The Street Ann Petry Analysis

The Street, is a novel, by Ann Petry, that tells a story about Lutie Johnson’s relationship to the urban setting. Petry conveys Johnson’s relationship to the urban setting through the use of imagery, personification and selection of detail. These literary devices help not only help give a better way to explain what Johnson is going through, but lets the readers have a better way of understanding it.
Imagery plays a huge role in this story with it being almost in every sentence you read. With imagery Petry is able to explain how hash the wind was from “it rattled the tops of garbage cans, sucked windows shades out through the top of opened windows and set them slapping back against the windows”. This helps the readers understand that the wind was out of control and messing up everything in its way.
Personification, just like imagery, plays a big role in the story. Personification helps bring the wind to life and show how it makes the people living in that area lives much harder. “Fingering its way along the curb”, “she shivered as the cold fingers of the wind touched the

Readers will find details about almost anything that comes to play in the story, such as the wind and how ferocious it is or how it gives great detail on the sign Johnson goes to look at. “She could see that it had been there for a long time because its original pain was streaked with rust where years of rain and snow had finally eaten the paint off down to the metal and the metal had slowly rusted, making a dark red stain like blood”. This sentence has a lot of detail in it explaining how old the sign is, how long it must’ve been there and how rusty it look, without so much details Petry could have just said the sign was old a rusty but that wouldn’t appeal to many people. The selection of detail helps bring readers in and make them keep reading along with making the story more