The Devil in the White City

5 - Comments
- Holmes’s sales of tonics and lotions increased by the end of 1886, and the pharmacy was running smoothly plus profitably. He thought that he would tuned to a woman that he had met earlier in the year during his brief in Minneapolis, Myrta Z. Belknap.
- What elevated her above mere beauty was the aura of vulnerability and need that surrounded her. She became an immediate obsession, that her imagination and her needs to lock his brain.
- The city toughened them quickly, however the best way to catch them would be at the start of their ascent toward freedom. In transit from small places, when they were anonymous, lost, their presence recorded nowhere. Everyday, he saw them stepping from trains and grip-cars and also hansom cabs, that inevitably frowning at some piece of paper that was supposed to tell them where they belonged.
- The city’s madams understood this and were known to meet inbound trains with promises of warmth and friendship, saving the important news for later. Holmes adored Chicago, adored in particular how the smoke and din could envelop a woman and leave no hint that she ever had existed, save perhaps a blade-thin track of perfume amid the stench of dung, anthracite, and putrefaction.
- When he left the store that first day, as motes of dust filled the space he left behind, her own life seemed drab beyond endurance. A clock ticked. Something had to change. When his first letter arrived, she asked sweetly if he might court her, that she felt as if a coarse blanket had been lifted from her life.
4 - Question
- Why did Holmes said that Chicago was the most feared and magnetic of cities?
- Does Holmes like/love Myrta Z. Belknap? Do they live together?
- Is the pharmacy of Chicago that Holmes own is a famous pharmacy and why did he created a pharmacy?
- What does Myrta Z. Belknap want to do with Holmes?
3 - Vocabulary
- Anthracite = a mineral coal containing little of the volatile hydrocarbons and burning almost without flame; hard coal.
- putrefaction = the act or process of putrefying; the anaerobic decomposition of organic matter by bacteria and fungi that results in obnoxiously odorous products; rotting.
- clerked = A person who works in an office performing such tasks as keeping records, attending to correspondence, or filing.
2 - Literary Terms
- Characterization = She was a young and blond, with blue eyes and a lush figure. Holmes was a handsome, warm, and obviously wealthy.
- Simile = …. conduct that applied in their safe little hometowns, like Alva, Clinton, and Percy, might actually still apply once they had left behind…
1 - Overview
- Holmes was in a trip in Minneapolis and about a woman name Myrta Z. Belknap, that I think he loves her and she loves him.