Song Of Solomon Close Reading

When she closed the door behind her afternoon guests, and let the quiet smile die from her lips, she began the preparation of food her husband found impossible to eat. She did not try to make her meals nauseating; she simply didn’t know how not to. She would notice that the sunshine cake was too haggled to put before him and decide on a rennet dessert. But the grinding of the veal and beef for a meat loaf took so long she not only forgot the pork, settling for bacon drippings poured over the meat, she had no time to make a dessert at all. Hurriedly, then, she began to set the table. As she unfolded the white linen and let it billow over the fine mahogany table, she would look once more at the large water mark. She never set the table or passed through the dining room without looking at it. Like a lighthouse keeper drawn to his window to gaze once again at the sea, or a prisoner automatically searching out the sun as he steps into the yard for his hour of exercise, Ruth looked for the water mark several times during the day. knew it was there, would always be there, but she needed to confirm its presence. Like the keeper of the lighthouse and the prisoner, she regarded it as a mooring, a checkpoint, some stable visual object that assured her that the world was still there; that this was life and not a dream. That she was alive somewhere, inside, which she acknowledged to be true only because a thing she knew intimately was out there, outside herself.

    In this passage Ruth seems to be trapped, she seemed to be internally delusional. At the beginning of the passage her smile fades away “let the quiet smile die from her lips”, this demonstrates that she is not happy, as the word “die”, shows that she clearly has a problem and therefore, her smile quickly fades away. Ruth seems to keep her husband unsatisfied “she began the preparation of food her husband found impossible to eat”, in this short line from the passage, the author reveals, Ruth can't cook,and she uses the word “impossible” to show that her cooking is pretty bad.As she was setting the table one thing that was metioned in the midle of the passage was a white line apperently it was a water mark though it represented something “ As she unfolded the white linen and let it billow over the fine mahogany table, she would look once more at the large water mark. She never set the table or passed through the dining room without looking at it”, Ruth seemed to be attracted to the white line for some reason, though it must of been something that held importance because “ she never set the table or passed through the dinning room without looking at it”. In the passage it was compared to “prisoner automatically searching out the sun” or “lighthouse keeper drawn to his window to gaze once again at the sea” and this has some significance because a prisoner has a limited time to be outside and a lightkeeper will be driven to look at out onto the sea. Though ruth saw it as a “checkpoint”, that would “ assured her that the world was still there”, which meant she might of not been living the way she wanted because she was used the mark to show that “the world was still there” and it seemed as though she was lost emotionally and mentally as in the text describes “she was alive somewhere,inside”, which means she was not her usual self, and it was a mental and emotional inter conflict that was represented in the text.