68 pages • 2 hours read
Jodi PicoultHandle With Care
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2009A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Literary Devices
Direct Address
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes depictions of medical procedures and trauma, self-harm, sexual assault, suicide, disordered eating, outdated and offensive mental health beliefs and terminology, police brutality, and the death of a child.
Each chapter of the novel is told from a different point of view; however, each character always directly addresses a “you,” which is Willow. A direct address is when a character uses another person’s name or pronoun to address a remark or question to them. In this way, the characters explain their actions to Willow as though justifying them. Additionally, the use of a direct address, especially one that uses the second-person singular pronoun “you,” creates a sense of community and complicity for the audience as well. For a story as emotionally fraught as Handle with Care, this narrative technique serves as a way to engage and hook the audience.
Foreshadowing
By jumping between various time periods and characters’ perspectives, foreshadowing becomes a central literary element in the novel. Foreshadowing is when information is shared that hints at something else that will be important further along in the story. The motif of the frozen pond and references to both water and broken ice serve as a foreshadowing of Willow’s untimely death. Additionally, the O’Keefe family’s pipes being eroded by acid, along with Amelia’s teeth not having much enamel, foreshadows the revelation that she has bulimia.
Allusion
Various allusions—references to outside texts, people, and events that reveal something about the story and its characters—appear throughout the novel. Following a fight with Sean, Piper recommends that Charlotte review the Greek comedy Lysistrata, which focuses on a woman’s attempt to end the Peloponnesian War by encouraging other women to withhold sex from men. This allusion reveals that Piper has a vindictive side.
However, some of the allusions, especially those related to disability, are offensive and outdated. Sean reacts to a doctor’s suggestion that Willow be terminated by asking, “Do you think Stephen Hawking’s mother had to listen to this load of bullshit?” (352). While cross-examining Charlotte, Guy Booker asks her, “Are you aware that Helen Keller was profoundly blind and deaf? [...] Are you aware that Jim Abbott, a one-handed pitcher, pitched a no-hitter in major league baseball and won an Olympic gold medal in 1988?” (365). These allusions simplify these figures to their disability, stripping them of their humanity and multidimensionality.
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By Jodi Picoult
