Miss Brill

So this was another one of those odd stories. Just like A Worn Path, the main character in this story is a lonely elderly woman. What really stood out to me in this story was the fur that Miss Brill obsesses over. The story starts off with her petting this fur and talking to it as if it were alive. The author almost uses an apostrophe here when Miss Brill is speaking to the fur because she is acting like it is a friend whom she calls Dear Little Thing. I really felt sorry for Miss Brill throughout the story because she seemed so lonely. Pages 184 and 185 really convey how lonely she was. Although Miss Brill makes it sound like she is very involved in the lives of others "No doubt somebody would have noticed if she hadn't been there; she was part of the performance after all" I could tell she wasn't because of the way she never really communicated with the other characters- just simply eavesdropped. One of the strangest parts of the story was on pg 183 "They did not speak. This was disappointing, for Miss Brill always looked forwards to the conversation". Obviously when I read this I assumed that Miss Brill enjoyed conversations with these people. However, the next line reads, "She had become really quite expert, she thought, at listening as though she didn't listen, at sitting in other people's lives just for a minute while they talked round her". So basically Miss Brill is so lonely that she doesn't even remember how to have pleasure from being engaged in a conversation anymore. Rather than being in the conversations, Miss Brill eavesdrops on them and cherishes them like they are her own.