Gwen Bristow: Character Analysis

Gwen Bristow did not just write a well drafted fictional story with love, adventure, and drama. Gwen Bristow wrote a complete fictional novel that teaches the history of the American Revolution. Instead of picking up a textbook, read Celia Garth and learn the facts of the Revolutionary War. Have the past come alive reading Celia Garth as you meet war heroes of the revolution, relive the Siege of Charleston, and discover the details of historic places. While writing Celia Garth, Gwen Bristow used many literary elements such as setting, conflict, point of view, and historical figures to make apparent that the fictional story told the history of Charleston and the American Revolutionary War.

The most important and most evident use of the literary elements was the setting, specifically the correlation between the time and date in the book and time and date at which

Celia Garth was written in a third person limited point of view where the author told the story through the perspective of Celia Garth. Third person limited point of view helped retell history because readers were told the thoughts and feelings of Celia about the Tories, the British, and the war. By knowing the thoughts of Celia, readers could have made generalizations about how colonists in Charleston and rebels in South Carolina felt about the war and about the British. An example was when the author said “But now that she (Celia) saw them they became men, men who wanted to destroy the town she lived in and everything she had to live for. The lump under her ribs began to get hot” (Bristow 119-120). From this quote readers could have concluded that Celia and many people in Charleston were starting to become nervous and slightly angst about the British attacking. Readers could have also used third person point of view to understand what everyday colonists such as Celia did to help and deal with the