The tragedy of society and lov
What will happen in a furnished room? What make the room be unique? And why the author stress “furnished”? When I got a glimpse of this book, there came so many questions. So I read the book to copy with my curiosity.
●A Tragedy of Love
The story is placed on the red brick distric of the lower West Side,New York,where “Restless,shifting, fugacious as time itself is a certain vast bulk of the population ”. There is a place where brim with homeless people. They flit from furnished room to furnished room,transients forever-transients in abode, transients in heart and mind.”They carry their lares et penates in a bandbos;their vine is entwined about a picture hat;a rubber plat is their fig tree.”The book describes.
And in this environment,there comes the chief actor-it is a young man.”At the twelfth he rested hes lean hand-baggage upon the step and wiped the dust from hes hatband and forehead.”It is a sorehead,and just like hundreds of thousands of homeless people who wander in this district,he removed from a furnished roon to another, now it is the twelfth. But he is different from others, in the meantime. The young man shows his unique after he was introducted to the furnished room,the third floor,back. He asked the landlord whether she had met a young girl called Eloise Vashner-the chief actress. But the landlord denied firmly.
And then author used a lot of paper to describe the circumstance of the furnished room. It is a room decorated by poor and worn furniture and in the room can “heard in one room a tittering and incontinent,slack laughter”,the monologue of a scold,the rattling of dice,a lullaby,and one crying dully. The room is a closed, dangerous, inclement space.
Then suddenly, the young man smelled his girl’s scent vaguely-”the strong,sweet odour of mignonette” -in this room. The poor man cried aloud:”What,dear?” He became crazy about searching for the evidences which showed that the young woman had existed in this room .But he could not find anything associated with her though he could recognize the smallest thing she ever had touched. “He found dreary and ignoble small records of many a peripatetic tenat;but of her whom he sought, and who may have lodged there,and whose spirit seemed to hover there,he found no trace.”
So the man turned to the housekeeper again,but the landlord denied him again,which finally beat the spoony down. Then disappointed man came back to the room,desperate pushed him turned out the gas switch and let the gas fill the room,his lying himself gratefully on the bed.
At the same time, the housekeeper was so happy for renting the room,in which a young girl just killed herself on the same bed last week. And that poor girl is the exact person the young man described. The two died in the same furnished room,on the same bed, and even used the same method.
What a pity and what a coincidence!
●A Tragedy of Society
This excellent story is written by O.Henry, whose writing style is usually humorous and witty. The endings of his masterpieces are always out of expectation while they are reasonable if you think them carefully.
The furnished room is just like the society which reflects the seamy side of it . In the O.Henry’s story,the landlord is the symbol of the benumbed and unresponsive capitalist class. They are bristletails in the society and they oppress the workforce to satisfy their stomachs. O.Henry uses serious words,sharp irony,and depressed atmosphere to make a sad story. The tragedy is not just a love tragedy between two person, it is a tragedy between the class and class. The poor,spoony young man and the stage star,the young girl are symbols of workforce. They survive in the society difficultly and they do not want to give up easily and they try their best to face the difficulties they meet. But in that society ,they finally can not miss the fortune of dying because of the crackdown. It is not their problem, it is the problem of society.
The furnished room reflects and abuses the capitalist class and it shows mercy for the workforce. The ending is impressive and pushes us to think over the reason. We should not just concentrate on the death of the two, we should boarden our horizon and face the differences and battles between different classes.
If we want to avoid the tragedy of love,we must solve the tragedy of society. Just like if we want to get rid of illnesses, we should not just depend on medicines but should take exercises to build up our body. Only the society gets its health can we get healthy lives.
Hope that the tragedy may no longer happen.
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