O Henry’s Furnished Room Essay

The short humbug is about a adolescent man meddle about for his making 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 felo-de-se 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 close toone committed suicide on her room because it wont attract lodgers. mental hospitalThis paper aims to analyze some stylistic features of O.Henrys short story the Furnished Room, in order to make further analysis of O.Henrys particular writing style and its specific effect. The short story was written not just to appraise the young mans true love to his beloved but to reveal the truth that the capital society makes people cold-hearted. People in that society t ends to be indifferent and cruel. They are the ones who LITERALLY nous their own businesses.STYLISTIC ANALYSIS1. Lexical features and the according set up Adjectives Most of the vocabularies in the story are simple and easy to understand. But its clear 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 its a little difficult for the indorser to understand them. The propose of victimization these vocabulary may be the authors intention to let the reader to have a authentic feel o f that room and the whole society. obscure word may help produce this kind of feeling.Noun PhrasesOne main character of the story is Mrs. Purdy, the landlady. The author tries to describe her in details using some specific noun phrases, such as an unwholesome, surfeited worm her throat seemed lined with fur furry throat Through that appearance more(prenominal) information of the landlady is added and a smart as a whip figure of a disgusting woman was shown. This ugly appearance of the landlady can originally provide a background of her hardheartedness mentioned later.2. Syntactic features and the according effectsThis article contains various types of sentences, both simple and complex structure. The author uses not only declarative, but also inverted sentences, subjunctive mood, indirect lecture, aiming to come upon particular effect, such as to emphasize someone or something. Take the specific followings for example (1) Restless, shifting, fugacious as time itself, is a ce rtain vast bulk of the population of the redbrick district of the lower West Side. The first is most important principle is employed here. At the beginning of the passage, the author uses syntactic inversion to emphasize the unstable atmosphere of the district, aiming to present the background of the whole story at the first sentence. (2) it would be strange if there could not be found a ghost or two in the arouse of all these vagrant ghosts. The subjunctive mood here shows the author attitude towards the solid world and emphasizes the cruel reality of the society. (3)To the door of this, the twelfth house whose bell he had rung, came a housekeeper who made him think of an unwholesome, surfeited worm that had eaten its nut to a comprehend shell and now sought to fill the vacuity with edible lodgers. This sentence is rather long and complex, including one inverted sentence and three attributive clauses. The complexity is helpful for the description as it gives and withholds in formation. The step-by-step revelation can make the sentence coherent and close linked. The reader can be deeply move of the situation it describes. (4) They comes and goes we has our living to be making (the landlady) The short form and grammatic mistake of these sentences prove that the landlady is not actually well-educated and her utterances can reveal her real character to the readers.3. Phonological features and the according effectsIn the view of phonology, the story has a specific feature produced by the character of Mrs. McCool, the landladys friend. She speaks with non-standard English and sounds strange. (1) Now, did ye, Mrs. Purdy, maam? said Mrs. McCool, with intense admiration. You do be a wonder forrentin rooms of that kind. And did ye tell him, then? (2) Yis, maam tis true. Tis just one wake ago this day I helped ye lay out the third floor, back. A pretty slip of a colleen she was to be killin herself wid the gas Compared with Mrs. Purdy, Mrs. McCool speaks with non -standard English which is full of grammatical mistakes. The underlined words show some features of Black English Vernacular. It implies that maybe she is poor-educated and simple-minded. Her social status can aid with making up the background of the story.4. Semantic features/figures of speech and the according effectsThe use of characteristic figures of speech in this article is frequent and effective. Obviously the rhetorical devices here can make the description more realistic and impressing. Take some examples from the story for support. (1) their vine is entwined about a picture hat a rubber plant is their fig direct. Traditionally vine and fig tree are often planted in house yard and here they stand for stable and clever family life. The author uses metaphor to show peoples eager for happy family life, which is not restless any more. (2) a housekeeper who made him think of an unwholesome, surfeited worm that had eaten its nut to a hollow shell and now sought to fill the vac ancy with edible lodgers. The author describes the landlady as a worm in order to dram a vivid picture of a greedy woman who forever hungers for profit. The employment of animizing produces special effect which may make the reader smile and impressed.(3) It seemed to have become vegetable to have degenerated in that rank, sunless air to luxurious Lichen or spreading moss The carpet in the room are said to become vegetable, lichen and moss, which are disgusting things. What the atmosphere of the room is like can be clearly shown through that metaphor.(4) but it was like a monstrous quicksand, shifting its particles constantly, with no foundation, its upper granules of to-day buried to-morrow in ooze and slime. The simile here is rather obvious which compare the city as quicksand. It draws a real picture of the cruel city and society which is a heaven and also a hell. The reader may understand why the hero of the story feels desperate and commits suicide hopelessly.CONCLUSION Thro ugh the analysis of the stylistic features of O. Henrys short story the Furnished Room, it can help the reader more understand the writing style of the author. The author uses specific adjectives and phrase to emphasize his description employs some complex sentences to achieve particular effect employs some rhetorical devices, such as figures of speech, to make his story more, picturesque also use the special way of surprise ending to produces the irony and surprising effect at the end of the story.