Classification. This is, primarily, a love story, having a strongly marked struggle between the first and second characters, and a complicating thread of interest drawn from the relations between the first and third characters. It is of the familiar “triangle” type, but of a unique individuality.
The struggle appears to be motivated by something like hate; but the dénouement reveals that the acts resulting from apparent hatred or contempt were only negative or distorted expressions of the real or positive passion.
Presentation. The narrator is the author (third person), who focuses the spot-light on Angel.
Plot. Analyze the plot, marking out the main steps. What is the turning point in the struggle, or the dramatic climax?
Compare the manipulation of the plot elements with the management of those in “The Yellow Cat” plot. Which is simpler?
Setting. Among the Portuguese on Urkey Island. The time is the present.
Characterization. The racial type chosen is one, through which passionate and contradictory expression might well flow. A colder-tempered, more logical people, would here be impossible. Or if individuals of the milder tempered race were chosen, the task of making them convincing (as a group) would be an added difficulty.
What impression of Peter Um Perna do you receive at first? By what method or methods of portrayal is this impression conveyed?
Where is the second Peter, his second self, first revealed? Where in full? What is the significance of the relationship of the one who explains him?
What is the chief trait of Angel? How is your opinion of her maintained or changed? At what point, and why, does she leave off caring for Man’el?