Literary Devices in Perfect
Symbolism, Imagery, Allegory
Setting
Ellen Hopkins lives in Nevada, so it's no surprise she'd set a novel there. After all, write what you know, right? In Kendra's first chapter, she and her mom drive from Reno to Elko, which is acros...
Narrator Point of View
There are four narrators in Perfect, but they all speak in the first person, one at a time. To differentiate, Hopkins begins each section with the narrator's name, and she uses a different font for...
Genre
Young AdultPerfect is published by Margaret K. McElderry Books, the young adult imprint of Simon and Schuster. (An imprint is a specialized division within a larger publishing company.) All the nar...
Tone
From the first page of Perfect, you know you're going to be reading about people with serious issues. Cara asks, "[…] when/did creating a flawless façade/become a more vital goal/than learning t...
Writing Style
Go into the young adult lit section of your local bookstore and pick up an Ellen Hopkins book. You probably wouldn't even have to see her name on the cover to know she wrote it. The first giveaway,...
What's Up With the Title?
Hopkins's titles are always one word, and this one's easy: Perfect is a book about being perfect. The big question here is who defines perfection. As Cara says on the first page, "Only you should d...
What's Up With the Ending?
The last page of Perfect contains only the words, "a perfect paper airplane" (57.17). Tony and Vanessa give the airplane to Cara at Conner's funeral. They were with Conner on the Aspen Springs wild...
Tough-o-Meter
First, let's get the slightly daunting aspects of Perfect out of the way: It's over six hundred pages long, and it's written in verse. When you first see it on the bookshelf, looking like a doorsto...
Plot Analysis
What Happened to Conner Sykes?Conner's in Aspen Springs, a psychiatric hospital, but nobody at school knows it. Cara's parents have warned her not to tell—after all, it might ruin their reputatio...
Trivia
A study by Penn State University determined that parental pressure increases suicide risk, with females being at higher risk than males. Even though he's a guy, Conner's suicide attempt represents...
Steaminess Rating
Perfect is one of those books you might be a little embarrassed to read on public transportation in case someone's reading over your shoulder. To sum up, we've got a student-teacher affair, a date...
Allusions
Led Zeppelin, Black Dog (3.30)Katy Perry (17.42)Scary Movie (30.19)The Little Mermaid (32.67)Pink (52.21)