Quote: "Charity stared straight ahead of her and then, dropping her flowers, fell face downward at Mr. Royall's feet." (Summer, p. 132)Charity has just witnessed, or so she believes at this point, seeing Lucius sitting on a bench next to Annabel Balch in town hall. This all occurs during the speeches being made for the Old Home Week in North Dormer. Charity's obviously fainted in this sentence as she us standing in the front of the room amongst the other young women of North Dormer in their attractive dresses, holding their flowers. You are led to believe that the cause for her fainting is that she has just seen Lucius and Annabel together, thus perceiving that there is someone in Lucius's life other than herself. Charity must feel used as a small town girl with a simple life might be by a "city fellow". All of this undoubtedly overwhelms Charity and she faints at Lawyer Royall's feet.This sentence is very metaphorical through each of its fragments as it pertains to Charity and her fate in life. "Charity stared straight ahead" means that Charity is looking into her future, what her life "ahead" of her hold in store. She is engulfed in the idea of what could possibly go wrong, and faints. "Dropping her flowers" is extremely symbolic in that flowers represent innocence, something that Charity no longer embraces because she has had sex with Lucius. "Fell face downward at Mr. Royall's feet" depicts and foreshadows that Mr. Royall will be the one that Charity falls upon when she does go down in the end. This all comes together as how Charity will not be able to handle what her future holds as she is no longer innocent and the only person she will be able to turn to will be Royall.Reflecting back on my own personal experiences in not being able to handle the obvious truth of my future, I now realize that many aspects were hard to adjust to. Sometimes I would be so overtake that the only thing to do was turn to someone I didn't particularly...
