O Henry's Furnished Room
BRIEF SUMMARY
The short story is about a young man searching for his love in a furnished room. He meets the owner of the furnished room that his love has rented recently. In the latter part of the story, the young man commits suicide in the same room where his love committed suicide, too.
Moreover, the landlady tells to a friend that she knows the girl that the young man is looking for but she does not tell him because she is greatly taking care of her reputation and her business. She wants no one to know that someone committed suicide on her room because it won’t attract lodgers.
INTRODUCTION
This paper aims to analyze some stylistic features of O.Henry’s short story “the Furnished Room”, in order to make further analysis of O.Henry’s particular writing style and its specific effect. The short story was written not just to appraise the young man’s true love to his beloved but to reveal the truth that the capital society makes people cold-hearted. People in that society tends to be indifferent and cruel. They are the ones who LITERALLY mind their own businesses.
STYLISTIC ANALYSIS
1. Lexical features and the according effects Adjectives
Most of the vocabularies in the story are simple and easy to understand. But it’s obvious that the author also employs many complicated and abstract words, especially the adjectives, in order to create the complex atmosphere in the story. For example, when the author describes the room which the young man rents , large amount of adjectives like “faint ,sunless, viscid, unholy, rank, foul and tainted, haggard, perfunctory, sophistical, ragged, gilt, gay-papered, desolate, musty, dank, cold…” are used. They can bring visual imaginary and aid the description of the room and the things in it. Actually many of these adjectives are not common words and it’s a little difficult for the reader to understand them. The propose of using these vocabulary may be the author’s intention to let the reader to have a authentic feel of
The short story is about a young man searching for his love in a furnished room. He meets the owner of the furnished room that his love has rented recently. In the latter part of the story, the young man commits suicide in the same room where his love committed suicide, too.
Moreover, the landlady tells to a friend that she knows the girl that the young man is looking for but she does not tell him because she is greatly taking care of her reputation and her business. She wants no one to know that someone committed suicide on her room because it won’t attract lodgers.
INTRODUCTION
This paper aims to analyze some stylistic features of O.Henry’s short story “the Furnished Room”, in order to make further analysis of O.Henry’s particular writing style and its specific effect. The short story was written not just to appraise the young man’s true love to his beloved but to reveal the truth that the capital society makes people cold-hearted. People in that society tends to be indifferent and cruel. They are the ones who LITERALLY mind their own businesses.
STYLISTIC ANALYSIS
1. Lexical features and the according effects Adjectives
Most of the vocabularies in the story are simple and easy to understand. But it’s obvious that the author also employs many complicated and abstract words, especially the adjectives, in order to create the complex atmosphere in the story. For example, when the author describes the room which the young man rents , large amount of adjectives like “faint ,sunless, viscid, unholy, rank, foul and tainted, haggard, perfunctory, sophistical, ragged, gilt, gay-papered, desolate, musty, dank, cold…” are used. They can bring visual imaginary and aid the description of the room and the things in it. Actually many of these adjectives are not common words and it’s a little difficult for the reader to understand them. The propose of using these vocabulary may be the author’s intention to let the reader to have a authentic feel of