Mother-Daughter Bonds

"The Leap" is fundamentally a story about Anna, but by its conclusion the author has established a number of connections between Anna and the narrator that underscore the importance of their relationship to the story-telling. When the story begins, the author places all of the focus on Anna, refusing even to give the narrator a name and instead having her jump immediately into describing her mother. That pattern continues as the story unfolds, but the author includes subtle details throughout that remind readers about the similarities between the central character, Anna, and the narrator.

The first indication of this parallelism is in the second paragraph, when the narrator says, "I would, in fact, tend to think that all memory of double somersaults and heart-stopping catches had left her arms and legs were it not for the fact that sometimes, as I sit sewing in the...