The Testing Literary Analysis

PLOT SUMMARY AND THEME OF NOVEL:

The Testing, a story by Joelle Charbonneau, is a story about a group of friends who get tested by the government to test how they act and how smart they are.. The plot of this story starts when Malencia Vale graduates high school and gets picked to go to a series of tests created by her government to see if she is smart enough to go to their university, but when she finishes the first test she realizes there is more to it than just being smart it is also about how you act under pressure, then as she goes to the last trial to pass into the university she starts to understand the tests are actually about if you have the skills necessary to be a good leader and if you will do whatever it takes, the story ends when she passes the test and

moves on to the university. The theme of this story is to not trust everybody especially if you do not know them because Cia learns that the hard way.

CHARACTERS AND POINT OF VIEW

Characters in The Testing by Joelle Charbonneau are what makes the story better. The protagonist of the story is a recently graduated girl named Malencia “Cia” Vale. This is also who narrates the story because it is in first person. Her role in the story is to pass the tests given by the government. Her dynamic characteristics shine through when she realizes she cannot trust anyone and finds out she might have to kill to survive the tests. She is a round character because you see many sides of her like when she is willing to help somebody to pass the test to when she trusts nobody. Another important character is Thomas he is Cia’s boyfriend and the only person she trusts. His role in the story is to protect Cia and pass the tests. He is a static character, but he is a found character. You see another side of him when he gets in a fight with someone at the testing and also when he kills someone to protect himself. The antagonist of the story is the government. The role of the government is to find the smartest of the recent high school graduates to go through tests to see if they are smart enough to go to a university. It is flat and static. The government in this story is very corrupt and only cares for the good of smart people and makes the readers despise them. The story’s main conflict is person vs. person while also being person vs. nature and person vs. self because sometimes Cia can not decide whether or not what she wants to do. These characters are what tie the story together to make it amazing.

LITERARY DEVICES:
The first literary device of the story is personification.

This literary device is when you give an inanimate object a quality of a person. This device is used when Cia is leaving her magistrate’s house after being told she has been invited to attend the testing. “Bright sunshine greets us as the door swings open”(Charbonneau 24). The second literary device is the use of foreshadowing. This is when the something is said or happens to foretell what will happen later on in the book. This takes place when Cia’s dad is giving a speech about a new hybrid of potato Cia’s brother Zeen made, but does not give him any credit for making the new kind of potato. “No it is not the potatoes that caught me off-guard, but the words dad uses to announce them. Last week he told us Zeen would get full credit for the project”(13). This shows foreshadowing because it shows you that there is a reason that dad does not want people to think his children are as smart as they actually are, and does not want them to be chosen for the testing. The third literary device is also foreshadowing. This example is about when another testing candidate wants to go first during a group exercise when someone else should actually go

first.
”’Guess that means I go first’... ‘the testing officials did not sat the problems have to be completed in order. We just have to determine the order the members of our group go into solve problems’ Roman folds his arm across his chest and scowls ‘That’s not what I heard’”(123). This clearly foreshadows that there is a reason he wants to go first whether it be good or bad.

HOW READERS MAY RESPOND TO THIS WORK:

The type of people who would like this novel are young people who love adventure and suspense. The reasoning for this is because it is a very fast paced book that is always exploring a new area we have never seen before and always running into wild creatures and having to fight for their lives. Young people would like this story because they can relate to it because in high school you do not know who your real friends are until they have proven themselves to be just like in the story. Another reason is because the wording makes you feel like you are in the story with Cia and Thomas going through the tests. The mood of this novel changes from happy to sad to action in a heartbeat and will keep you on your toes.