But Rogers' arrival reminds Persis, Silas' wife, of what Silas has d unity. She declares that the mod house is built with blood money and that she will ne'er live there. Silas and Persis debate Silas' actions in buying extinct Rogers. That detect meeting with Rogers, and Persis' reaction, begins Silas' transformation.
Until that point, Silas does not have much to recommend him. He is not evil, but rather a rube, albeit a hard-working rube. The taradiddle opens with Silas being interviewed by a reporter about how he made his fortune. Lapham talks about nothing but key fruit and money, though he is keen enough to realize, "I scene you wouldn't want my life without my money" (Howells 1). His life has no mar class outside of his fortune.
When we first meet Silas, he is a amusive character. After the interview, the reporter writes a feature story on Silas that includes some jabs. But those knocks are too subtle for Lapham to notice. Similarly, Silas craves genial acceptance, only they cannot find it living where they do. They are country folk, asleep that the right address guarantees entry to the social circles they desire. They also deprivation the social skills necessary to move
Howells, William Dean. The approach of Silas Lapham. New York:
Silas' silliness ultimately makes him more pathetic than comical. The dinner at the Coreys illustrates this point. Silas arrives offending gloves, but no one else does. He is embarrassed to discover that a gentleman does not wear gloves to dinner, and he keeps his hands in his pockets every(prenominal) night. Silas is very uncomfortable, retentivity quiet while the men discuss topics with which he is unfamiliar. Finally, subsequently several glasses of wine, he tells of how Jim Millon saved his life during the gracious War. That opens the floodgates, and soon Silas is the only one talking (about paint, of course), too intoxicated or too insipid to notice that he is qualification an ass of himself.
Such boorish behavior is nothing wise for Silas, who brags about his money sometimes seeks validation by mistreating others. For example, he takes great pride in the fact that Tom Corey full-page shebang for him. Howells writes, "[T]he presence of young Corey as an applicant to him for employment?was one of the sweetest flavors that he had yet tasted in his success" (Howells 85). At the resembling time, he tries to inflate his own self-worth by treating Corey as if he were a lowly clerk.
Howells' Characters and Their Shades of Gray
Silas needed a partner when he started his paint business, so he teams up with Rogers. When he did not need him any more, he forced Rogers out of the business. Silas went on to make a fortune, with Rogers' blood on his hands. So when Rogers is introduced at the building site, we pity him because Silas has wronged him.
Silas relates that point to Reverend Sewell. "sometimes I get to thinking it all over, and it seems to me I through wrong about Rogers in the first place; that the whole trouble came from that. It was just like starting a row of bricks. I tried to catch up, and stop 'em from going, but they all tumbled, one after another. It wa'n't in the nature of things that they could be stop till the last br
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