...Actions during a difficult situation is a reflection of a person's attitude when undergoing new or past experiences. Writer, Ann Petry, in her novel “ The Street,” implies that society is similar to their physical and geographical features. Petry’s purpose is to assert that the way society thinks of themselves reflect their characterization and actions towards various situations. She adopts a determined tone in order to imply that actions reflect a person's true intentions and character. In this excerpt from the passage “The Street.” Petry seeks to emphasize the self motivated connection of Lutie Johnson towards the relentless actions of the storm through the use of figurative language and selection of detail. Petry begins her novel by describing the violent actions of the wind towards society as a whole. The narrator recounts, “...except for a few hurried pedestrians who bent double in an effort to offer the least possible exposed surface to its violent assault.” The writer also reveals that the storm “...pried their scarves...
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...| Critical Appreciating Ann Petry | | | Shantanu Kulesh, 14B133 | | | A Brief Biography Ann Petry’s birth date is not certain: earlier biographers place her birth on October 12, 1911, while later it has been stated as October 12, 1908. In any case, she was born in Old Saybrook, Connecticut, and a predominantly white, rural community. Ann was the second daughter of Peter C. Lane, pharmacist, and Bertha James Lane, licensed chiropodist, barber, and entrepreneur. Ann’s family was solidly middle class, including two college educated aunts, and several generations of pharmacists. The Lanes often told autobiographical and fictional stories while she was growing up, and Ann began writing short stories and plays while she was still in high school. Following family patterns, Petry graduated from the College of Pharmacy at the University of Connecticut, but she was unhappy “counting pills,” she later said, because she had aims to be a writer. She married George David Petry and moved to New York to fulfill her aim to be a writer. According to Petry herself, the content of her early fiction was heavily influenced by the inner city life she witnessed as a reporter, social worker, and involved community member. She quickly found work as a journalist. Her early years in Harlem were fueled by involvement in progressive political causes and membership in a community of activists, labor leaders, visual artists, actors, and writers. Despite working closely with self-identified...
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...In the 1946 novel The Street, Ann Petry uses imagery with vivid details, and figurative language such as personification to create a negative relationship between Lutie Johnson and the cold urban setting. Petry strictly focuses on the vicious wind and its barbaric actions through 116th Street. Imagery is the most important literary device used by Petry to demonstrate to the reader what the people walking along the street, especially Lutie Johnson, have to experience in the extreme winds. The “cold November wind” foreshadowed the ominous events through 116th Street. The hard-blowing wind made it very uncomfortable for people to walk along the street. In fact Petry stated, ‘It did everything it could to discourage the people walking along the...
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...Society is as cruel as a violent storm sweeping over a city and destroying everything in its path. Author, Ann Petry, in the excerpt of The Street, illustrates a raging storm in which Lutie Johnson is attempting to weather. Petry's purpose is to show how Johnson was able to overcome the storm in order to reveal how she overcame her harsh struggles with society. She adopts a powerful tone in order to relate the feeling of determination Johnson has towards the storm. Through personification, similes, and selection of detail, Petry conveys to the audience that Lutie Johnson has a complicated relationship with the ruthless urban city. Petry begins the excerpt by illustrating the harsh effects the wind has on the town. The narrator reveals”[the wind] drove most of the people off the street…except for a few hurried pedestrians who bent double in an effort to offer the least possible exposed surface to its violent assault.” The speaker also recounts “it did everything it could to discourage the people walking along the street.” Petry uses violent personification to show how aggressive the wind is in order to indirectly characterize the city as a difficult place to live. The threatening figurative language used to describe the town allows the audience to understand how challenging the city is to live in....
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...Within the first half of the opening of “The Street”, Petry personifies the wind. She then begins to introduce Lutie Johnson. Once Lutie Johnson is introduced, the focus shifts from the wind to Lutie Johnson. In the opening of “The Street”, Ann Petry uses imagery in order to personify the wind and includes detail, conjunctions and omission of conjunctions, symbolism, and loose sentence structure in order to set the scene of the story and express how Lutie Johnson feels. It becomes obvious to the reader that Petry develops the plot with an abundance of imagery. She uses specific verbs and adjectives in order to personify the wind. She includes words like “rattled”, “fingering, and “stamped” to describe the wind, rather than her blatantly...
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...University of North Carolina at Pembroke English and Theatre DEPARTMENT COURSE: ENG 2100: African American Literature Fall 2014 INSTRUCTOR: Dr. Charles Tita OFFICE: West Building, Office of Distance Education OFFICE HOURS: Monday 4-6 and Tuesday/Thursday 10:30-12 OFFICE PHONE: 521 6352 FAX: 910 521 6762 EMAIL ADDRESS: charles.tita@uncp.edu LECTURE TIME: Tuesday/Thursday 2-3:15pm LOCATION: DIAL 147 REQUIRED TEXT Gates Jr., Henry Louis, and Nellie Y. McKay, eds. The Norton Anthology of African American Literature. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2004. OPTIONAL REFERENCES Locke, Alain, ed. The New Negro. New York: Atheneum, 1968. hooks, bell. Teaching to Trangress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. New York: Routledge, 1994. Harrold, Stanley. American Abolitionists. New York: Pearson Education, 2001. Youngs, J. William T. American Realities: Historical Episodes-From First Settlements to the Civil War. New York: Longman, 2000. Fanon, Frantz. The Wretched of the Earth. New York: Grove Press, 1963. COURSE DESCRIPTION: A survey of African American literature, introducing students to genres, trends, and major periods of African American literature, ranging from the 17th-, 18th- and 19th- century autobiographies and narratives to 20tth –century works. Authors include: Jupiter Hammon, Briton Hammon, Sojourner Truth, Nat Turner, Claude McKay, Zora Neale Hurston, Sterling Brown, Richard Wright, Lorraine Hansberry, Amiri Baraka, Toni Morrison...
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...2013B Carefully read the following excerpt from the short story “Mammita’s Garden Cove” by Cyril Dabydeen. Then write a well-organized essay in which you analyze how Dabydeen uses literary techniques to convey Max’s complex attitudes toward place. ‘Where d’you come from?’ Max was used to the question; used to being told no as well. He walked away, feet kicking hard ground, telling himself that Line he must persevere. More than anything else he knew 5 he must find a job before long. In a way being unemployed made him feel prepared for hell itself even though he knew too that somewhere there was a sweet heaven waiting for him. How couldn’t it be? After all he was in Canada. He wanted to laugh all of 10 He continued walking along, thoughts drifting back to the far-gone past. Was it that far-gone? He wasn’t sure . . . yet his thoughts kept going back, to the time he was on the island and how he used to dream about 15 being in Canada, of starting an entirely new life. He remembered those dreams clearly now; remembered too thinking of marrying some sweet island-woman with whom he’d share his life, of having children and later buying a house. Maybe someday he’d even own 20 a cottage on the edge of the city. He wasn’t too sure where one built a cottage, but there had to be a cottage. He’d then be in the middle class; life would be different from the hand-to-mouth existence he was used to. 25 His heels pressed into the asphalt, walking on. And slowly he...
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...2013B Carefully read the following excerpt from the short story “Mammita’s Garden Cove” by Cyril Dabydeen. Then write a well-organized essay in which you analyze how Dabydeen uses literary techniques to convey Max’s complex attitudes toward place. ‘Where d’you come from?’ Max was used to the question; used to being told no as well. He walked away, feet kicking hard ground, telling himself that Line he must persevere. More than anything else he knew 5 he must find a job before long. In a way being unemployed made him feel prepared for hell itself even though he knew too that somewhere there was a sweet heaven waiting for him. How couldn’t it be? After all he was in Canada. He wanted to laugh all of 10 He continued walking along, thoughts drifting back to the far-gone past. Was it that far-gone? He wasn’t sure . . . yet his thoughts kept going back, to the time he was on the island and how he used to dream about 15 being in Canada, of starting an entirely new life. He remembered those dreams clearly now; remembered too thinking of marrying some sweet island-woman with whom he’d share his life, of having children and later buying a house. Maybe someday he’d even own 20 a cottage on the edge of the city. He wasn’t too sure where one built a cottage, but there had to be a cottage. He’d then be in the middle class; life would be different from the hand-to-mouth existence he was used to. 25 His heels pressed into the asphalt, walking on. And slowly he...
Words: 37585 - Pages: 151
