Jackie Toomey
11/17/2011
English D
Petry Analysis
“The Street” By Ann Petry
Shifting between physical and intellectual characteristics when describing the “wind” in “the street”, Ann Petry uses a “cold”, uninviting tone coupled with sinister personification and menacing imagery in order to solidify the common idea that despite the large amount of people, city streets never fail to “discourage” newcomers with all their “dirt”, “dust”, and “coldness”; just as they did to Lutie Johnson.
Throughout the entirety of the excerpt, Petry consistently leaves the reader with a sense of “coldness” in regard to the tone of the piece, which she develops through the use of forbidding, inhospitable diction. She describes how, in it’s rage, the wind “drove most of the people off the street...except for a few hurried pedestrians who bent double in an effort to offer the least possible exposed surface to it’s violent assault”, which, in itself, contributes various different instances where the diction she chooses aids in the creation of the harsh, brutal tone. She also accounts for the way that the wind “did everything it could to discourage the people walking along the street. It found all the dirt and dust and grime on the sidewalk and lifted it up so that the dirt got into their noses, making it difficult to breathe; the dust got into their eyes and blinded them; and the grit stung their skins.” In doing this, Petry further exemplifies that there is nothing hospitable or welcoming about the wind described in the excerpt; only cold, merciless tone that chills the reader down to their very bones.
Working along with the cold tone she has developed early on, Petry makes use of dark, ominous personification in order to develop a sinister personality that she attributes to the wind throughout the excerpt. She gives life to it by describing the way it “rattled the tops of garbage cans, sucked window shades out through the top of opened windows and set them flapping back against the windows.” Her utilization of humanlike actions such as “rattled” and “sucked” aid in showing just how uninviting the wind can make a city seem. By exemplifying how the wind “drove most of the people off the street”, it further shows that “the wind”does not welcome those who do not belong there. In order to show the inhospitable characterization of the wind, Petry uses dark, sinister personification that illuminates the depth surrounding the intensity the personification adds to her excerpt.
The dimension added to Petry’s excerpt through the use of ominous, menacing imagery is one that is essential to the development of her universal idea. Right from the start, Petry wastes no time with sugar coated descriptions of happenings in her work, instead she does a wonderful job of evoking emotion from the reader when she describes how the wind “wrapped newspaper between their feet entangling them until the people cursed deep in their throats”, and how it “grabbed their hats, pried their scarves from around their necks, stuck its fingers inside their coat collars, blew their coats away from their bodies.” In this instance, it is fairly easy for the reader to develop a vivid image in their mind of the happenings that have taken place at that particular point in the section. She further adds to the balefulness of the piece by telling how the wind in it’s actions made it so difficult that those around it “cursed deep in their throats, stamped their feet, kicked at the paper”, and became generally very uncomfortable. Just as Lutie Johnson experiences, the wind can have a daunting effect on the confidence of someone lost and alone in a large, populated city.
