Crow Lake :: Character Analysis, Kate Morrison

Crow Lake Essay In Crow Lake, Mary Lawson portrays a family who experience a great tragedy when Mr. and Mrs. Morrison are killed in a car accident. This tragedy changes the lifestyles of the seven years old protagonist Kate Morrison and her siblings Matt, Luke and Bo. The settings are very important in this novel. Though there are limited numbers of settings, the settings used are highly effective. Without effective use of themes in this novel, the reader would not have been able to connect with the characters and be sympathetic. Lawson uses an exceptionally high degree of literary devices to develop each character in this novel. The element of setting is used to create a definite atmosphere, and therefore, helping to create a desired mood .In Kate’s childhood, she and Matt visited the ponds regularly. They used to go â€Å"through the woods with their luxuriant growth of poison ivy, along the tracks, past the dusty boxcars lines up receive their loads of sugar beets, down the steep sandy path to the ponds themselves† (Lawson 4). Lawson has used powerful imagery to further describe the ponds. The settings of the ponds are a central part of the story. The ponds are a symbol of the tight relationship between Matt and Kate. They had spent â€Å"hundreds of hours there† (Lawson 15). Ponds were like a home to her. In the prologue, Kate stated that â€Å"there is no image of my childhood that I carry with me more clearly than that† (Lawson 4). The ponds also symbolizes Kate’s childhood. Matt and Kate were able to overcome the tragedy of their parent’s death by visiting t he ponds, but however, they did not survive Matt’s â€Å"disloyalty†. The ponds later developed into the scene of the crime. Kate mentions in the book â€Å"By the following September the ponds themselves would have been desecrated twice over, as far as I was concerned, and for some years after that I did not visit them at all† (Lawson 218). Therefore, the ponds are of great significance in Crow Lake. The setting has developed from a warm, sweet, memorable place to a scene of crime in crow Lake. The theme of isolation is established and developed through the setting of Crow Lake. Located against the deserted territory of Northern Ontario, Crow Lake is a diffident farming settlement that is â€Å"... linked to the outside world by one dusty road and the railroad tracks† (Lawson 9).