While personification enlightens the reader on the accident and how it affected the narrator and the narrator’s mother, a heat, fire, lightning, etc. motif shows how the narrator owes her life to her mother. Ana, the narrator’s mother, performed with her husband Harold Avalon, and lightning struck in an unannounced storm. After the lightning struck, (Preposition) Ana was in mid air and she did not feel her husband's hands, so instantly she knew to save herself. Instead of falling straight to the ground, “ Her body twisted toward a heavy wire and she managed to hang onto the braided metal, still hot from the lighting strike”(Erdrich 121). In this example of (Prepositional) the lightning/heat motif, accented by the hot metal and heat of the lightning, the narrator develops a clear adoration for her mother’s bravery. …show more content…
Ana too wanted her life due to the fact that she was with child from Harold, and chose to use her natural survival instincts rather than grabbing onto her husband and plummeting to her death with him. Ana’s sheer calmness during the horrifying experience, the narrator could not have live to appreciate her mother’s choices. Though this motif example includes the heat of the lightning the next explains the warmth motif from a house fire. A fire caught onto the narrator’s childhood house while her parents had gone out for a time, but Ana came right to the rescue just in time. Ana’s wits and instinct shows through once she sees how, “ [The] flames had pierced one side wall…”(Erdrich 123). Motherly instincts took over Ana after she saw that no help was coming. Again, quite literally without Ana, the narrator would not exist because she would have burn to death. With this life that the narrator has, she can thank her mother for everything she has