The Furnished Room

The furnished room in the story serves as a symbol of Transience, Loneliness and Isolation. Its worn and shabby condition emphasizes that this is a place where people pass through, but never settle. Its occupants leave traces of their existence but ultimately fade away. The hair grips, buttons and other unremarkable items found by the protagonist provide evidence of those who came before him while, at the same time, remaining completely anonymous.

The room’s history is marked by a series of tragic events, connected to the hopelessness of its occupants. The furniture in the room, bearing the imprints of past tenants, speaks of the “malice and injury” inflicted by those who have tried to make a home there and felt “cheated” (Paragraph 18). The observation that “each plank in the floor owned its particular cant and shriek as from a separate and individual agony” (Paragraph 18), suggests the dilapidated space has absorbed the misery of its many inhabitants. The room is figuratively “furnished” with the loneliness and hopelessness of the Lower West Side’s transient population.