The good Anna
The good Anna was a remarkable woman! In spite of the fact that she wasn’t beautiful or influential, she was well-known and respected. Her voice “was high and piercing” and she often used it to scream at “wicked men”, “when she saw them beat a hoarse or kick a dog”. The good Anna “didn’t belong to any society that could stop them and she told them so most frankly”, but her “strained voice and her glittering eyes, and her queer piercing German English accent first made them afraid and then ashamed”. Not to mention that “all the policemen on the beat were her friends”. This imagery illustrated how authoritative the good Anna was.
Fascination of a railroad yard
Melanctha “liked to wander, and to stand by the railroad yard”. She watched “the men and the engines and the switches and everything that was busy there, working”. Railroad yards were “a ceaseless fascination”, for they could “satisfy every kind of nature”. There was a place for “the lazy man”, “natures that like to feel emotion without the trouble of having any suffering” and, of course, “a child”, for that endless motion had been always associated with joy.
An easy victim
It was mentioned that “it was easy to blacken all the Drehtens” because of “their poverty, the husband’s drinking, the four big sons carrying on and always lazy”. There were also “the awkward, ugly daughters dressing up with Anna’s help and trying to look so fine”. Mrs. Drehten was “weak, hard-working sickly mother” and evoked only pity. It was so easy shower them with “large dosing of contemptuous pity”. This imagery is used not only to illustrate how poor the Drehtens are but to show what kind of people the good Anna like to spend time with.
