Analysis & Critique of The Third Angel Book by Alice Hoffman - Essay Example

The third story is about Maddy’s mother; Lucy. At the tender age of 12, Lucy was forcibly pulled to attend the wedding of her stepmother’s sister. Half-heartedly Lucy attends the wedding with no joy, unhappy face and an unrest soul. The novel revolves around the sweetness of love and the sheer bitterness of heartbreak filled with a triumph of hope that makes every individual hopeful for a bright sunny day after a dark stormy night. Critical Analysis of the Novel: Alice Hoffman has intelligently interlocked three stories together in a single book, though each story sounds about a different individual but somehow all the three characters of this novel are cleverly linked with one another.

The Third Angel is all about love and betrayal, hope and misery, happiness and sadness that haunts around and inside the Lion Park Hotel as ghosts; shouting and screaming in madness. The room 707 in the hotel always makes the presence of the ghosts be felt through their angry voices; shouting high right at 10.30 p.m. Alice Hoffman has set the events taking place in different years 1999, 1966 and 1952. . A person may lack words to explain the author’s efforts in maintaining the flow of the story without distracting the mind of the reader.

The author has showed her efforts that how skillfully she has managed to keep the pace of a novel. The characters can be seen going through the rough patch in their lives, sometimes appearing as innocent as a little child and sometimes cruel enough to be betraying their loved ones. They are living with their suffering souls that sometimes they transform into Third Angel as described by Frieda’s doctor father. Frieda remembers her father as a serious, practical but a loving man. Her father used to take her on his house calls, where he tells her about the three angels; the Angel of Life, the Angel of Death, and then there is another Angel, who is known as the Third Angel.

He tells Frieda that the Angel of Life and the Angel of Death ride with him when he makes a house call but then there is another third angel, who is a mysterious one; the doctor tells Frieda, 'You can't even tell if he's an angel or not. You think you're doing him a kindness, you think you're the one taking care of him, while all the while, he's the one who's saving your life.' Alice Hoffman’s characters are complicated to understand. They love and then they betray their loved ones or even sometimes, they end up betraying themselves.

But these characters possess some heroic traits in them. They learn how to mend their broken souls and sometimes, without our knowing they become, the Third Angel. They learn kindness, compassion for their loved ones, for those whom they betray and for themselves. Main Themes of the Novel: The main themes of the novel revolve around life and death and about loving someone with all your heart and