PRESENTATION

ENGLISH LITERATURE

What I want to talk about?

• Author’s background• Character • Summary • Setting • Theme

• Symbolism• Point of view

The authors background

• Real name is William Sidney Porter• Lived from 1862 – 1910• Born in Greenboro, North Carolina• Worked at ranch, work for the newspaper,

started on his own paper.• Texas to America then back to Texas -> New

Orleans• Got arrested ( fraud in bank)• 270 short stories• Died

THE FURNISHED ROOM

Characters

•Major character - young man (protagonist) •Minor character – Mrs. Purdy & Mrs. Cool • -Eloise

SUMMARY LISTEN TO ME

LEND ME YOUR EARS PLEASE

IF NOT LEAVE THE ROOM

Setting

• The worn, bruised, furnished room• In a city

THEMESHOPELESSNESS• 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.

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.

Symbolism

• Poor condition of the room represents the cruelty of the people in general.

“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”

Point of view

• Limited omnicient • The story is seen through outside

observer.

Video

THE END