Genre
Psychological Fiction
Setting and Context
Set in the late 1960s in Brooklyn Heights, New York City.
Narrator and Point of View
Third-person narration
Tone and Mood
Tense, Disparaging, Suspenseful, Earnest
Protagonist and Antagonist
Sophie Bentwood is the protagonist who is discontented with her marriage, the fragility of the marriage and the inescapable social disorder are the antagonist.
Major Conflict
The major conflict is their disintegrating marriage of which both Sophie and Otto seem indifferent towards akin to their everyday lives and careers. Adding to their sense of powerlessness in their private lives, the fracture and decay in society further aggravate their anxieties.
Climax
The climax perhaps occurs when the couple catches the cat that ostensibly bit her early on in the story.
Foreshadowing
The passage Sophie reads from the English edition of Renée Mauperin foreshadows the silent deterioration of her marriage and the cat bite.
Understatement
Throughout the novel, Sophie understates the gravity of her bite wound until the pain and infection become unbearable.
Allusions
The narrative alludes to the paradigm shift in 1960s New York where social changes were taking place while inhabitants were coping with postwar society.
Imagery
“The maple trees planted by the neighborhood association the year before were beginning to bud. But the street was not well lighted yet, and despite phone calls, letters, and petitions to City Hall and the local precinct, policemen were rarely glimpsed, except in patrol cars on their way to the slum people…There was still refuse everywhere, a tide that rose but barely ebbed. Beer bottles and beer cans, liquor bottles, candy wrappers, crushed cigarette packs, caved-in boxes that had held detergents, rags, newspapers, curlers, string, plastic bottles, a shoe here and there, dog feces.”
Paradox
The characters’ neighborhood exhibits both the affluence of urban gentrification and the urban decay of former slums.
Parallelism
Otto and Charlie are paralleled, as they are stark opposites of each other in terms of social skills and conflict resolution. While Otto exudes stoicism with a reserved and detached persona Otto is rather melodramatic and emotional.
Metonymy and Synecdoche
“The woman opened a huge black purse and extracted from it a Kleenex”
Kleenex is a brand name that acts as a metonymy for tissue.
Personification
“At night, the street had a quiet earnest look, as though it were continuing to try to improve itself in the dark.”
