The Starveling Summary and Analysis

The Starveling Summary

"The Starveling" has a complex beginning, in which a man is thinking about a time long before he encountered a particular woman. He was living alone, in poor circumstances, and apparently without ambition. Faulty wiring caused a lamp in his room to catch fire and he watched it impassively. The story then moves forward to his life with a woman named Flory, who is not the woman he mentioned at the start. They also live in poor circumstances, in her apartment. They were married but have been divorced for several years. She is an actor, currently reading radio news. He goes to cinemas, one after another, watching three or four films every day. His name is Leo Zhelezniak. Flory originally admired his devotion to the movies, and concocted various explanations for his behavior, ranging from fanaticism...