Literary Devices

Roxane Gay uses a variety of literary devices to portray the heartbreaking story of Mireille as she is held in captivity. She manipulates the language in order to allow the readers to experience, first-hand, what Mireille goes through.

IMAGERY
"He pressed the blade into the skin at the base of my throat, and drew his knife to the left. I gasped and he shoved his cock down my throat before I could stop him" (80).

Gay's use of imagery allows the readers to visualize Mireille being sexually abused. The readers can feel the pain of the knife cutting open her bare flesh as the Commander does repeatedly. They can imagine her struggling, not being able to push off the overbearing rapist as he forces her into intercourse. Mireille is helpless in this situation, and readers can picture her fighting, but she does not escape the abductor's force.

THEME
"I didn't stop shaking until I was safely locked inside [my car]. I refused to look at myself in the rear view mirror. I couldn't go to work. I couldn't go home. I could drive, though. I drove to I-75 and I drove out of Miami. I kept on driving until I stopped seeing palm trees" (266). A common theme throughout the novel is Mireille versus the world. During and after her kidnapping, she feels as though everyone is against her and that nothing can make up for the pain that is inflicted upon her. Her father refuses to pay her ransom promptly; her husband does not venture out to find her; her abductors repeatedly take advantage of her body. Even after the ransom is paid and the thirteen days of captivity are over, she feels like a different woman, who could no longer survive in this world. She no longer trusts anyone, including her husband, and therefore she escapes Florida to be alone, away from her family and memories of her old life.

POINT OF VIEW
"I made myself forget everything I could no longer bear to remember- love, my husband's sleeping body, his smile, my child's fingers, how our baby laughed, how it calmed me to poke his chubby cheeks while he nursed, feel his sweet, warm breath on my skin" (170). Mireille narrates the novel, An Untamed State. The readers follow her journey and her thoughts, while also gaining insight into the thoughts of other characters. This occurs through first person point of view, though, often, some chapters take on third person omniscient which give background information about the scenes that occur. The third person point of view narrator offers information about other characters while Mireille is in captivity and cannot observe the scenes. Therefore, the use of multiple points of view serves the novel more effectively for it allows the reader to understand more of the story. Roxane Gay implements these to to also show that while Mireille is held in captivity, she is not the sole person who has difficulty during those painful thirteen days. Michael, for example, also loses a part of himself along with Mireille and that is evident through the use of the various perspectives.

TONE
Gay writes with two different tones when speaking of Haiti. The Haiti of Mireille's childhood and the Haiti of Mireille’s captivity are two totally different places. Mireille recalls, "This is the Haiti of my childhood-- summer afternoons at the beach, swimming in the warm and salty blue of the ocean... We played in the sand and my sister and I chased my brother up and down the beach while our parents cheerfully ignored us" (51). When Miri looks back on her annual visits to Haiti when she was an adolescent, she remembers nothing but blissful memories. She recalls the beauty, the freedom, and the enjoyment of being in the country. Her appreciation of the country shows through her description and the diction chosen by Roxane Gay. Gay writes with an upbeat, cheerful tone when speaking of the Haiti in Miri's childhood. The current Haiti Mireille lives in is nothing like the country she knows and loves. She sees "the streets are covered in trash-- plastic bottles, torn paper, shallow pools of dirty water, rushed coffee cans, discarded cigarette butts" (134). Mireille begins to open her eyes to the side of the country she has never seen, the side where people do not live as privileged of a life as she does growing up. Gay writes with a more sickened, aware tone as Mireille begins to acknowledge the ugliness of the country, specifically including the section in which she is being held hostage.

(Source: Gay, Roxane. An Untamed State. N.p.: n.p., n.d. Print.)