The Street Ann Petry Analysis

FRQ #2 : The Street
In this excerpt from Ann Petry’s novel, “The Street”,, Petry utilizes asyndeton, personification, imagery and selection of detail to establish Lutie Johnson’s relationship to the urban setting and their enemy and antagonist, “the cold November wind”. In this opening excerpt, the readers will discover on how aggravating and uncooperative the urban life would be during spring, in addition, decipher on how effective the wind are to Lutie Johnson and its people. Throughout this excerpt, Petry deliberately employs asyndeton to describe the role of the “cold winter wind” and its potential. In the second paragraph, Petry applies this literary device in line 10 through 15 to convey how the gust of wind “found every scrap of paper along the street--theater throwaways, announcements of dances and of bread had been wrapped in, the thinner waxed paper that had enclosed sandwiches, old envelopes, newspapers”, this expresses the burden of the wind and its precised role in the urban setting, also this can portray similarities to a janitor , in addition, in the third paragraph,
As Petry begins to utilize asyndeton, she will constantly state that the wind will perform a humanly action such as in paragraph 2, line 10, “ [it] found every scrap of paper..” also the objects that the wind picks up will execute a human action as quoted in line 15, “the wind set the bits of paper to dancing high in the air..” Petry also treated as a person, in paragraph 3 line 21, who “did everything it could to discourage the people walking along the street”. This use of personification gave the wind character and possibly a rival towards Lutie Johnson, which made her suffer to scavenge a house in the urban area. As written in paragraph 5, line 40, the “wind pushed it away from her so that she wasn’t certain whether it said three rooms, or two