Just the Facts 1
This is why Martha seeks out Pam.
What is Martha is looking for a residence with tw bedrooms and a garden for a thousand dollars per month?
Pam attempts to kick start a conversation with Martha whose behavior is rather cold and distant. The budget constraints concerning the house also trouble Martha but Pam assures a space for negotiation with the owners of the house she wishes to show her. They travel to an Asian professor’s house which is huge but old and smelly. Martha dismisses the house owing to her limitations on rent as well as the size. She desires to have a two-bedroom house with a garden. Pam further drives Martha to another neighborhood where she witnesses two men playing with snow and Pam presumes their excitement as their first encounter with the white beauty of nature. The house Martha is up for looking next belongs to an interracial couple- a Moroccan man Yousef married to an American woman Amelia and they have a girl named Lily. They are a welcoming couple who hope for Martha’s positive decision.
What is rising action?
Martha's last name is Penk. A penk is a minnow or small fish. This is the significance of her last name.
What is Martha, without her shoal is alienated, a small fish in a big pond"?
This is the POV of "Martha, Martha"
What is a third-person narrator who holds a bias toward Pam’s point of view in the initial sections of the story?
Smith uses this literary advice to help establish her themes on the subject of multiculturalism.
What is diction (or specifically dialect)?
This is how the Middle eastern man responds when he learns that Pam's office is not the temping agency which he had been seeking.
What is apologizes and says please as if fearfully requesting understanding?
Pam and the couple - Youssef and Amelia - wait for Martha to move forward with the formalities assuming Martha’s satisfaction regarding the house. Martha rinses her face and compliments the house but then insists on getting some air.
What is the falling action?
Pam appears to attribute Youssef and Amelia's desire to move to Morocco to their fear of another 9/11, but this is also how Pam's remark can be interpreted: "They're moving to Morocco. It's just what we were saying, they don't really want to bring up their children in this country, I'm afraid."
What is to the fear of their own status in America?
The story begins with this literary device and piece of music - a reference to memorials that took place on Sept. 11, 2002 [and again in 2011 and 2022], around the world marking the one-year anniversary [and ten-year and twenty-first year anniversary] of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. The piece was was performed by choirs in 22 time zones, each beginning at 8:46 a.m. local time, to coincide with the time of the first attack on the World Trade Center.
What is an allusion to the "Rolling Requiem" - the performance of Mozart's "Requiem"?
Pam states during the story "I just think you have to make things work for you, work for you personally, because life is really too short, and if they don't work, you just have to go ahead and cut them loose..." This seems to indicate this theme regarding the past.
While the past may haunt one, one must learn to move on in order to live on.
This is why Martha wants to live near the university.
What is Martha is interested in self-improvement and aspires to attend the university?
Pam Roberts- an estate agent in Massachusetts - is waiting for her client Martha Penk who is originally from England and of Nigerian descent.
What is exposition?
These are two ways in which one can understand Martha's desire to find a one-bedroom apartment at the end of the story.
What is either Martha wishes to stop hunting for real estate or Martha is giving up hope that she will be visited by Ben and Jamal?
Martha’s boots allow her to put “her weight on their edges like an ice skater [as] she seemed to waver between two doorways.” This literary device is employed in this quotation and this is its significance.
What is a simile and what is a stress placed upon Martha's displacement and removal because she is constantly framed by doors and windows? Her life is also on thin ice.
A theme for multiculturalism in Martha, Martha
What is "A society in which various cultures co-exist is no longer a dream, but rather is possible"?
This is why Pam appears to have moved from her previous residence.
What is she is divorced and her husband has clearly altered the property for a new person?
Martha leaves the premises in denial and an affirmation to seek out a single-bedroom house. The Middle-East men play with snow laughing and communicating in their tongues.
What is the conclusion?
This is how Pam's statement regarding the university students at Harvard can be understood: "Well, of course there are students of colour, dear! I see them all the time—I mean, even before the affirmative action and all of that—I mean, there’s always been the basketball scholarships and the rest—though it’s much, much better now of course. They’re completely here on their own steam now. Lots of Chinese young people too, and Indian, many. Many! Oh, there’s plenty, plenty of people of colour here, you’ll see,’ said Pam and switched off her desk lamp."
What is this is an example of Pam's occasional xenophobic comments?
When the reader continues to encounter mentions of towers (e.g., "Martha had already recovered herself, turning to peer now over the back wall towards the piercing towers and stark white crosses of the university), airplanes (e.g., "Outside a plane roared low like some prehistoric bird), and Pam's reluctance to let the outside in (e.g., "Martha wound down the window that Pam had just closed and Pam felt she might just scream if the girl kept letting the outside in everywhere they went"), the reader is aware that this is an important motif in the story and this is Pam's attitude toward it.
What is the attacks of 9/11 and Pam's definite anxiety linked to the life changes associated with the attack?
This is what Martha's characterization as a person on Nigerian descent with a previous residence in England and a search for a new residence and life in the United States offers thematically on the subject of identity.
What is identity becoming more complicated and a creation of individual creation?
This is why Martha admires her friend Kara.
What is Kara did not become involved with man and then have children?
In a twist of emotions, Martha locks herself in the bathroom and cries profusely looking at a picture of a black man with a small boy she takes out of her pocket.
What is the climax?
This is the inference that can be drawn about Martha in her past.
What is Martha aspires to more in her life that the relationship with a man and motherhood. She has broken up with her partner and left her child with him, although she may hope that they come to visit?
This is what Pam's Chinese slippers, lithograph of Venice, and made up lyrics for Mozart's requiem symbolize.
Pam fancies herself truly open to multicultural society and yet lacks genuine understanding.
This is what is made clear about racism in the comments made by Pam regarding the Middle Eastern men playing in the snow: "‘Well, what else were they doing. You know, Martha, they’ve probably never seen snow. Isn’t that amazing—what a thing to see!’"