative language in the text include personification:
Mother nature is a lousy mom. (75)
The thing about my mom’s Bundt is that they are not very good. Terrible. Actually inedible very nearly indestructible. (28)
I lost track of time. (27)
Allusion:
Her smile is toothy and wide, very Cheshire Cat-like.
Beware the Queen of Hearts. She'll have your head.
Everything, Everything was written by Nicola Yoon. It is a novel about a teenage girl named Maddy who suffers from a severe combined immunodeficiency disorder (SCID). Due to the affliction, Maddy must remain at home—and cannot venture outdoors—in order to stay well. She has lived with her mother, Pauline, and Carla, her nurse, for her entire life in a very sheltered environment. Her condition is constantly monitored, which limits her freedom to enjoy the outdoors and prohibits her from living the way she would like to.
The narrative incorporates more than prose to convey information in the story. Maddy starts chatting online with Olly, a boy whom she develops a relationship with, and their messages back and forth are incorporated as part of the narrative progression. This literary device reflects a modern style, which is not surprising for a book that was not only published in the twenty-first century but also about online interactions that could only take place after the advent of the internet. The story is also revealed in the first person through Maddy's diary; the diary contains notes about the air quality, her number of breaths per minute, and other health statistics.
These devices give readers a vivid sense of how Maddy thinks and feels about her disease and about her upbringing. The devices also make the content in the story interesting for young adults in today's technologically-advanced society. Readers can understand their own emotions as they interpret Maddy's feelings and her behaviors as expressed in her diary and through her communication with Olly.
Additionally, these literary devices help readers to understand why and how Maddy feels limited by her disease (which leaves her defenseless against bacteria and viruses outside) and why she wanted to risk her life to have a loving, joyful relationship with Olly.