Literary Devices in The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down
Symbolism, Imagery, Allegory
Setting
Merced, California is one unique place. On the one hand, it's just another slice of small-town America. Nothing flashy there. On the other, it's home to more Hmong immigrants than any other city in...
Narrator Point of View
Although The Spirit Catches You uses a standard first-person narrator, it's a bit more complicated than you're average narrative setup. Sometimes Anne Fadiman is detached from the story and exclusi...
Genre
The Spirit Catches You is a unique piece of literary non-fiction that blends the story of one girl's life with the overarching history of her people. Pretty crafty, if you ask us. On one hand, The...
Tone
Anne Fadiman is the consummate journalist, presenting the facts without muddying the waters with her own opinions. Don't get it twisted, though—despite her relative objectivity, Fadiman gets very...
Writing Style
You're not going to find any mind-blowing prose styling in The Spirit Catches You. But hey, we ain't here for Shakespeare-style wordplay. Instead, author Anne Fadiman channels her energy into preci...
What's Up With the Title?
The book's title is the translation of the Hmong phrase for epilepsy. But it's a lot more than just naming the book Epilepsy—that phrase, and the cultural baggage connected to it, speaks volumes...
What's Up With the Ending?
The Spirit Catches You closes with a neeb ceremony—a Hmong religious ritual meant to bring Lia's soul back to her body after a big seizure leaves her officially brain-dead.As an outsider, author...
Tough-o-Meter
The Spirit Catches You is a non-fiction book that dives into some pretty serious subjects, from the history of the Hmong people to the successes and failures of modern Western medicine. Though this...
Trivia
Anne Fadiman never set out to write The Spirit Catches You. Shocking, right? Here's the deal: she originally visited the Lees to write a single article about Lia, but The New Yorker's abrupt cancel...
Steaminess Rating
There's nothing remotely offensive about The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down. Well, maybe some of the comments the doctors make, but the whole point is to critique that sort of prejudice. That...
Allusions
François Marie Savina (2.3, referenced throughout)Søren Kierkegaard (3.21)Vincent van Gogh (3.21)Gustave Flaubert (3.21)Lewis Carroll (3.21)Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Idiot (3.21)Marcel Proust (10....