My grandfather took me to the back of his house, to a room that my mother said was private, that she had yanked me away from when I once had tried to look. It had a bead curtain at the door and we passed through it and the beads rustled like tall grass. The room was dim, lit by candles, and it smelled of incense, and my grandfather stood me before a little shrine with flowers and smoking incense bowl and two brass candlesticks and between them a photo of a man in Chinese mandarin hat. – Robert Olen Butler, “Mr. Green,” A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain The first sentence states that the room is private. The author then uses specific detail to illustrate privacy. How does this detail define and focus the privacy of the room?
Most of the passage is filled with detail describing the room. Which detail do you think adds most to the impact of the passage? Why?