Summary Of Ann Petry's The Street

The conflict between light and dark, good and evil, protagonist and antagonist is one often discussed in literature as it is both comprehensively simple and unfathomably complex. Ann Petry dives deep into this motif in her 1946 novel, The Street, exploring, in specific, the conflict between the {never ceasing to try} protagonist, Lutie Johnson, and the seemingly uncontrollable antagonist that is the urban setting that surrounds her. The author masterfully incorporates this motif into Lutie’s relationship with her surroundings through skillful integration of personification, careful selection of details, and vivid descriptive imagery.
Petry’s primary tool in characterizing the nature of the relationship between Lutie and the novel’s setting is her use of personification in this selection of her work. The omnipresent narrator describes the wind as, “[doing] everything it could to discourage the people walking along the street” (lines 21-22). This shows how, despite the city’s many efforts to hinder Lutie’s progress in finding a home, she is able to continue moving forward. Also, the characterization of the wind as violating Lutie establishes it further as the antagonist and her as the innocent victim. For example, the narrator states that “She shivered as the cold fingers of the wind touched the back of her neck, explored the sides of …show more content…
The narrator says in the first paragraph that “[the harsh 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 its violent assault” (lines 5-6, 7-9). It is then later said that Lutie’s reaction to this same assault is that she simply shivers, virtually unbothered in comparison to the rest of the people of the