The theme of “The Leap” by Louise Erdrich is that survival often depends upon the ability to use reason. The narrator’s mother exhibits quick-thinking when lightning strikes the tent pole during her trapeze act with her first husband.
Q. How did Anna Avalon save the narrator when the narrator was seven years old?
In the short story “The Leap” by Louise Erdrich, Anna Avalon saves the seven-year-old narrator from a house fire by climbing an elm tree, leaping from the elm tree to the roof of the house, and then leaping with her daughter, the narrator, from a window into the firefighters’s net.
Table of Contents
- Q. How did Anna Avalon save the narrator when the narrator was seven years old?
- Q. Why does the narrator return from the West to live with Anna?
- Q. When the narrator first sees the figure of the old gentleman he thinks it is?
- Q. What are the leaps in the story the leap?
- Q. What happened to the narrator when she was seven?
- Q. What does the water represent in the man in the water?
- Q. How are the different flashback episodes related?
- Q. What are the many ways in which the narrator’s mother displays courage?
- Q. Why do shows do flashback episodes?
- Q. Which line from the Leap is an example of foreshadowing?
Q. Why does the narrator return from the West to live with Anna?
The narrator returns home to help out her mother Anna who is ageing and blind as a result of cataracts.
Q. When the narrator first sees the figure of the old gentleman he thinks it is?
The first time the narrator saw the figure of the old gentleman, he had thought him to be a mistaken hallucination. He thought he had imagined him. Therefore, option C, a momentary misperception is the correct answer.
Q. What are the leaps in the story the leap?
What are the three leaps that Anna takes in the story? 1) The literal leap on the trapeze; 2) the figurative leap of learning to read and starting a new life; and 3) the literal leap from the tree to the window during the fire.
Q. What happened to the narrator when she was seven?
The third time the narrator owed her life to her mother occurred when she (the narrator) was seven years old. During this time, the house catches on fire while the baby-sitter has fallen asleep. The narrator is grateful for the series of leaps (actual and metaphoric) that her mother has taken to ensure her safety….
Q. What does the water represent in the man in the water?
(THE MAN IN THE WATER) According to Rosenblatt, the man in the water symbolizes the conflict between humans and nature. He characterizes nature as uncaring. The man in the water is the opposite of that – he cares.
Q. How are the different flashback episodes related?
The different flashback episodes are related to one another as they all have to do with the narrator recounting the events in her mother’s life: the choices she made, her regrets and her strengths. It is revealed in a flashback towards the end that as a child she was trapped in that bedroom while the house was on fire.
Q. What are the many ways in which the narrator’s mother displays courage?
She showed courage by working in a dangerous job while seven months pregnant. Moreover, when lightning struck the tent she was performing in, she had the courage to grip onto a wire, which burned her hands, but protected the life of her unborn child.
Q. Why do shows do flashback episodes?
When writers start to get burnt out and run out of ideas, they create flashback episodes to satisfy the the order. You’ll typically see a flashback episode around the mid-season mark… either just before the “mid-season finale” or as one of the first episodes of the second half of the season.
Q. Which line from the Leap is an example of foreshadowing?
An example of such subtle foreshadowing from “The Leap” is when the narrator parallels the late Mr. Avalon with her father, the “specialist in arms and legs,” as a way of foreshadowing one early event and one later one.
