Which sentence in the excerpt from O. Henry's "The Trimmed Lamp" contains direct characterization? Of course there are two sides to the question. Let us look at the other. We often hear "shop-girls" spoken of. No such persons exist. There are girls who work in shops. They make their living that way. But why turn their occupation into an adjective? Let us be fair. We do not refer to the girls who live on Fifth Avenue as "marriage-girls." Lou and Nancy were chums. They came to the big city to find work because there was not enough to eat at their homes to go around. Nancy was nineteen; Lou was twenty. Both were pretty, active, country girls who had no ambition to go on the stage. The little cherub that sits up aloft guided them to a cheap and respectable boarding-house. Both found positions and became wage-earners. They remained chums. It is at the end of six months that I would beg you to step forward and be introduced to them.

Question

Misael Huff

English

12 December, 17:45

Which sentence in the excerpt from O. Henry's "The Trimmed Lamp" contains direct characterization? Of course there are two sides to the question. Let us look at the other. We often hear "shop-girls" spoken of. No such persons exist. There are girls who work in shops. They make their living that way. But why turn their occupation into an adjective? Let us be fair. We do not refer to the girls who live on Fifth Avenue as "marriage-girls." Lou and Nancy were chums. They came to the big city to find work because there was not enough to eat at their homes to go around. Nancy was nineteen; Lou was twenty. Both were pretty, active, country girls who had no ambition to go on the stage. The little cherub that sits up aloft guided them to a cheap and respectable boarding-house. Both found positions and became wage-earners. They remained chums. It is at the end of six months that I would beg you to step forward and be introduced to them.

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Itzel Benson · Answer 1

If direct characterization, as opposed to indirect characterization, straightforwardly describes or tells for the reader the personality and the traits of a character ("the woman was tall and shy; the man was small and was nervous"), then the sentence in the excerpt that contains it is this one: "Both were pretty, active, country girls who had no ambition to go on the stage." Other sentences in the excerpt are providing information about them (they were friends, they were young, they lived in a boarding house, they lived in a boarding house, and they were working), but they do not directly reveal their traits.