Discussing the story

I. Answer the following questions on the story:

1) Why is it said in the story that homeless people “have a hundred homes”? 2) Why were transient people transient in heart and mind? Why are flowers for transient people just something to be put on a woman’s hat? Why did transient people sing a song “Home, Sweet Home”? 3) In what way do you understand the phrase that each house had a thousand stories to tell? What stories could a house tell? 4) How could spirits of the people who had lived in the house be remained there? 5) Why did the author compare the owner of the house with a monster coming up from a hole in the ground? 6) What was the thing for the owner of the house whether to like dwellers or not? What determined her estimation? 7) What description of the room did the owner give to emphasize that the room was rather comfortable? 8) What people mostly stayed in that house? What was their occupation? What income did they have in life? 9) Why was the phrase “they come and they go” so often used in the story? 10) What question did the young man always ask when he rented a room? What shows that he had been looking for Eloise for a long time? 11) What was the reason for Eloise to live her home? What is your opinion? 12) Where did the young man look for Eloise? Why there? 13) In what way do you understand the phrase “what was on top today, was lost at the bottom tomorrow”? 14) What could the room tell to each dweller? Why, to the author’s mind, were the words of this history strange, as if from many distant countries? 15) Why does the author think that the people who lived in that room were angry with it? Can a person be angry with any dwelling? 16) What word repeated many times in one passage shows that it was noisy in the house? What did the young man hear? 17) What breath of the house did the young man feel? 18) What did the young man do when he felt the strong smell of the mignonette? Was it normal behaviour to your mind? 19) What did the young man find in the room? Were those things which he had looked for? 20) Did the young man get from the owner any information of Eloise having been in the room? Who had been in the room before him? 21) Why did not the young man have any hope to find Eloise? What were his actions when he returned to the room after having talked with the owner? 22) What were the owners of the houses busy with in the evenings? 23) What could the reader know from the talk between Mrs. McCool and Mrs. Purdy? 24) What is the theme of the story? 25) What character do you sympathize? Why? 26) Why did the young man commit a suicide? 27) What would you advice to the young man if you met him in that house and knew his tragic story? Do you think the young man was not mentally quite healthy? Why / why not?