65 pages • 2 hours read
Lynn JosephThe Color of My Words
Fiction | Novel/Book in Verse | Middle Grade | Published in 2000A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Summary
Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Character Analysis
Themes
Symbols & Motifs
Important Quotes
Essay Topics
Tools
BetaSymbols & Motifs
The Gri Gri Tree
From the second chapter onwards, the gri gri tree features heavily in The Color of My Words as a representation of a safe place for Ana Rosa. The tree is the place where she knows she is “different from everyone else in our village” (25) and is where Ana Rosa can watch everything that is going on, making observations and artistic connections. The gri gri tree takes on kind of a mythical quality in the novel, almost like it is its own place separate from the realities of Ana Rosa’s daily life.
When Guario dies at the foot of the gri gri tree as Ana Rosa watches, the gri gri tree cements its status as a permanently meaningful place for her. For days, Ana Rosa does not leave the tree except at night; the gri gri tree is her only safe place to have all of her internal feelings without having to talk to anyone or use her words out loud. When Ana Rosa is finally ready to leave the tree for good, it is the turning point towards acknowledging that she is a writer. The gri gri tree is immortalized for Ana Rosa in a painting by Señora Perez, which depicts Guario “with angel wings on his back, sitting at the bottom of my gri gri tree” (132). This transformation of the image of Guario lying dead on the ground to being an angel at the foot of the tree fits with the way the gri gri tree exists for Ana Rosa: it is a safe and special place.
Throughout the book, Ana Rosa also refers to the gri gri tree as hers. This is an important aspect of Joseph’s use of the gri gri tree: Ana Rosa is a young person with very few private spaces. Through the possessive descriptions of the gri gri tree, Joseph highlights that for Ana Rosa, like many young people, having a secret or special place to call their own can be a formative aspect of their development.
The Whale
Before any more intense events take place in The Color of My Words, Ana Rosa has her first dramatic incident with the whale that she spots in the ocean. When she first sees it from her gri gri tree, Ana Rosa believes it is a sea monster, and she only finds out that it is a humpback whale later when she hears it on the radio. The whale helps the community recognize Ana Rosa as a real storyteller rather than just an odd child. The villagers laugh at her at first, but when they realize that there is, in fact, something in their bay, Ana Rosa is taken seriously, and gets to write a whole story. Ana Rosa views the whale as a “beautiful black-and-white sea monster” who helps her “to make [her] dream come true” (43). In this important moment, Ana Rosa decides she will name the whale after her brother, Guario. As a symbol, thus, the whale represents the almost impossible futures that both Ana Rosa and Guario dream of: something that other people don’t quite want to believe in but can possibly truly come to pass.
The Ocean
The beach and ocean are a place where many of Ana Rosa’s significant interactions and learning moments take place. This is both natural, since Ana Rosa lives in a seaside village, but like the gri gri tree, the ocean is also an important symbolic element for Ana Rosa to imprint on. The ocean is a large, “glittering” (27) body of water that can contain almost any ideas that Ana Rosa puts onto it. She learns to dance with Papi as she listens to “the music of the sea” (58), and later, after Guario’s death, Ana Rosa walks along the water’s edge at night looking at “only the smooth black sea” (128). The largeness and beauty of the sea are in direct contrast to many of Ana Rosa’s more precise conflicts; the sea absorbs everything and remains magical in its inability to be defined.
