Hope vs. Hopelessness
The protagonist of “The Furnished Room,” an unnamed young man, has been searching for his lost love Eloise Vashner for five months with no success. Only his hope that he will one day find her keeps him going. The young man’s hope is reflected in the presence of light throughout the story. When he first enters the house of rental rooms, hopeful there might be some clue to Eloise, the shadows of the halls…
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Urbanization and City Life
“The Furnished Room” is set in New York City’s Lower West Side, and the turn-of-the-century setting shapes the story. The late 19th century was a period of rapid urbanization, and New York City is presented as unnaturally crowded and yet isolating. Much of the story is dedicated to describing the furnished room itself, which is crowded with old decorations and the remnants of previous guests much in the way the city is run down and…
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Homelessness and Transience
“The Furnished Room” begins not with its protagonist, but with the “restless, shifting, fugacious” transients of the Lower West Side. The significance of impermanence, specifically as it pertains to housing, carries throughout the story. The housekeeper implicitly links a person’s housing status with their identity when she remarks, “Them stage people has names they change as often as their rooms.” The narrative ties a lack of permanent housing to a lack of personal stability, but…
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Individual Stories and Memory
“The Furnished Room” takes place in the Lower West Side of New York City at the turn of the 20th century. This part of the city is so old and so crowded that thousands of people have lived in its houses; the story pauses on this fact and extrapolates that each house “should have a thousand stories to tell.” The narrator acknowledges that many of these stories would not be interesting, but that does not…
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