Pilgrims by Julie Orringer

In Pilgrims by Julie Orringer, there are many things that caught my attention.  One thing that I noticed was the description used to set up the story.  The details that Orringer used bring the reader into the story, as though he or she is a bystander.  There is more description used instead of dialogue to give the reader an idea of what the setting looks like, and to bring out the characters.  When Peter comes to get Ella to clean up, his eyes are “small and cold” (Orringer 17).  It may be thought that children would say things more joyfully, but the situations that these children come from have transformed these children into adults in a forceful way.  The transformation can be seen also in the way that the children play with each other.  Instead of playing games like tag or hide-and-seek, “Four kids stood in the semidarkness, wide-eyed and still as sculptures, each bound at the ankles and wrists with vine handcuffs” (9).  This represents the world that they are trapped in because of their family situations.  These children cannot be actual children since they have broken families.  This scene takes away the innocence of children, while the parents seem to be more innocent and child-like based on the fact that they need to be taken care of by their families.  The kids are almost barbaric, not only knowing about death but also creating games about killing people.  This can reference cancer itself, and how it can tear the body apart, just like it can tear a body of a family apart.  The tooth seems to represent Ella’s innocence being lost as her family goes through a difficult time with her mother’s cancer.  She is also being forced to grow up quickly, and the way she loses her tooth is an allusion to that.  “The new tooth’s already coming in” (11) can also be a reference to the maturity that is growing inside of Ella, as she begins to grow up.