Final Assignment - Vũ Thị Hạnh - V1320023

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING HUNG YEN UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY & EDUCATION Marker’s notes Assignment on English- American Literarture THE FURNISHED ROOM BY O’HENRY Hung Yen, … /… /2021 Marker Supervisor: Class: Student ID: Nguyen Thi Bich Van V13203 V1320023 Student’s name: Vu Thi Hanh Hai Duong, 2021 Table of Contents Page I About The Author - O’ Henry In the first decade of the twentieth century, O’Henry was a widely popular author Let's discover more about him The life “Life is made of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating.” It is one of O' Henry's best famous sentences To begin with, William Sydney Porter known by his pen name O’Henry (September 11, 1862 – June 5, 1910) He was born in Greensboro, North Carolina As you can see, his mother died when he was just three years old He and his father moved to his grandmother's house Next, O’Henry has found it interesting since he was a youngster He read everything he could get his hands on, from classics to cheap novels and he started attending school where his aunt was the principal until 1876 In 1879, he began working for his uncle's pharmac and when he was 19 years old, he earned a degree as a pharmacist Furthermore, he moved to Houston, where he worked a variety of occupations, including that of a bank clerk He married after coming to Austin, Texas, in 1882 Unfortunately, heavy drinking was O Henry's personal tragedy His health had declined by 1908, and his work had suffered a lot Lastly, he died in 1910 from cirrhosis of the liver, diabetic problems, and an enlarged heart The funeral was conducted in New York City, although he was buried in his home state of North Carolina, where he was born The career Like many other authors, O Henry's early career goals were unfocused and he tried a variety of activities and jobs before discovering his passion as a short story writer He began working for his uncle's pharmacy in 1879, and by the age of nineteen, he had earned a degree as a pharmacist His first creative expression came while working at a drugstore, where he would draw the customers who came in Customers reacted to his drawings, and he was recognized for his artistry and drawing abilities And then he moved to Houston and worked in a lot of occupations, including that of a bank clerk Next, while in prison, O’Henry began writing short stories in order to support his daughter Margaret His first published work, "Whistling Dick's Christmas Stocking," appeared in McClure's Magazine in 1899 On the other hand, Porter was released from jail in 1901 after completing three years of his five-year sentence and changing his name to O’Henry When O’Henry arrived in New York City in 1906, he wrote a story for the New York World every week and also published it in other magazines He went on to write 113 stories over a period of around 30 months The works O Henry's short stories may have been influenced by the author's diverse life He published 10 collections and over 600 short stories during his lifetime Henry's first collection, Cabbages, And Kings appeared in 1904 The second, The Four Million, was published two years later and included his well-known stories "The Gift of the Magi" and "The Furnished Room" One can find characters in occupations that the author himself has experienced, and more: shopkeepers, salesmen, journalists, painters, doctors, stage actors, barbers, policemen, inspectors, goldseekers, there are also homeless homeless people, and even criminals and prisoners The book that first won him clear popular and critical acclaim for his tales of New Yorkers, The Four Million, was titled so in mocking contrast to the then famous list of New York's most prestigious families “The Last Leaf," "Christmas Gift," "The Loft," "The Policeman and the Tramp," and many others are among his best-loved short stories among readers and critics The author’s writing styles O’ Henry was a well-known American author There are two of the author’s writing styles like the surprising moving endings and a lot of conversations used To begin with, the author's writing style made the story surprising and moving to the end The stuations of his stories are smart, humous and quite interesting The end of the story is always surprising For example, in the story " The last leaf" the surprise ending was the final realization that the last leaf was not real but a painting seemed to have a magical healing power the pain And then many others his stories have the ending is so interesting Besides, his famous works also the same as the surprising ending, namely The Four Million, The Gift of the Magi, The Furnished Room and so on Furthermore, except the surprsing ending ,the author's writing style also made the stories has several dialogues, which were used in these stories As you can follow the stories of the author, the conversation is the basic form of all other language activities of the characters It helps the readers understand the story one best way he help readers see the story clearly one best way On the other hand, many readers are delighted to place themselves in the position of the conversation because of the compact structure and funny style by O’Henry In conclusion, each of the authors has different writing styles But except for O’Henry, who has an interesting writing style, those are the ending surprises and a lot of conversation II Summary "The Furnished Room" is a short story by the American author William Sydney Porter, who wrote under the pseudonym of O’Henry It was first published in the New York World on August 14, 1904 and was later republished in the 1906 anthology The Four Million “The Furnished Room” is a subtle ghost story about about a young man, his relentless search for his beloved and the cruel end that Fate has reserved for him Dealing with the themes of suffering, isolation, greed, apathy and suicide, The Furnished Room with its combination of mystery, paranormal elements and O Henry’s signature twist ending makes for a terrific read Set in the lower West Side, New York, this grim tale showcases the dark side of the city and the sense of isolation that pervades seemingly crowded areas It also explores the pain and sufferings of lost love through the obsession and desperation of the protagonist A young man who is frantically searching for the girl he loves tries to commit suicide upon failing to find her – ironically, in the very room his girlfriend had killed herself just a week ago Plot summary The story opens with a detailed description of the neighborhood which forms its setting– the lower West Side It is described as being home to a vast number of homeless people, who constantly travel from one dwelling to another, carrying all their worldly possessions with them These people have no permanent address to call their own and this transience is reflected in their hearts and minds Just like its occupants, the area carries around it an air of restlessness and unpredictability The narrator reckons that this district, being home to a vast multitude of dwellers, holds within its houses thousands of stories- some that are dull, and some that might send chills down one’s spine One such tale is that of a young man, who after having spent almost the entire day roving among the red- bricked houses, finally finds a place to rest as the darkness of the evening sets in It is the twelfth house he’s visited that day Upon ringing the doorbell, he is greeted by a greedy-looking housekeeper seeking to acquire as many lodgers as possible Upon inquiring about the availability of a room, the housekeeper offers to show him a room on the third floor which has been lying vacant for almost a week The young man agrees and follows her to the said room, moving through the dingy, dilapidated stairways The house appears to be quite old and broken down, almost in the stage of falling into pieces, with its worn-out carpet covered with moss and eerie-looking walls As they reach the room, the housekeeper informs her guest that the room in the theatrical district rarely remains vacant and has been occupied by many elegant theatre personalities who pay the entire rent in advance She tells him about the famous people that were her lodgers, in an attempt to entice him into renting the same Being tired and weary, the man agrees to engage the room, paying in advance for the entire week and takes possession immediately As the housekeeper is leaving, she is stopped by him He asks her whether she knows the whereabouts of a young girl named Miss Eloise Vashner He describes her as being fair, mediumheighted girl with reddish, gold hair and a dark mole near her left eyebrow She’s engaged in singing on the stage However, the housekeeper claims to have no remembrance of encountering anyone matching the description It is revealed that the young man had been tirelessly searching for this girl, who was his beloved, since the past five months, but is still not able to track her down Thus dejected and dispirited, he lies down to rest upon a chair, lost in his resignation The room, appearing to comfort him with pseudo-hospitality at the beginning, gradually begins telling him about its previous tenants, speaking to him through the various aspects of its furnishing A multicolored rug lies on the otherwise dirty matting The wallpapered walls are decorated with generic pictures that travelers find in most of the lodgings Many items of personal use lie around, probably forgotten by those who’ve vacated the room As the current resident of the room surveys his surroundings, he begins to discover things about the previous tenants from the traces they’ve left behind in the room It seems that the occupants had unleashed all their frustrations on the room Almost all the furniture bore traces of abuse, some being chipped, and others distorted Even the floor and mantel have sustained the injuries as the people, for whom the room was their home, albeit a temporary one, wrecked it in their agony As the young man muses upon these findings, sounds and scents from the other parts of the house drift towards him Suddenly, he catches a strong, sweet odor of mignonette, the one that Eloise, his beloved, used to wear He is absolutely sure that it’s her scent and that she has been in the room before He feels that she’s somewhere near him as her signature scent envelopes him He begins looking for other signs of her stay in that room However, his attempts at locating the source of the scent yields no result Thus frustrated, the man seeks help of the housekeeper in the hope that she might lead him to the whereabouts of Eloise He asks the housekeeper the details of the person who occupied the room before him However, over the entire year, there had been no visitor that held any resemblance to her Thanking her, he returns to the room, with his hopes dampened and his spirit disheartened Losing all hope, he tears the sheets into strips, using them to fill the gaps in the door and the windows in order to block the passage of air Thus confining himself, he turns on the gaslight, puts out the flame, and lies on the bed, attempting to suffocate himself to death Meanwhile, the housekeeper is catching up with her friend over a beer later that evening She informs the latter about finally being able to rent out the thirdfloor When her friend asks her whether she had informed the new guest about what had happened in that room, she reveals her that she hasn’t She remarks that rooms are meant to be furnished for rent They are the only means of earning for people like her and letting out the news that someone had committed suicide in the same room will hampered her business It is then revealed that the girl who had killed herself with gas in that room, exactly matched the one whom the young man had been looking for all this time – she was a fair girl with a dark mole near her left eyebrow III Analysis The main themes 1.1 Setting The story was set in the obscure and scruffy New York West Side It was depicted to be a residential area for the theater community The location was spotted with apartment buildings and old red condos to be let The tragedy took place in a room belonging to one of these aged houses The Furnished Room is an example of a masterful use of the setting to develop the story This is achieved in two levels – the setting of the city and the setting room itself The City – The city-setting is presented as a place of restless movement, where transient humans with no permanent homes flit from one room to another This rootless nature of people that the city cultivates is brought out by the use of plant imagery in the very first paragraph of the story where the man-made redbricked district’s artificiality is contrasted with the lack of all that is natural and wholesome: “Their vine is entwined about a picture hat; a rubber plant is their fig tree.” We see an even more scathing commentary on the nature of the city-setting when the narrator remarks thus: “But it ( the city) was like a monstrous quicksand, shifting its particles constantly, with no foundation, its upper granules of to-day buried tomorrow in ooze and slime.” The room– The Furnished Room is an example of how a masterful sketch of the setting can impact the nature of the story In this regard, the room that the man rents is laden with sociological and psychological significance On an individual level, the dark, inner room represents the repressed part one’s psyche that the supposedly civilized city-norms bind within an individual The room is an arena where this repression finds its release It is, as it were, a region where the Jungian Shadow Side of one’s personality finds its expression This is reflected in the imagery of violence, brutality and lust that is used to describe the room The violence and frustration vented out in the room is seen in the way its furnishings have been abused by the lodgers, an example of which may be seen in the lines below: “A splattered stain, raying like the shadow of a bursting bomb, was witnessed where a hurled glass or bottle had splintered with its contents against the wall.” The room is thus a setting of psychological release not only in terms of an individual, but also in terms of meaningful, intimate relationships that one forges with others and that makes a house a home: “It seemed incredible that all this malice and injury had been wrought upon the room by those who had called it for a time their home” The setting of the room is also symbolic of isolation and loneliness that the city life brings along with it, where, without meaningful relationships to sustain oneself, one feels stranded and lost This is reflected in the imagery of a shipwreck that O’Henry uses to describe the contents of room left by its earlier occupants: “Upon it was some desolate flotsam cast aside by the room’s marooned when a lucky sail had borne them to a fresh port—a trifling vase or two, pictures of actresses, a medicine bottle, some stray cards out of a deck” The deceptive artificiality of the “furnished room” is laid bare where O’Henry compares its welcoming nature to the wiles of a woman of questionable repute: “The furnished room received its latest guest with a first glow of pseudohospitality, a hectic, haggard, perfunctory welcome like the specious smile of a demirep” 10 nothing about gardens Gardens are spaces to be lived in; spaces to spend time in so one can nurture it with love The young man was looking for a room to stay in, but his real purpose was to find his dearest, who had left her home In this huge city, he was sure she would be somewhere, but trouble in paradise arose when he realized this city was restless, always shuffling its stacks b) Love and Determination Love and obsession like the young man could find a needle in the hay And he does find her, but only in essence His passion for Eloise had exceeded physical bounds, for he found her to be a feeling, a presence he could not see, only feel His yearning for her made him converse with the scent His love had learned the language of silence, and he was well aware it was absolutely batty c) Isolation and loneliness The young man feels as though he is facing the world alone He is searching for one girl in a city of thousands of girls The room he rents seems to be monstrous in its chipped furniture, distorted couch, and chipped fireplace mantel “A hut that is our own we can sweep and adorn and cherish.” This is not his room, and he has nothing to show for his life He searches the room to find anything that his lost love might have left behind Like the many other times, he finds nothing His isolation from the rest of the world in this terrible place without hope of finding his girl is a life not worth living Alone, depressed, isolated, and lonely- the young man no longer wants to fight He gives up his life 12 d) Hopelessness After the man has searched all over the town for five months, he gives up his hope Apparently, he was obsessed with this girl and did not want to live without her He faced the large city looking for one lost girl with nothing but negative results “The ebbing of his hope drained his faith He sat staring at the yellow, singing gaslight Soon he walks to the bed…he drove [the torn sheets] in every crevice around the window…turned on the gas and laid himself gratefully upon the bed.” When he smells her fragrance and was sure that she had been in the room, the denial of the housekeeper pushes him over the edge He feels that the girl is gone forever Although he does not know it, he is right She committed suicide in the same bed in which he is going to die The housekeeper took all of his hope away when she lied to him Man must have hope to live Without hope, nothing will ever get better The main characters In the short story " The furnished room" there are four characters consist of the young man, Mrs Purdy, Eloise Vashner, Mrs McCool Each character plays important role In these essay, let me discover more about these characters 2.1 Describe the character of the young man When we first meet the story's main character, a young man who goes unnamed throughout the story, he has been wandering through transient housing in search of a lost love We figure out almost immediately that this man is relentless in his search, making it to twelve houses before 'he rested his lean hand baggage upon the step and wiped the dust from his hatband and forehead.' His face was primed with a layer of dust and he had been carrying around baggage This baggage could mean his luggage and or his pain, torment and heartache This long inquiry process 13 tested him for five long months.He is clearly desperate in his search for the woman, having been at it for a long time with no success His devotion, concern and bother had exceeded all sensible bounds and contrived into an imposing fixation He combed through New York for her and checked even in places he was cringing to find her But this also translates that he had a good degree of patience saved in him He finds shelter at the twelfth house, which shows his willingness to stay committed to his quest He is not a regular to the transient scene, which we can figure out from his description of the place when he talks about its 'foul and tainted air.' Even in his fatigue, he continues on his pursuit, quizzing the housekeeper (who we'll meet later) about former tenants He is tenacious in his questioning of the housekeeper, peppering her with the same questions over and over, desperate for the answers he seeks He eventually relents and settles into his new space He possessed polite and mannerly handling He had a quiet and temperate dialogue and would not indulge in fruitless banter with Mrs Purdy He conversed with Mrs Purdy with an adequate tone and attitude, even when he so badly did not want to believe the hopeless report she gave him about Eloise As he gets to know his new space, he slowly starts allowing his mind to run away with itself He spends a lot of time thinking about what brought him to this place He starts to pick up on the noises around him and throughout the building With his senses heightened, he starts to imagine a familiar smell, the smell of the woman, in the room Then, it seems, he starts hearing voices He is suffering from delusions, and subsequently, starts tearing the room apart looking for evidence that the young woman has been there Not only did he observe characters but also his surroundings, even hushed ones He established the aura of the room and all the pieces in it, tagged a story with 14 each Recognized the scent he should’ve long forgotten, in a few seconds Some may say his sixth sense was his active reflex Slipping further from reality, the man again confronts the housekeeper but doesn't get the answers he seeks He returns to the room, defeated 'The ebbing of his hope drained his faith,' the author tells us It's a telling passage that shows that the young man has lost his reason for living Having lost all hope, he makes preparations to end his life 2.2 Describe the character of Mrs.Purdy Mrs.Purdy is the housekeeper who rents the room to the desperate young man She is a saleswoman from the start, immediately telling the man about how nice the room is and how it’s not frequently vacant She starts dropping names of famous people who have stayed in the room and how they paid for their lodging in advance Right off the bat, Mrs Purdy is shown to be a gross beefy blob of flesh She either looked ravenous or she was again, just too disgustingly fat The young man may as well have seen her as a huge slimy slobbering monster, with the way he described her Her voice had some measure of femininity but not in an attractive melodious manner She advertised the room to the young man with a perfect balance between desperation and indifference, only what a skilled and business-oriented professional could do.The young man’s casual peripheral notice commented that the room had been carelessly cleaned Other than that, the house groaned with each step, the atmosphere stunk of stale air and radiance may have been an ancient concept to the house She did not care to replenish it So even though Mrs Purdy had a keen eye for collecting money, she could care less about how she did it This clearly demonstrated her greedy and selfish custom 15 Sitting with Mrs McCool and enjoying a drink seemed to be a recurring pattern for her She also created the impression that indulging in good gossip was one of her favorite pastimes Along with being hopelessly and helplessly fat, she was also a fat punctual liar, because once a liar, always a liar This quirk of hers was pretty clear by the end of the story 2.3 Describe the character of Eloise Vashner She was the love interest of the protagonist in the story She was a beautiful girl, petite in height and waist, with red-gold ringlets for hair A small mole growing near her left eye was the only flaw to her face She had a melodious singing voice and for some time sung in theatres She had left her home to be a singer and to chase her dream, to see to it that she made a name in the industry But she had to run away from her beloved in order to pursue her ambition This directly pointed to her having a rebellious nature and fighting for what she believed in On a contrary analysis, she also was a very sensitive soul with a huge mix of dramatism She had to possess some extent of a dramatic demeanor, for she wanted to work in the theatre She had also taken the rash and irrational decision of leaving home Even though it was for something she believed in, she could’ve found another way around this approach It is a known fact that success does not come overnight Theatrical workers are well aware that five months may hardly build them a base, but Eloise wished for it too soon Or it could have been the guilt of leaving the man who loved her so dearly behind, or maybe both, that drove her to end her life She was also most of the time misunderstood The young man may not have understood her desire to become a singer, and neither did her audience see much talent in her In this regard, she also sounded like she was a very brave woman 16 She kept on going for quite some time without much support from her loved ones Two roads were diverged in a yellow path for her, and she took the one less travelled, just as Robert Frost did 2.4 Describe the character of Mrs McCool Mrs McCool was a co-worker of Mrs Purdy She must have been an oldie, around Mrs Purdy’s age She was old but she could butter up a person better than a chef could butter bread She would and say all things to please her coworker, Mrs Purdy, so she could remain in her good graces She praised Mrs Purdy for convincing the young man to take the room and not telling the truth about Eloise Vashner It also shows that she was weak, she did not have her own opinions and could not stand for what was right It was clear that Mrs Purdy had the business wrapped up under her supremacy and she wore the pants in hers and Mrs McCool’s relation Consequently, Mrs McCool let her decide major things and let her talk their clients up; meaning Mrs McCool was a major pushover She also seemed to enjoy their little meetings in the basement, or maybe that was also a pretense to delight Mrs Purdy Mrs McCool may remind one of Beadle Bamford from the movie Sweeney Todd: the demon barber of Fleet Street but in a mellow The author’s viewpoints It was a third-person point of view, an outside sneak peek from a window into the protagonist’s life and limited omniscient perspective • Proof of “third person view”:“One evening after dark a young man prowled among these crumbling red mansions, ringing their bells.” In “The Furnished Room”, the author did not describe the story use I to describe the narrator, instead of using he, she or one’s name • Proof of “Limited Omniscient Perspective”: 17 A lot of part in front of this story was focus on the narrators feeling but not tell us the truth that Mrs Purdy wanted to hide As the reader of “The Furnished Room”, in spite of we get the truth of this story at last, we not understand everything about this short story, such as the past of this couple and some reason of Miss Eloise Vashner’s death The author’s notable writing styles In the history of literature, O’Henry was a very popular writer in the first decade of the twentieth century His writing is colorful and he knows how to use irony, paronomasia, metaphor, metonymy, as well as other literary devices to make the story entertaining In this essay, let me discover more about the author’s notable writing styles in the story “ The furnished room” 4.1 Language His general language was simple and flowy There was an unwrinkled flow to his dictions A very uniform fluidity when his narration tipped from one character to the other The shift and transition from one dialogue to the next was effortless However, it does not mean the narration was flat There is an edge to his pieces A constant tension in his words that keep his audience guessing when the scale may tip over His words in the story promise a foreshadow of mighty commotion The content was always mattered up with a rich selection of words, but he eliminated the employment of chunky verbosity This means that more than decorating his stories with superfluous words, he wished for a clear propagation Mingled with that, his grammar and sentence structure were mellow but immaculate, twining pretty well with the register 18 There was also an array of figurative language dispersed through-out the story The anecdote included antidotes of simile, metaphors and personification Personification was scoped in abundance in ratio to simile and metaphor 4.2 Tone The tone and attitude of this story were serious and even dull It was severe in its subject matter, but in the matter of narration, it was gentle but also vacant and cold The elemental expression was dismal and melancholic Therefore, the discourse and the registry of the voice were abiding by a sober and earnest recount 4.3 Philosophy It is obvious the employment of personification was engaged in abundance, but O’ Henry went the extra mile and introduced anthropomorphism It is the ascribing of human actions and habits to non-human existences The scent, the items in the room, the room itself and the ancient house, are far from being non-human entities, but O’ Henry goes on ahead and puppeteers the young man to treat all these non-living materials as non-human essences He grants a feminine voice to smell Shapes it as an embodiment and evaluates the house to be a diseased gray man to grow the story active and adequate 19 This practice in literature also cradles minimalism In “The Furnished Room”, minimalism was expressed in a way that cut down the number of characters Therefore the dialogues were scanty but competent, and the authorial speech, narrator speech and dialogue speech did not jam the fluency of the theme or voice The story remained effortless, simple and short 4.4 Significance of the title A sneak peek into the story revealed that O’ Henry was intrigued and fascinated by motel rooms and apartments that were stayed in by people with theatrical careers Earlier in the story, the narrator pondered on these houses to be alive with the stories of the dead or those that are gone Whatever tragedies, fury, sexual energy, happiness and gloom had been left behind as legacies, would be wiped away by landladies under the greedy, feeble and futile term of furnish The title “The Furnished Room” is a laughable mock by O’ Henry He wanted to expose the selfish nature of business-oriented shallow owners, who dusted the delicate sufferings that tenants had gone through, under the rug, without a grain of penance or decency 4.5 Foreshdowing The Furnished Room makes ample use of foreshadowing However, given O Henry’s skill in weaving it into the immediate context, it is easy to miss them in the first reading of the text The transient nature of human lives is hinted at in the very beginning of the story when the narrator describes the city dwellers as thus: 20 “transients forever—transients in abode, transients in heart and mind” Similarly, the supernatural element in the story is foreshadowed in the second paragraph of the story: “Hence the houses of this district, having had a thousand dwellers, should have a thousand tales to tell, mostly dull ones, no doubt; but it would be strange if there could not be found a ghost or two in the wake of all these vagrant guests.” Also, the theme of death and decay is foreshadowed while describing the vacant niches in the wall:Perhaps plants had once been set within them If so, they had died in that foul and tainted air 4.6 Symbolism The room crumbled at the seams and its maltreatment was the emblem, and some may say one of the motifs of the room The young man observed the room and noticed that it had been hurt and trashed, with passionate anger, anger that had deepset roots He said the relationship between their lash-out and this abused room was the irony the room catered These rooms should disguise as a home for those away from home, but the mockery and coarse paradox was that it only culminated the fact that these wanderers would always be drifters without hometowns, homes and families It also shed light on the fact that artists and men chasing their dreams and inspirations were only served with such scanty unkempt residencies 21 The walls listened and the air recorded, is another recurring symbol As the proverb says, “walls have ears.” It is true that if a place witnesses too much history, it starts to ingrain it on its own parchment and with its own quill.· 4.7 Irony As with most of his stories, O Henry, the master of irony makes ample use of verbal and situational irony in The Furnished Room Notice the used of irony in this exchange between the man and the housekeeper: “Do you have many theatrical people here?” asked the young man “They comes and goes” Accordingly, the man pays for the entire week in advance, not knowing that he will die there that very evening Also, the fact that the man, unknown to himself, commits suicide in the same room and in the same manner in which his beloved had killed herself is the biggest irony, as both literally and figuratively speaking, his search for her will never become successful One does not know what might have been the outcome had he not been in the room or had the housekeeper told him the truth 4.8 Conflict All the consequences in the story, such as Eloise leaving the young man, Mrs Purdy not coming clean to him about the room, and then lying to him, were all because of confusion and lies There was disarray, a pandemonium between the relations 22 a) Person vs Person conflict This was pretty clear, pertaining to the distortion between the young man and his girl It also meddled in, in regards to Mrs Purdy’s dishonesty b) Person vs Self conflict Even though O’ Henry did not shed much light on this, there was a sort of guilt and grief smeared across the young man’s expressions Regardless of the reason Eloise left him for, it is clear there was an established sharing of feelings between them She may have left him because he did not understand her passion for singing Or maybe singing was her excuse to escape because he was an inattentive and lousy partner It could also be that Eloise was a very dramatic chick and ran away because of one petty argument Whatever the reason, the young man set out to look for her and have her make up with him That alone spoke of his fault Towards the end, when he lay down in his bed to die, a part of him did so as a punishment Which is why he was satisfied when he did so He blamed himself for driving her out of his hold and a part of him always knew he may never find her again c) Person vs God conflict There is not much alignment with god or religion in the story, but every man must believe in something, especially in the hour of need Just as the lyrical poetry in Carnival of Rust says, “Do you breathe the name of your savior in your hour of need?” 23 Whatever god was for the young man, he was aggravated at him too It may have felt like god was playing a royal joke on him Every time he got just a bit closer to her (like her scent), he would find himself leagues and light years away, back to square one all over again He felt stumped and powerless The only thing he had power over was his death The irony was that Eloise had done exactly the same, so in a strange way; he had found her and had never been more close to her God works in mysterious ways Paulo Coelho in The Alchemist comments on such a situation, “Every search begins with the beginner’s luck and every search ends with the victors being severely tested.” So he was victorious when he caught a dash of her scent, but his test was that if he wanted to get to her, he had to lose himself Poetic justice decided by god, the only way both could have been together Conclusion: Through the analysis of the stylistic characteristics of O’ Henry’s short narrative the Furnished Room” It can assist the reader more understand the authorship manner of the writer The writer uses specific adjectives and phrase to stress his description ; employs some complex sentences to accomplish peculiar consequence ; employs some rhetorical devices such as figures of address to his narrative more picturesque ; besides use the particular manner of surprise ending” to bring forth the sarcasm and surprising consequence at the terminal of the narrative Lessons drawn The short narrative was written non merely to measure the immature man’s true love to his beloved but to uncover the truth that the capital society makes people cold-hearted Peoples in that society tends to be apathetic and cruel They are the 1s who LITERALLY mind their ain concerns 24 The love The protagonist showed his persistence that he never give up to find his love The love of the narrator was deep and painful Finally he feeling hopeless because the fragrance which represent his will was disappear in the rotten city, therefore, he choose the death at last The love is showed strong persistence but get a sad ending The deceptive, cold and detach The city was described cold and curl by O’Henry Mrs Purdy is the representative of the deceptive petty bourgeois and she lie to the protagonist that she had never seen Miss Vashnor before She not want loss the narrator’s rent which give herself benefit Not only Mrs Purdy was a cold deceptive person, but also this city is a pressure, cold and curl city which pressure and suppress many weak younger O’Henry describe a lot of environment in this city, make the atmosphere became more dark and heavy, give reader blue pressure 25 ... and the Tramp," and many others are among his best-loved short stories among readers and critics The author’s writing styles O’ Henry was a well-known American author There are two of the author’s... of stories- some that are dull, and some that might send chills down one’s spine One such tale is that of a young man, who after having spent almost the entire day roving among the red- bricked... bricked houses, finally finds a place to rest as the darkness of the evening sets in It is the twelfth house he’s visited that day Upon ringing the doorbell, he is greeted by a greedy-looking housekeeper