Monday, March 25, 2013

"A Woman on the Roof" - Characters


In this unit, lust, betrayal, and attraction, the short story A Woman on the Roof clearly portrays the theme of lust.  All of the characters in this story, play a major role, each one being throughly defined.  The extremity of the characters is what makes the story and helps to understand it.  Set in the 1960’s of London, a woman decides to go tanning on the roof of her suburban home.  
Passerby’s of the woman have all different reactions to the situation, the strongest reaction coming home Stanley.  Stanley is in his mid 20’s and is recently married.  He has a plethora of emotions, from excited, to pissed, to extreme anger.  It seems though, that the main reason he feels this way is because of his outrage of the woman’s audacity.  I believe that he is thinking to himself, “what if it were my wife up there”.  I also think that he is so outraged because he is ashamed of himself for being tempted and looking up there at the woman sunbathing.  
While Stanley’s reaction is extreme anger and resentment, Tom has a completely different view on the woman.  This is where the theme of lust in the story takes over.  Tom is 17 and he very mush believes he is in love with this woman, when in reality is just “lusting” over her.  All day he thinks of her and how he is going to muster up the confidence to be able to go to her and ask her out.  When he finally does, he is rejected.  Out of anger he drinks.  This shows how naive and immature he is as a teen.  His idea of love is not completely developed.  His love for this woman on the roof is filled solely by the idea of her.  Being on the roof, dressed half naked, forces Tom to come up with ideas of what she is like in his own head.  Tom thinks that she is confident and bold.  To him, she holds the power of what he is going to do.  But his “love” that he thinks that he has for her, is just lust and infatuation.  He actually knows nothing about the woman and is only in love with the infatuation of her.   
Harry is the oldest of all of the boys and men that walk by the woman on the roof.  Harry is older, roughly 45 years old.  As he sees the woman, he doesn’t have nearly as extreme of a reactions as the others.  He is not as infatuated.  His age and maturity show because he is not one of the men cat calling at the woman, he is being respectful.  His age and maturity also show is experience.  He has seen much in his lifetime, being married for a very long time.  
Lust, betrayal, and attraction are all seen by all of the characters throughout The Woman on the Roof.  Lust seeming to be the main theme that takes over, is shown dramatically by Tom.  Without the extreme definitions of each character and how they feel and view the woman, the story would not be as understandable.  The characters help to drag the reader to each different view point of each character, Stanley, Tom, Harry and the Woman.    

5 comments:

  1. I like how you focused in on theme of the class. You related the theme of the class to each character in the story and the reactions they had to the woman who was on the roof. I thought it was interesting to see the themes live throughout the characters like you explain.

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  2. Good job going into detail on such an important part of the class. I liked this a lot, especially showing some the diverse cast of characters which relay the over-all theme of lust. Nice reading!

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  3. I love how you did a further, detailed breakdown of all three of the men. I completely agree with your perspective on why they all reacted differently to the woman on the roof and I definitely think that their ages and experiences play a huge role in why they behaved in the way that they did. By talking more in depth about the "men" as individuals, I think that we actually have a better understanding of the difference between a "boy" and a "man". Great job!

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  4. I really enjoyed how you broke up your blog post into sections of the three men who comment on the woman tanning. Each of them hold extremely different views towards the young woman but all share the common factor of being intrigued by her. I also like how you focused on lust because I believed this was a strong theme conveyed throughout the story.
    Good Job Alexa!

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  5. Love it.keep it up!

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