58 pages • 1 hour read
Ellen OhFinding Junie Kim
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2019A 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
Setting
The setting is the context in which a story occurs. It is made up of three parts: time, place, and cultural representations. These control the mood/atmosphere of the story as well and may have further symbolic significance, especially in certain genres. The dual settings provide the necessary components to illustrate and develop both aspects of the main protagonist’s hybrid Korean American identity, for example.
The novel uses setting to create structural parallels in time, place, and cultural context between South Korea and America. These parallels help establish the protagonist’s understanding of the main conflict between self-advocacy and racism while providing the resolution when Junie stands up to Tobias within the present-day setting.
Paratext
Paratext is material that surrounds a published work that offers a framework to understand or interpret the main body of the text. These additional textual elements are supplied by authors, editors, printers, and publishers and include elements such as book covers, Forewords, Introductions, and Afterwords.
The novel includes two important paratextual elements: an Author’s Note and a Glossary at the end of the book. The Author’s Note provides authorial context. The author identifies Jinjoo’s story as one that her mother shared with her as a young girl, which she believed to be exaggerated until it was corroborated by an aunt visiting from Korea.
