Imagery Behind Ann's Loneliness In The Painted Door By Sinclair Ross

Ms.Gargano
ENG3U1-02
February 27, 2011 The imagery behind Ann’s loneliness The Short story, The Painted door, by Sinclair Ross, follows the life of a woman and a man living on a quiet, secluded farm. The woman, Ann, is a very confused person who is seemed to be unsatisfied with her marriage. Her Husband, John, is a very hard working farmer who works his hardest so that he can provide for him and his wife. He enjoys the simpler things in life, yet his wife, Ann, cannot. Nothing is good enough for her. Her selfish ways are evident in her attitude toward the material things in her home environment and in the way she treats her husband. Through the heavy use of imagery in the story “The Painted door” Ross effectively shows how lonely Ann is.
“The sun was risen above the frost mists now, so keen and hard a glitter on the snow that instead of warmth its rays seemed shedding cold.” Ann also states it was time she got used to staying home alone. We see that the sun has risen, however, it is shown that it feels like the sun was shedding rays of cold. This sentence is paradoxical as the word sun has connotations of heat and happiness, and the word cold has connotations of loneliness. Both of these two terms are effective at affecting our mood and leaves the reader lost and unsure how to feel. By saying that the sun is shedding these waves of cold or loneliness Ross is actually using the sun to show the progression of Ann’s