A Woman on a Roof

From water that sizzles then steams on the rooftop, to sun so punishing it bruises the men’s skin, heat emerges as a motif in the story, one that represents both anger and sexual arousal alongside the anxiety and hostility that result when men feel unseen and unheard. If the heat motif amplifies the battle between the sexes theme, the story’s first line foreshadows the heat wave as an inciting incident to this conflict: “It was the week of hot sun, that June” (72). The frustration the heat instigates for the men is exacerbated by the distraction that is the nameless, topless, sunbathing brown woman with black hair. She, too, becomes a source of heat in the forms of anger and sexual arousal. In particular, Stanley is infuriated by her indifference, as indicated when “his sun-heated face was screwed into a rage” (77). He later becomes “sullen” because “they said the heat wave’d break” and he resents having to work in it, while “It’s alright for some” (specifically, the woman who is financially independent of and sexually indifferent to him) who “lie about as if it’s a beach up there” (79).