Like Lutie’s, the parallel struggles of other adult women in the novel are tragic. Petry descriptively characterizes in her novel, in order to establish a relationship between the setting and the main character, Lutie. And then she thought about the other streets. The streets are dirty and empty and the harsh wind outside does “everything it could to discourage the people walking along the street,” (2). As the story progresses, Lutie’s experience of a need for space grows in its specific relevance to the black experience of the impoverished ghettos in Harlem. Willing to do anything short of selling her body for money, Lutie makes every effort to escape the physical walls of her apartment in Harlem and overcome the many racial barriers to opportunity that press in on her with increasing force as she moves closer to her tragic fate. It would get them sooner or later, for it sucked the humanity out of people—slowly, surely, inevitably.’’. The first 34 lines of the novel are mainly focused on describing the environment. Petry's novel is a commentary on the social injustices that confronted her character, Lutie Johnson, as a single black mother in this time period. At the end of the third paragraph, the wind is described ‘assaulting’ people on the street, “the wind grabbed their hats, pried their scarves from around their necks, stuck its fingers inside their coat collars, blew their coats away from their bodies.” (Lines 31-34) Personifying the wind as having “fingers” is enough to create a tense and eerie tone. Free proofreading and copy-editing included. He is a desperate man acting like a caged animal in his devious ploy to hurt Lutie and Bub. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1946. In his famous essay ‘‘Everybody’s Protest Novel,’’ writer James Baldwin critiques the genre of protest fiction popular with African American authors, arguing that the ‘‘failure of the protest novel lies in its rejection of life, the human being, the denial of beauty.’’ With the very human, sympathetic Lutie, Petry appears to succeed where her contemporaries fail. She reworked her experiences as a reporter for two Harlem newspapers, The Amsterdam News and The People’s News, into her novel The Street. “There was a cold November wind blowing through 116th Street.” You’re alone in an unfamiliar, grimy and bitter city, just looking for a place to spend the night. By introducing Lutie’s experience of changing physical and psychological spaces in a neutral context relevant to all people regardless of race, Petry builds a foundation onto which she can build an argument with universal appeal: “She noticed that once the crowd walked the length of the platform and started up the stairs toward the street, it expanded in size. The Harlem Renaissance, a cultural movement which brought out the literary interest of many black American writers is the theme behind many novels written in the period 1920-1935. No longer describing the details of an experience to which all New York City residents can relate, Petry writes about the inadequate living conditions of the inner city neighborhoods, explaining, ‘‘The trouble is that these rooms are so small. The Street opens with the story’s main character, Lutie Johnson, braving a bitter, cold wind as she walks through Harlem in New York City. The novel begins in New York City on a cold and windy day in November of 1944. Petry is able to establish the Capitalism & The American Dream The Sexual Politics of Race and the Racial Politics of Gender Classism: How do Lutie and Min attempt to break free of the constraints living in society where they are constantly victimized by men? In contrast to the insight she develops later in the novel, Lutie’s early view is relatively limited: ‘‘[Lutie] hummed as she listened to it, not really aware that she was humming or why, knowing only that she felt free here where there was so much space.’’ As she continues to come up against the forces of institutional sexism and racism, her perspective begins to shift into a deeper understanding of her own oppression— encouraging readers, who have come to sympathize with her, to shift their perspective on race relations as well. Lutie has two strikes against her from birth. . Ann Petry This Study Guide consists of approximately 50 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of The Street. The Street by Ann Petry: Literary Analysis “There was a cold November wind blowing through 116 th Street.” You’re alone in an unfamiliar, grimy and bitter city, just looking for a place to spend the night. The relationship between Lutie Johnson and the urban setting is established by the use of personification, imagery and characterization, in The Street by Ann Petry. In The Street, Petry uses imagery as a tool to establish a relationship between the setting and Lutie. The story begins with the main character, Lutie Johnson, looking at an apartment available for rent. Raw, real, and vibrant, life on the street pulses on, dominated by sharply drawn characters. Her book The Street was the The setting of this novel is Harlem in the 1940s. Print. It pushed the walls back and back into space. Like the other black characters in Petry’s work, the novel’s protagonist Lutie Johnson and her son Bub are victims of an institutional racism that grants privileges to Anglo Americans while denying them to African Americans. Professional writers in all subject areas are available and will meet your assignment deadline. The Street by Ann Petry is a novel about a woman, Lutie Johnson, who finds herself in this situation. The story deals with the life and trials of the Mulatto woman Lutie Johnson and her struggle to find a place in this environment for herself and her son. Theodore Roethke’s "My Papa's Waltz": Summary & Analysis, Cite this article as: William Anderson (Schoolworkhelper Editorial Team), "The Street by Ann Petry: Literary Analysis," in. In her novel, Petry uses personification in the interest of establishing a relationship between the setting and Lutie Johnson. Through the combined use of these devices and others, Petry is able to make the reader relate to Lutie in this new, harsh and confusing environment. It wasn’t just this street that she was afraid was bad. One community in which the racism and oppression towards Country Place by Ann Petry (1947) came on the heels of the massive success of her first novel, The Street, published just the year before. With Lutie’s uncompromising attitude toward her body, Petry insists to readers that black people are human. Our May 2020 pick for the PBS NewsHour-New York Times book club is Ann Petry’s “The Street.” Become a member of the Now Read This book club … To make her protest against institutional racism rhetorically compelling, Petry must successfully dispel the misguided notion that problems of the ghetto may be attributed to some failing on the part of its residents. Laura Noll, Critical Essay on The Street, in Novels for Students, Gale, Cengage Learning, 2010. As a strong, beautiful woman, she evokes the sympathy of readers, who cannot help but admire her strength and perseverance while those around her insist that she succumb to the lure of easy money by prostituting herself—a proposition that Lutie rejects in spite of her desperation. Article last reviewed: 2019 | St. Rosemary Institution © 2010-2020 | Creative Commons 4.0. Let us do your homework! Sara Constantakis, Novels for Students: Presenting Analysis, Context & Criticism on Commonly Studied Novels, Ann Petry, Volume 33, Gale-Cengage Learning, 2010 … Later, Lutie sings and catches the attention of Boots Smith, a sly man who falsely promises a music career to her. The struggle by Lutie Johnson to make a home for her eight-year-old son, Bub, to keep him off the streets, to give him the opportunity to grow up unwrapped by fear and violence and evil … with the setting in Harlem we see a slice of life hitherto unknown to most of us. This detailed literature summary also contains Related Titles and a Free Quiz on The Street by Ann Petry. The crowd that Lutie observes is implicitly diverse but moves together, suggesting from the start that Lutie’s journey concerns us all. It was any street where people were packed together like sardines in a can. Petry, Ann. The 1940's were an extremely rough time for African Americans living in the United States. Supe was captain of the detectives and he, Bub, was his most valued henchman.”. Science Teacher and Lover of Essays. Ann Petry’s first novel, “The Street,” was a literary event in 1946, praised and translated around the world — the first book by a black woman to sell more than a million copies. Students are rewarded for what they do well. As Lutie discovers after noticing the disparity between her own observations of an event and the way it is presented in the newspaper, ‘‘it all depended on where you sat how these things looked.’’ Viewing her situation from a new vantage point after experiencing multiple setbacks in her attempt to find decent work, Lutie begins to recognize that her situation is not unique: ‘‘It was a bad street. Where Mrs. Hedges withdraws from Mr. Junto, who genuinely admires and respects her, Lutie withdraws from her son when she abandons him at the Children’s Shelter. https://schoolworkhelper.net/the-street-by-ann-petry-literary-analysis/, Richard Wright’s “Black Boy”: Literary Analysis, Robert Bolt’s A Man For All Seasons: Summary & Analysis, Joyce Oates’ “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?”: Arnold Friend Analysis, Yevgeny Yevtushenko’s Babi Yar: Summary & Analysis, Barbara Kingsolver’s “Animal Dreams”: Alice Analysis, “On the Sidewalk, Bleeding”: Analysis & Theme, Psychological testing: Construction, Administration, Validity, Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House”: Analysis & Summary, Augustus’ Role in Shaping the Roman Empire, Arthur Miller’s The Crucible: Abigail Williams Analysis, Hiro Murai’s “Guava Island”: Film Analysis, Alice Dunbar Nelson: Poet, Essayist and Activist, Impact of Globalization- Gini Coefficient. After she had been in them just a few minutes, the walls seemed to come in toward her, to push against her.’’ Likewise, Lutie’s desire to find a better place to live is framed in terms of a need for space: ‘‘Now that she had this apartment, perhaps the next thing she ought to do was to find another one with bigger rooms.’’ Again keeping the prejudices of white readers at bay, Petry conveys Lutie’s experience in terms that are not racially specific while simultaneously evoking sympathy for Lutie’s struggle. . (Line 24) While some imagery, “she felt suddenly naked and bald, for her hair had been resting softly and warmly on the back of her neck,” gives us hints about how Lutie feels in this new setting. In order to establish this complex relationship between Lutie and the urban setting, Petry employs personification, imagery and characterization. Print Word PDF Ann Petry’s 1946 novel, The Street. AmazonでのThe Street: A Novel。アマゾンならポイント還元本が多数。作品ほか、お急ぎ便対象商品は当日お届けも可能。またThe Street: A Novelもアマゾン配送商品なら通常配送無料。 Organized into eighteen chapters and set in … Despite the squalid conditions of the apartment, and the strange and even threatening behavior of the building’s superintendent, Jones , Lutie takes the apartment because she knows she has few other options … As the novel careens toward its devastating conclusion, Lutie herself becomes less able to feel human. ATTENTION: Please help us feed and educate children by uploading your old homework! ANN PETRY (1908-1997) was a reporter, pharmacist, teacher, and community activist. Tutor and Freelance Writer. so they could believe in themselves again,’’ and with the powerful relief provided by the illusion of increased space: “The big mirror in front of her made the Junto an enormous room. Set in World War II era Harlem, it centers on the life of Lutie Johnson. The Street, written by Ann Petry and published in 1946, follows Lutie Johnson, a single mother of a young boy named Bub, who moves into a new apartment in Harlem during the 1940s. Analysis Of The Street By Ann Petry 1129 Words | 5 Pages In the novel, The Street by Ann Petry the main character Lutie Johnson, a black woman is a single mother raising her son Bub in 1944 Harlem. But over the years, not all of its covers conveyed the complex themes of race and class. In the beginning of the novel, Petry introduces the idea that Lutie’s perception of space is tied to her life journey: ‘‘As the train gathered speed for the long run to 125th Street, the passengers settled down into small private worlds, thus creating the illusion of space between them and their fellow passengers.’’ Implying that everyone has a need for a private psychological world, Petry’s description of the crowded train suggests that a relationship exists between the need for physical and psychological space. And it wasn’t just this city.‘‘ Here, Lutie begins to understand and clarify for the reader the relationship between housing segregation (a situation created in part by unfair mortgage lending practices) and the poverty of African Americans, thinking, “It was any city where they set up a line and say black folks stay on this side and white folks stay on this side, so that black folks were crammed on top of each other—jammed and packed and forced into the smallest possible space until they were completely cut off from the light and air.”, By the time Lutie comes to the conclusion that it is white people who are responsible for the situation in Harlem, readers are so invested in Lutie’s perspective that they cannot help agreeing with her when she declares, ‘‘No one could live on a street like this and stay decent. The same people who had made themselves small on the train, even on the platform, suddenly grew so large they could hardly get up the stairs to the street together.”. Thus, one might also claim that Petry’s novel is about portraying the difficulties a single coloured woman and mother had in Harlem, living on 116th Street in … The train is in motion, serving as a metaphor for Lutie’s life journey and the processes of changing race relations in the inner-city. Only, Supe is not the captain of detectives. Her 1946 debut novel The Street became the first novel by an African-American woman to sell more than a million copies. Analysis Of The Street By Ann Petry 1129 Words5 Pages In the novel, The Street by Ann Petry the main character Lutie Johnson, a black woman is a single mother raising her son Bub in 1944 Harlem. Georgia-born Mrs. Hedges, … The Street tells the poignant, often heartbreaking story of Lutie Johnson, a young black woman, and her spirited struggle to raise her son amid the violence, poverty, and … While certainly misguided in her belief that the pursuit of the American Dream will be fruitful, Lutie works with integrity to feed and clothe her only son. An Analysis of "The Street" by Ann Petry by Sirinya Pakditawan (Author) ISBN-13: 978-3656841746 ISBN-10: 3656841748 Why is ISBN important? ‘‘He had been chained to buildings until he was like an animal,’’ a fact that Petry underscores through the cruelty of his subsequent actions. Lutie’s unsuccessful attempts to find more space for herself and Bub are not unlike Mrs. Hedges’s escape from a burning building, ‘‘determined that she would force her body through the narrow window.’’ Like Mrs. Hedges, Lutie survives the novel physically, escaping on a train to Chicago; however, also like Mrs. Hedges, she withdraws from the people who love her. Hence, The Streetis also concerned with different aspects of urban life. In the excerpt from Ann Petry’s The Street, Lutie Johnson’s resistance to the city and the surrounding area of 110th street is shown through explicit imagery and personification of the wind. In addition to her metaphorical presentation of 116th Street, Petry depicts the street in realistic detail; it is a place where prostitutes, pimps, and other criminals live and where her young son, Bub, is in constant danger when left alone. Analysis Of Ann Petry's The Street 1115 Words | 5 Pages In Ann Petry’s The Street, Lutie Johnson is an amicable African American woman as she navigates through a hard life of poverty and motherhood. (Lines 36-38) Each piece of imagery that Petry chooses to include in her novel reveals a little bit more about the relationship between Lutie and the setting. Sara Constantakis, Novels for Students: Presenting Analysis, Context & Criticism on Commonly Studied Novels, Ann Petry, Volume 33, Gale-Cengage Learning, 2010. Like the adult characters in Harlem who are lured by the illusion of space at Junto’s bar, Bub—an innocent child—is lured by the space William Jones inhabits in the cellar of their apartment building, since ‘‘there was so much space down here, too.’’ In the warmth of the fire and the attention of Jones, Bub’s perception of reality shifts dangerously into line with that of the malicious superintendent, “This was real. (Ann Petry’s The Street) The score reflects the quality of the essay as a whole—its content, its style, its mechanics. By keeping the focus in the beginning of the book on Lutie’s experience of Harlem’s poverty, rather than on race, which was extremely controversial during the 1940s (the United States Army was still segregated racially during World War II and in the occupation of Germany thereafter, for instance), Petry invites white readers to empathize with the need for escape, ‘‘No matter what it cost them, people had to come to places like the Junto . Read the selection carefully and then write an essay analyzing how Petry establishes Lutie Johnson’s relationship to the urban setting through the use of such literary devices as imagery, personification, selection of detail, and figurative language. The wind Lutie faces is personified as a hostile character, mirroring the aggressive attitude of many white Americans toward … For this purpose her determined protagonist, Lutie Johnson, is perfect. While often treated as a realist novel about the interior lives of its characters and their internal experiences of oppression, Ann Petry’s The Street may also be read as a powerful protest novel—one with the potential to provoke specific political and social changes for the benefit of African Americans and women. Boots later sexually assaults Lutie, who kills him and escapes. The persuasive power of Petry’s carefully crafted work can be traced to the changing perceptions of The Street’s characters as they experience changes in the space available to them in response to their experiences of oppression. In The Street, Ann Petry utilizes dark personification, violent imagery, and terrifying selection of detail to compare the “cold November wind” to life’s obstacles. How does Petry address the issue of the "woman as a By aligning the plights of her characters, Petry bridges the gap between her feminine ideal, Lutie, and those characters who gave up the futile fight against institutional racism long ago, thereby extending the implications of Lutie’s story to all African Americans who are forced to live in the ghettos of the inner city by unfair governmental and business lending practices. Ann Petry (October 12, 1908 – April 28, 1997) was an American writer of novels, short stories, children's books and journalism. . They were faced with constant oppression and racism from others around them. Most of the imagery included in the novel, such as, “the dirt got into their noses, making it hard to breathe,” reveals more about the hostile and nearly uninhabitable environment. After her audition with Mr. Crosse for a position as a singer, Lutie feels trapped, and comes to realize that her attempts to escape have been futile because ‘‘from the time she was born, she had been hemmed into an ever-narrowing space, until now she was very nearly walled in and the wall had been built up brick by brick by eager white hands.’’ Nor can she control the anger she feels in response to being trapped: ‘‘She was neatly caged here on this street and tonight’s experience had increased this growing frustration and hatred in her.’’ To preemptively counter those readers who are inclined to disagree, Lutie’s perspective is immediately juxtaposed with that of Bub’s white teacher, Miss Rinner, who incorrectly attributes the erratic animal-like behavior of her black students to their lack of morality rather than differences in privilege that existed between white and black residents of New York. The Street Chapters 1-3 Summary & Analysis Chapter 1 Summary The novel opens as Lutie Johnson walks the uninviting streets of Harlem looking for a new apartment for herself and her 8-year-old son, Bub. Your online site for school work help and homework help. This great, warm, open space was where he really belonged. The Street study guide contains a biography of Ann Petry, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis. Throughout these lines, Petry uses words like “dirt and dust and grime,” to negatively characterize the setting and make it seem unappealing to the reader. Intimately tied to the success of her protest is Petry’s treatment of space. Science, English, History, Civics, Art, Business, Law, Geography, all free! The Street, written by Ann Petry, is a novel that explores the way of life for both Caucasian and African Americans during the 1940’s and provides valuable insight to the problems that plagued both races during this turbulent time in history. The apartment is located on 116th Street in Harlem, New York, and Johnson immediately despises the apartment supervisor, Jones, as he has taken a sexual fantasy to Lutie. By quietly earning the readers’s sympathy for Lutie as a human being and then gradually introducing readers to the idea that white people are to blame for the one-way train Lutie boarded at birth, Petry gives herself a chance to be heard by white and black readers alike and succeeds in protesting the status quo. Lutie, separated from her husband Jim faces many challenges including poverty, sexism, and racism. The Street, naturalistic novel by Ann Petry, published in 1946, that was one of the first novels by an African American woman to receive widespread critical acclaim. 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