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O Henry's The Furnished Room

705 Words3 Pages
The human experience is influenced by a series of emotions that affect how people act on an everyday basis. Two emotions that drive people toward severe actions include love and loneliness. O Henry illustrates the theme of how loneliness and love can make the human heart act in ways it would never normally act, in the short story “The Furnished Room”. Although the circumstances in the story may come across as far-fetched, the theme expressed in the story through O Henry’s descriptive word choice, figurative language and more provides a brilliant display of how love and loneliness can drive someone to do the most outrageous of things. Despite the tragic circumstances in the story, O Henry’s descriptive word choice serves as an aid to help people accurately interpret how the influence of love can affect our actions. O Henry displays the theme through his diction when he wrote, “No. Always no. Five months of ceaseless interrogation and the inevitable negative”(4). The description and word choice from this line of the story allows O Henry to exploit the feelings behind the young man’s actions. By stating that the man has been “ceaselessly” searching for five months, O Henry develops the young man’s character in a way that showed that he would do anything for love. This also reveals that the young man has an obvious longing to restore the love and affection he once had. For instance, when the young man believes that he may have found the girl he has been searching for, the
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