Read the following excerpt from "The Brown Chest." "And this?" she went on, leaving the bed hanging in a realm of future possibility. Her headscarf had slipped back, exposing auburn hair glinting above the vapor of her breath, in evanescent present time. She had paused at the chest. Her glance darted at Gordon, and then, receiving no response, at the present owner, looking him in the eyes for the first time. The ogre smiled. "Open it." "What's in it?" she asked. He said, "I forget, actually." Delicately but fearlessly, she lifted the lid, and out swooped, with the same vividness that had astonished and alarmed his nostrils as a child, the sweetish deep cedary smell, undiminished, cedar and camphor and paper and cloth, the smell of family, family without end. Why does the narrator refer to himself as an "ogre?" What comparison can you draw between how Morna views the narrator and the old objects and how the narrator as a boy viewed similar people and objects?

Question

Zayne Dawson

English

17 March, 13:25

Read the following excerpt from "The Brown Chest." "And this?" she went on, leaving the bed hanging in a realm of future possibility. Her headscarf had slipped back, exposing auburn hair glinting above the vapor of her breath, in evanescent present time. She had paused at the chest. Her glance darted at Gordon, and then, receiving no response, at the present owner, looking him in the eyes for the first time. The ogre smiled. "Open it." "What's in it?" she asked. He said, "I forget, actually." Delicately but fearlessly, she lifted the lid, and out swooped, with the same vividness that had astonished and alarmed his nostrils as a child, the sweetish deep cedary smell, undiminished, cedar and camphor and paper and cloth, the smell of family, family without end. Why does the narrator refer to himself as an "ogre?" What comparison can you draw between how Morna views the narrator and the old objects and how the narrator as a boy viewed similar people and objects?

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Kassidy Moyer · Answer 1

In the story, the narrator views old people and things as repulsive and gross. Morna, however, does not.

When the narrator was a boy, he was repulsed by the chest and the things in it. The chest and everything in it was old (and therefore gross) and the narrator never wanted to go in there.

Now, the narrator finds he is the gross old thing - - the ogre. However, Morna views the chest as something beautiful and is not afraid to open it, unlike the narrator when he was young.