The Street By Ann Petry: Summary

The third person omniscient point of view in The Street by Ann Petry helps show Lutie Johnson’s feeling of victimization. A parasitic relation is revealed between herself and the setting. Lutie Johnson’s perception and relationship with the urban environment is established through extremely vivid imagery and personification.

Through personification, we see the parasitic relationship between Lutie Johnson and the urban setting. The main source of this personification is linked with the wind, symbolizing the life of the city. It is described as living thing, shaping the city. The wind in the street is representative of the all the unpleasant elements of a life in the city—depicting this urban atmosphere. The wind becomes an unavoidable grievance to all city goers, “it did everything it could

to discourage the people walking along the street.” The wind figuratively grabs their tangible belongings just as a city can deteriorate a person’s intangible spirit. The personification conveys how Lutie feels she is one of the many victims subject to the urban city life.

The narrator describes specifically how the wind invades her personal space, “as the cold fingers of the wind touched the back of her neck…bathed in a rush of coldness.” By adding this, it shows how she must constantly deal with these unpleasant aspects, having to find strength within herself to make it in an urban setting. The wind whipping the sign back and forth is the city fighting Lutie, keeping her from finding the shelter she needs. It is ironic that wind is an aspect of nature, and the narrator uses it to describe the torment of the city. However, the narrator does this to emphasize lively facade that many city’s have, when in reality, it is anything but high spirited. Overall, the personification of the wind portrays this parasitic relationship.

The imagery throughout the selection emphasizes the negative characteristics of the city, enlightening us of Lutie Johnson’s perspective. This imagery makes the city seem suffocating. It almost seems inessential as it is so meticulously detailed, describing the “announcements of dances…heavy waxed paper…chicken bones and pork-chop bones.” This could

equally be described as trash, however, the narrator extends his description to add a feeling of being overwhelmed by the different elements of the city. These objects seem innocuous by themselves, but when listed together, an image of the grime city’s hold is stressed. The imagery is extended to describe every trivial object and how the wind attacks these item’s, while also attacking the people within the city. This extreme detail causes the people to seem as insignificant as the scraps of paper they are being equalized too. Lutie Johnson feels like one of the many people who have to fight to give her life meaning in such a harsh environment. Many of the words used to describe pieces of the city emphasize this parasitic relationship. The narrator describes how the “rain and snow had finally eaten the paint off down to the metal, and the metal had slowly rusted, making dark red stain like blood.” The word “eaten” is a literal sense of how the city is literally sucking out the life force of its citizens. Comparing it to blood also adds to the competitive nature and tension in the atmosphere, everyone fighting for their own success. Finally, what helps emphasize the effect of the imagery is the syntactical structure of the last sentence of the excerpt. After finally being able to read the sign, she describes the information on the sign in one word, “reasonable.” This is contradictory to the style of the preceding paragraphs, because this is anything but the extreme detail that was used before. This juxtaposition of the two styles is to show that the city takes more than it gives. The city takes from the people’s enthusiasm and strength, but only gives back something that is sufficient to live, not ideal, “reasonable.” This is another way a parasitic relationship is created between Lutie Johnson and the urban setting.
The narrator creates this parasitic relationship between Lutie and the city through many different techniques, including her imagery and personification. These techniques allow us to see how Lutie feels used, and the city is anything but a warm and welcoming place. Overall, she has become a victim to the urban environment just as her fellow citizens.