I have been continuing reading Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott. I have really enjoyed the story so far, but I am also intrigued by the structure that Alcott uses in some chapters. In the chapter "The P.C. and P.O.", Alcott writes most of the chapter in a newspaper format. She is describing one of the favorite pastimes of the girls, writing their own newspaper under fake names, and includes some excerpts of their work, written under their pen names. However, most of the other chapters uses the same birds-eye-view where the narrator (we don't know who it is, I'm assuming it may be Alcott herself) watches in in the lives of the girls through third person. Every so often the narrator will make themselves heard with a paragraph or two in first person, usually describing how his/her lives relate to those of the girls. Sometimes a chapter will focus solely on one of the sisters, so you can never tell who is the main character. This is shown through the chapter "Meg goes to Vanity Fair". This chapter follows Meg as she spends a weekend at a rich friends house. She hears people at the parties talk about her behind her back because of her family's financial situation, and how she is poor compared to the other party guests. Because of this, she allows to let the other girls dress her up in one of their old dresses, and be paraded around the party as one of them. Even at this she hears negative remarks from party guests saying she is a fool for letting herself be subject to the girls fun. Another example would be the chapter "Amy's Valley of Humiliation." This chapter focuses on Amy in school, and how she was physically punished for having limes in her desk (limes were big for girls her age, they traded them and bought from others). Because of this Marmee pulls Amy out of school, to be tutored by her older sisters.

I have noticed that my vocabulary has increased immensely since reading this book. Because it was written in a different time, the vocabulary seems richer to me, and I have started annotating for unusual words that I didn't know before.