The Painted Door - Charactor Analysis

The painted door

1. The characters in “The Painted Door” are defined by their loyalties and the sacrifices they make for the people they love. John is deeply loyal to his wife Ann, and he expresses this by working hard year after year in the hopes of providing her with a better life someday. Ann has been loyal to John throughout the seven years of their marriage, but she secretly resents some of the sacrifices that being married to him has required of her, particularly the social isolation of their farming life. For John, sacrifice is the ultimate expression of love and loyalty. Ann understands the necessity of some sacrifice, but she sees it as a necessary evil and something which makes it more difficult to remain loyal to her husband.

2. The story takes place on a farm in the Prairies during an awful snow storm. The setting (snow storm) is important to the overall story because it helps to bring out the character’s traits.

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4. The painted door can symbolize many things. The fact that John and Anne's relationship is falling apart, Ann decides to pain the door to cover something up. Maybe she is denying that things are not what she expected them to be therefore she wants to deny her unhappiness and her urge for disloyalty. Usually doors symbolize the beginning or end of a 'thing' in this story it symbolizes the relationship.

5. The foreshadowing is Steven's Relationship with Ann - The foreshadowing here is that Steven and Ann have always had hidden emotions to each other more than being just friends. My proof is : "Once she had danced with Steven six or seven times in the evening, and they had talked about it for as many months." This is saying that Anna and Steven enjoyed each other's a little bit more than an unmarried man and woman in this time period. This eventually lead to the story later.

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