Set in colonial New Zealand, "The Garden Party" falls into two clearly different parts. A lot of the story is about the preparations and the consequences of the garden party, it was organized by the daughters of the privileged Sheridan family. As dawn breaks, Laura goes into the Sheridan's exquisite garden to inspect the proposed site for the marquee. Her encounter with three workers hired to raise the tent is awkward and confused, as she finds herself torn between being a snob and her developing sense of morality. This story is perceived as the difference between life and death, and can sometimes be portrayed in objects. (Death is symbolized by the broken cakes and dried-out leftover sandwiches Laura Sheridan carries to the house of mourning in "The Garden Party." Neurotics, Eccentrics, and Victims…)
Laura, the main character in the story knows nothing of death. She lives in a rich well of house hold. Much to her dismay seeing the dead man is both embarrassing and serene. Nothing like that has ever happened to her. To be her rich self and to see death was hard for her. Laura felt over dressed to see the dead man. Doesn’t mean the world is a beautiful place but to her it is. The gift of sandwiches was ironic because they are rich, the person who died was a worker. (The pattern of contrasts between context and climax is complex: life against death, bustle against repose, middle-class decorum and complacency against working-class unrestraint, enjoyment against gravity, dissipation of emotion against concentration The Rules of Time: Time and Rhythm in the Twentieth-Century Novel.)
When Laura hears of one of the laborers death she debated on whether she should still throw the garden party or not, she was leaning more towards hav...
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Epiphany of “The garden party” appears when Laura is exposed to the world that she has never been to.. “The garden party” is mostly in the perspective of Laura. Laura is a part of an upper class family that are planning to have a nice garden party to show off their splendid garden. “They could not have had a more perfect day for a garden party if they had ordered it” (Norton ENGL 2745). This line is a sarcasm which implies that how much power the high class people had back in the early 19’s. Laura is a feature that taking a role as an intermediate between the two different classes because unlike the rest of her family she can relate to both classes but each time she is exposed, a multiple different features bring her back to her world. The hat symbolize the cultural limitation and it shows the ignorance of wealthy people about lower class. “People like them don’t expect sacrifices from us” (Norton ENGL 2752). When Laura is deeply upset after hearing the accident, her mom gives her the hat. She looks herself in the mirror and forgets how she felt when she heard the news for the first time. Laura never rejects her hat, showing that she does not reject her place in her class. The Hat is used to criticizes the inaccessibility of wealthy class to lower class that even a hat could hide a death of