How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #10
The apartment is full of light. Clarissa almost gasps at the threshold. All the shades have been raised, the windows opened. Although the air is filled only with the ordinary daylight that enters any tenement apartment on a sunny afternoon, it seems, in Richard's rooms, like a silent explosion. Here are his cardboard boxes, his bathtub (filthier than she'd realized), the dusty mirror and the expensive coffeemaker, all revealed in their true pathos, their ordinary smallness. It is, quite simply, the tenement apartment of a deranged person. (18.2)
When Clarissa Vaughan's imaginative metaphors and similes are taken out of the equation, Richard Brown's apartment seems much more ordinary and pitiful. Likewise, as Clarissa interacts with Richard in his final moments, she sees him as he really is, and not as the younger, healthier, more brilliant version of himself that she's been remembering all morning and afternoon.