In order to portray the characters, to describe the setting and to render the general mood and atmosphere of the passage vividly and convincingly the author of the analysed passage resorts to the following devices:

-                     Lexical:

+  metaphor: pay something on his rent; honk loudly; to seize a chance;

+   personification: the winters that had the double front room with private bath; through the glass of the little skylight you saw a square of blue infinity; with her demon's smile at his pale looks;

+   irony: "In this closet," she said, "one could keep a skeleton or anaesthetic or coal”; "Eight dollars?" said Miss Leeson. "Dear me! I'm not Hetty if I do look green.”; Mr. Skidder jumped and strewed the floor with cigarette stubs at the rap on his door.; "Excuse me, Mr. Skidder," said Mrs. Parker, with her demon's smile at his pale looks. "I didn't know you were in. I asked the lady to have a look at your lambrequins.";

+   epithets: incredulous, pitying, sneering, icy stare;

+   oxymoron: roguish heroine; heavy hair; vivacious features;

+   simile: in a cloud of smoke like an aerial cuttlefish;

+   hyperbole: his fatness hovered above her like an avalanche.

-                     Phonetic:

+   alliteration: smoked cigarettes; still stood; Clara would say; way to the second floor back; forty-five, fat, flush and foolish

-                     Syntactical:

+   polysyndeton: She was a very little girl, with eyes and hair that had kept on growing after she had stopped and that always looked as if…; …black-haired heroine from his latest (unproduced) play and inserting a small, roguish one with heavy, bright hair and vivacious features…; … thrust her into a vault with a glimmer of light in its top and muttered the menacing and cabalistic words…; And Miss Dorn, who shot at the moving ducks at Coney every Sunday and worked in a department store, sat on the bottom step and sniffed.

+   assonance: feeling, half- Tuskegeenial, sneering, Leeson, sleeves;

+   repetition: Avaunt, Hoover! Hoover, forty-five, flush and foolish, might carry off Helen herself; Hoover, forty-five, flush, foolish and fat is meat for perdition.

-                     Graphic and phonetic:

+   graphon: Then--oh, then—if

As for the plot of the story, it has its introduction, which involves the reader into the matter of Mrs. Parker’s apartments. The introduction goes from the very beginning of the story up to the words: “One day Miss Leeson came hunting for a room...”. The description of  Leeson’s life there is the development of events. The climax of the story is the place where Dr. Jackson carried Ms. Leeson into the ambulance. The anticlimax is in the last paragraph of the story where Dr. Jackson says that his patient will recover.

The types of speech employed by the author of the analysed story are narration, description and dialogue. The text is the narration with the elements of descriptions and dialogues.

Mr. Skidder is a playwriter. He is described indirectly. He has a bright imagination and smokes cigarettes as most creative people in that time. To my mind, he sees in Mrs. Leeson his ideal, it is visible in the moments where he makes her the main heroine of his romantic private, but not still existing drama. Reading that he owes money for his apartments we can make conclusion that he is not a successful playwriter. Also we see that he is afraid of the snobbish landlady, and after every visit he pays some money for the apartments.

The next character is coloured maid Clara. She is also depicted indirectly. As Mrs. Parker makes her to give the skylight room in rent, we can make conclusion that she does all bad job in the apartment. As she is coloured, it is possible that she can be uneducated.

The next character is Miss Longnecker. She is depicted in both direct and indirect ways: “But Miss Longnecker, the tall blonde who taught in a public school...”. She is also not pleased with their new neighbour and maybe she envies her, because Ms. Leeson attracts all the men in the apartment. Also she named the star which Leeson called Billy Jackson “Gamma, of the constellation Cassiopeia” and it means that she can teach astronomy, and also she can be well educated.

Miss Dorn is indirectly. The author says: “Miss Dorn, who shot at the moving ducks at Coney every Sunday and worked in a department store”. So we can consider that her hobby is shooting and she has quite good salary at the department store as she shots every Sunday. She is also angry that all men in the apartment pay too much attention to Ms. Leeson. She and Miss Lognecker might be friends. To my mind she can be ill-natured as she shots every week.

Mr. Evans is depicted indirectly. He is very young. The author says: ”And especially very young Mr. Evans who set up a hollow cough to induce her to ask him to leave off cigarettes”. He is pleased when Leeson asks him to abandon smoking. As he is very young and smokes, he may be living too far from his parents and began to work too early.

Mr. Hoover is depicted directly and indirectly: “Mr. Hoover, who was forty-five, fat, flush and foolish”. He also pays attention to Mrs. Leeson and even tried to make her a proposal. He also tries to protect her from other women.

Dr. William Jackson is depicted directly and indirectly. “Capable young medico, in his white linen coat, ready, active, confident, with his smooth face half debonair, half grim, danced up the steps”. The author says the doctor is young but clever, he loves his job. Also we can make conclusion that he fall in love with his patient.

From the point of view of presentation the following story is the 3^rd person narration. The author of the story is not the direct participant of the events, he is just a commentator of the events.

The characters we meet in the story under analysis are:

-                     Miss Elsie Leeson, a young room hunter, the protagonist

-                     Mrs. Parker, landlady, the antagonist

-                     Mr. Skidder, playwriter

-                     Clara, maid

-                     Miss Longnecker, teacher

-                     Miss Dorn

-                     Mr. Evans

-                     Mr. Hoover

-                     Dr. William Jackson

The first character we meet is Mrs. Parker, the landlady, who is a bit snobbish. She is depicted in both direct and indirect ways. She considers herself to be of too high status, for example “Then you would manage to stammer forth the confession that you were neither a doctor nor a dentist. Mrs. Parker's manner of receiving the admission was such that you could never afterward entertain the same feeling toward your parents, who had neglected to train you up in one of the professions that fitted Mrs. Parker's parlours”. From these words we see that Mrs. Parker is snobbish, her main characteristic is that she wears mask as a stated type of behaviour for different conditions. The only thing which matters for her is money and her apartment. The smallest her room is her embarrassment.   She considers most of her lodgers not to be worth of living there. She is full of indifference. Even when the doctor comes to Miss Leeson, she remembers her name with troubles.  Also she was not satisfied with her new lodger: ” Mrs. Parker gave her the incredulous, pitying, sneering, icy stare that she kept for those who failed to qualify as doctors or dentists, and led the way to the second floor back” The snobbish landlady was insensitive to Miss Leeson. We should keep ourselves alert and sensitive to the needs of others.

We next meet Miss Leeson, a young typist who rents "the skylight room" because it is the only room she can afford. She is described in both direct and indirect ways. “She carried a typewriter made to be lugged around by a much larger lady. She was a very little girl, with eyes and hair that had kept on growing after she had stopped and that always looked as if they were saying: "Goodness me! Why didn't you keep up with us?” and because of her beauty, because of her charm the lodgers couldn’t help loving her. She is dreamy and optimistic one. She call the star “Billy Jackson” dreaming about the man who is ideal for her. Miss Leeson has an ideal of true love and romance in her mind and in her heart. She clings to this ideal even when she becomes destitute and is starving. She does not compromise. But according to the author, Miss Leeson is not created for the skylight room. She lives there because it is the only one she can afford. And when she was fired, she felt herself broken and depressive, she stopped dreaming, she began to disappoint in her dreams and the author says: ” Miss Longnecker must be right; it was Gamma, of the constellation Cassiopeia, and not Billy Jackson. And yet she could not let it be Gamma”. But Miss Leeson's dream comes true. Her prince rescues her. We shall assume that Dr. Jackson is a prince who is worth the wait.

The events in the analyzed story happen in the shared apartments in New York and in the skylight room, where the main character lives. The place is typical American apartment from the beginning of the XX century. Firstly we visit the double parlours, but if you are neither a doctor nor a dentist, you go to the second floor with eight dollar rooms. And especially, we visit Mr. Skidder's large hall room to admire the lambrequins. But if you still want something cheaper, Mrs. Parker will call her coloured maid and she will send you to the Skylight Room, which costs three dollars. The author shows us such a division to underline that everyone can dream (as Mr. Skidder dreams in his hall room and Ms. Leeson dreams in her little 7x8 feet room) and it doesn’t matter what apartments you have. The setting is represented in general way, it completely corresponds to the time it was written.

The main theme of the story is stratification of society, its division into classes, estates, leading to social inequality and contradiction in the needs, values ​​and motivations. So, Mrs. Parker by renting her rooms before exploring the future tenant, trying to sell him a more expensive room, “Convinced by her second-floor manner that it was worth the $12.” And only when she was sure that it is impossible to give more expensive room you hear, ” Two dollars, suh,” Clara would say in her half-contemptuous, half- Tuskegeenial tones.

The next theme of the story is the behaviour of people from different social groups and their attitude towards the other people. As we see in the story, the landlady Mrs. Parker, clearly aware of her higher social status (the status of the landlady), attitudes to the tenants differently.