Difficulty: Intermediate | Prerequisites: Familiarity with Tangerine by Edward Bloor, Part 2 events (pages 1 through 185).
Tangerine is a young adult novel by Edward Bloor, studied widely in English Composition courses. The story follows Paul Fisher, a legally blind seventh-grader who moves to Tangerine County, Florida, where he navigates family dysfunction, his older brother Erik's violence, and the social fault lines of a community built on unstable ground. Pages 55 through 230 span a critical stretch of the narrative: Mike Costello's death by lightning, the fallout across multiple families, Erik's escalating aggression, and the approach of winter, which in Florida carries its own symbolic weight. A double entry journal for these pages asks you to connect textual evidence to interpretation, a core skill in literary analysis.
These passages track how death and violence reshape the Fisher and Costello families, how adults fail to protect children, and how Paul slowly pieces together truths the adults around him would rather hide. The double entry journal format pairs direct quotations with analytical questions to practise close reading and inference.
Double entry journal
A two-column reading strategy in which the left column records a direct quotation from the text and the right column records the reader's personal response, question, or analysis. Think of it as a structured conversation between you and the book.
Close reading
The practice of analysing a short passage in detail, paying attention to word choice, imagery, tone, and what is left unsaid. In simple terms, it means slowing down to notice what the author is doing with language, not just what happens in the plot.
Characterisation (indirect)
When an author reveals a character's personality through actions, dialogue, thoughts, or how other characters react to them, rather than stating traits outright. In Tangerine, Bloor rarely tells you what someone is like; he shows you through scenes like Coach Warner refusing to stand up, or Erik striking Tino.
Foil
A character whose qualities contrast with another character's, making both stand out more clearly. Erik and Paul function as foils: Erik is violent, entitled, and protected by his parents; Paul is observant, empathetic, and routinely overlooked.
Symbolism
The use of a concrete object, setting, or event to represent something beyond its literal meaning. The freeze and the hot cocoa on page 224, for example, carry connotations of seasonal change and the passage of time within the narrative.
Textual evidence
Direct quotations or specific details from the text used to support an analytical claim. In a double entry journal, the left column is your textual evidence; the right column is your interpretation of it.
Quotation: "Mr. Bridges sat down, but Coach Warner did not get up. He spoke quietly from his chair, directly to Mom."
Coach Warner's refusal to stand is a small but loaded detail. Standing is a social courtesy; staying seated signals either grief too heavy to move through, or an authority figure who does not feel the need to perform politeness.
The phrase "directly to Mom" implies Warner bypasses Dad, which raises questions about the family hierarchy and whom Warner considers the real decision-maker, or at least the more emotionally available parent.
The analytical question here is about Warner's inner state: does he grieve Mike as a person, or only as a football asset? Bloor leaves this deliberately ambiguous, which is the point. The reader must infer from behaviour, not from narration.
What to notice for exams: Indirect characterisation through physical gesture. Bloor uses body language (sitting, standing, where someone looks) to reveal emotional truths the characters will not say aloud.
Quotation: "Mom headed upstairs first. She said good night to me, but she pointedly ignored Dad. When I went upstairs, he was standing alone by the fireplace, staring at the spot where Coach Warner had been sitting."
The word "pointedly" is doing significant work. It tells us Mom's silence toward Dad is deliberate, not accidental. This is a household cracking under the weight of what Mike's death has exposed about the community.
Dad standing alone by the fireplace, staring at an empty chair, is a visual image of isolation and guilt. He is literally looking at absence.
The double entry journal question extends the ripple: Mike's death does not just damage the Costellos. It destabilises every family connected to the football programme, including the Fishers. Paul watches his parents' marriage suffer in real time.
What to notice for exams: The ripple effect of tragedy as a theme. Bloor shows that a single death reshapes the social fabric of an entire community, not just the immediate family.
Quotation: "Eric lashed out, smashing the back of his hand across Tino's face."
This is one of several moments where Erik's violence moves from implied to explicit. The verb "lashed out" and the specificity of "the back of his hand" make the act visceral and deliberate, not accidental.
The backhanded strike carries social connotations of contempt and dominance. Erik does not punch Tino; he backhands him, a gesture associated with dismissal and superiority.
The journal question about long-term injuries is surface-level but leads to a deeper one: what are the long-term consequences of Erik's pattern of violence? The novel's answer is that the adults around Erik enable him, and the consequences land on everyone except Erik himself, until the very end.
What to notice for exams: Erik as an embodiment of unchecked privilege. His violence is protected by his parents' denial and the community's investment in football culture.
Quotation: "Welcoming the freeze with hot cocoa, fake logs and Christmas CDs."
This passage marks a shift in the novel's timeline. The freeze is both literal (a cold snap in Florida, which threatens the tangerine groves) and symbolic (a hardening of circumstances, relationships cooling, truths becoming harder to avoid).
"Fake logs" is a telling detail. The Fisher family performs comfort and normalcy, but it is artificial. They are not warming themselves by a real fire; they are arranging props.
The journal question about Christmas is straightforward chronologically, but the deeper reading is about how the passage of time in the novel compresses: events that feel spread out are actually rushing toward a climax.
What to notice for exams: Setting as symbol. Florida's freeze is not just weather; it is a narrative device that threatens the tangerine groves (the community's economic foundation) and mirrors the emotional coldness settling over the Fisher family.
Students often think the double entry journal's "Response" column is just for summarising what happened. It is not. The response column is for analysis: questions, inferences, connections, and evaluations. A summary restates the plot; an analysis interrogates it.
Students frequently read Erik's violence as isolated incidents. Bloor structures them as a pattern. Each act of aggression is worse than the last, and the adults' failure to intervene escalates alongside it. Treating any single scene in isolation misses the cumulative design.
The freeze on page 224 is sometimes dismissed as a minor setting detail. In the novel's architecture, the freeze is a turning point. It threatens the tangerine groves, which are the economic backbone of the community, and it coincides with the narrative's own shift toward confrontation and revelation.
Some students assume Coach Warner is a purely negative figure because of his association with the football programme. The passage on page 55 complicates that reading. His quiet, seated posture after Mike's death may indicate real grief, or it may indicate something else entirely. The ambiguity is the point, and a strong essay acknowledges it rather than flattening it.
⚠️ Indirect characterisation is one of the most commonly tested skills in English Composition. Be ready to explain how a character's actions, dialogue, or body language reveal their inner state, using specific textual evidence.
⚠️ The ripple effect of Mike Costello's death is a strong essay topic. Exams may ask you to trace how a single event affects multiple characters and families across the novel.
⚠️ Erik's violence is almost always on the exam. Know the specific passages (including page 205) and be prepared to discuss how the adults' silence enables his behaviour. The word "enablement" or "complicity" will serve you well.
⚠️ Setting as symbol (the freeze, the tangerine groves, the muck fire) is a reliable exam question. If asked about symbolism in Tangerine, the freeze is your strongest example because it operates on multiple levels: literal weather, economic threat, and emotional metaphor.
⚠️ The double entry journal format itself may be tested. You may be asked to create one from a new passage, or to evaluate the quality of a response column entry. Strong responses go beyond plot summary to inference and connection.
True or false: In a double entry journal, the response column should summarise what happens in the quotation.
Answer: False. The response column is for analysis, questions, and inferences, not plot summary.
Fill in the blank: Coach Warner's refusal to stand on page 55 is an example of __________ characterisation.
Answer: Indirect.
True or false: Erik backhands Tino on page 205, which is the first time Erik is physically violent in the novel.
Answer: False. Erik's violence is a recurring pattern throughout the book; this is one of several incidents.
Fill in the blank: The freeze on page 224 threatens the __________ groves, which represent the community's economic foundation.
Answer: Tangerine.
True or false: Mom's pointed silence toward Dad on page 59 suggests that Mike Costello's death is creating tension within the Fisher family.
Answer: True.
Q: How does Bloor use Coach Warner's body language on page 55 to reveal character?
A: Warner stays seated while Mr. Bridges stands, and he speaks quietly and directly to Mom. This indirect characterisation suggests either deep grief or a refusal to perform social niceties, and it raises questions about his relationship to Mike beyond football. A strong answer cites the specific physical details (seated posture, quiet voice, direct address to Mom) and explains what they imply.
Q: What is the significance of Mom ignoring Dad on page 59?
A: Mom's pointed silence signals that Mike Costello's death has opened a rift in the Fisher marriage. The word "pointedly" tells us her behaviour is deliberate, not absent-minded. This moment illustrates the novel's theme that tragedy does not stay contained within one family; it radiates outward, destabilising relationships across the community.
Q: Analyse the word choice in "Eric lashed out, smashing the back of his hand across Tino's face" (page 205). What does the phrasing reveal about Erik's character?
A: "Lashed out" implies reactive, explosive aggression. "Smashing the back of his hand" is specific and visceral: a backhand strike carries connotations of contempt and dominance rather than self-defence. The phrasing reveals Erik as someone who uses violence to assert superiority, and the detail suggests Bloor wants the reader to feel the act's deliberateness.
Q: How does the passage on page 224 use setting to advance the novel's themes?
A: The freeze is both a literal weather event and a symbol. It threatens the tangerine groves (the community's livelihood) and mirrors the emotional coldness settling over the Fisher household. "Fake logs" reinforces the theme of artificiality: the family performs warmth and normalcy while real warmth, both meteorological and emotional, is absent.
Q: What makes a strong response in a double entry journal, as opposed to a weak one?
A: A strong response moves beyond surface-level reaction ("this is sad" or "what happens next?") to analytical inference. It asks why the author made specific choices, connects the passage to larger themes, and uses the quotation as evidence for an interpretive claim. A weak response summarises the plot or asks questions that the text has already answered.
This material connects to the broader study of literary analysis techniques, particularly close reading and the use of textual evidence to support interpretive claims. If your course covers other novels with unreliable or limited narrators (such as The Catcher in the Rye or To Kill a Mockingbird), Paul Fisher's perspective in Tangerine offers a useful comparison: he sees more than the adults around him, but his visual impairment is both literal and metaphorical.
The theme of community complicity in violence connects to texts about systemic failure and bystander behaviour. If your course discusses these ideas in a non-fiction context (journalism, sociology, psychology), the enabling behaviour of the Fisher parents and the Tangerine County community is a strong fictional case study.
The double entry journal as a format connects to Cornell notes and other active reading strategies. Practising this format strengthens the skill of pairing evidence with analysis, which is foundational for any essay-based exam in English Composition.
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