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Passage In Sinclair Ross's The Lamp At Noon

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I chose to focus on a passage in Sinclair Ross’ “The Lamp at Noon” and how it related to the larger context of the short story. The passage I chose is near the end of the story on page 21, when the storm finally clears and Paul sees the desolate landscape: It was over – three days of blight and havoc like a scourge – three days so bitter and so long that for a moment he stood still, unseeing, his senses idle with a numbness of relief. But only for a moment. Suddenly he emerged from the numbness; suddenly the fields before him struck his eyes to comprehension. They lay black, naked. Beaten and mounded smooth with dust as if a sea in gentle swell had turned to stone. And though he had tried to prepare himself for such a scene, though he had known since yesterday that not a blade would last the storm, still now, before the utter waste confronting him, he sickened and stood cold. Suddenly like the fields he was naked. Everything that had sheathed him a little from realities of existence: vision and purpose, faith in the land, in the future, in himself – it was all rent now, stripped away. “Desert,” he heard her voice begin to sob. “Desert, you fool – the lamp lit at noon!” I chose this passage because I consider it to be the climax of the story where Paul has an epiphany that pulls him out of his denial and allows him to admit that they trying to farm a barren wasteland. I felt that it was one of the most significant scenes in the story and it had a lot

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