...In The Yellow Wallpaper, Charlotte Perkins Gilman uses the narrator’s restraint of self-expression and inevitable insanity, to illustrate humanity’s need for creative outlet and emotional expression. The narrator is put into a position where she is forced to hide her fear and anxieties to convince others that she is winning the fight against her depression. However, her silence only has the opposing effect. The narrator’s further progression of her illness due to her repression, her need for expression through writing, and her inevitable insanity all point towards humankinds need for self-expression. Instead of being healed by her bed riddance, the narrator falls further into depression and fear. The narrator in The Yellow Wallpaper is an...
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...The Yellow Wallpaper Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper”, highlights the repressed position of most married women during the 19th century. The narrator struggles both at the hands of her family members and internally. Her husband John, a physician, makes an effort to alleviate his wife’s mental state by moving their family into an old style home located in a remote area and isolating her as much as possible. He determines that it is unhealthy for her to entertain, interact with their baby, even to write which she seems to enjoy a great deal. When approaching “The Yellow Wallpaper” one has to keep in mind the importance of the title itself. John decides on their bedroom in the new home and it is covered in yellow wallpaper that the narrator takes great issue with. Using reader response, it is evident that Gilman uses imagery and symbolism to merge the protagonist’s life with that of the “woman” behind the yellow wallpaper. Before an analysis is presented the reader must first understand the marital expectations and male to female dynamic during the time period to which Gilman is writing. Married women faced oppression at the hands of society as well as their husbands. The 1800’s were a time when the wife was to be seen and not heard. It was a general societal expectation that wives if financially secure could have no real issues of their own. This was also because they were not expected to think on their own. They were expected to only reflect the...
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...Symbolism has a very effective meaning in Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper short story. Symbolism is defined as “the practice of representing things by symbols, or investing things with a symbolic meaning or character” (Dictionary.com). Firstly, the wallpaper symbolizes a variety of the narrator’s senses. Throughout the story, her senses change and the wallpaper also changes. The wallpaper shows how someone who suffers from a mental illness has different perspectives on their emotional surroundings and self-perception. Next, the house the narrator is kept in and the ugliness in the patterns of the wallpaper help represent the outlook of a woman’s repression. All in all, the wallpaper symbolizes the events in which the narrator finds herself trapped...
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...Fight Club is a story of the narrator’s struggle to gain control over his life. He is in search for an identity in the form of manhood. His masculinity is so repressed because of the absence of a father figure in his life. Because of this he creates Tyler, his alternate personality. Tyler is nothing like anyone the narrator has met, he is self assured and completely free. The narrators alternate personality Tyler Durden is the ultimate alpha-male. Tyler becomes the narrator’s hero and he envied him. After creating Tyler the narrator’s view on the world is adjusted. Tyler ends up changing the narrators life and has him doing things he never thought he would do. Both the narrator and Tyler bond over the fact that both their fathers were not major factors in their lives. The narrator says “ Me, I knew my dad for about six years, but I don’t remember anything”(50). Tyler goes to say that his father was distant and he would only speak to him once a year. Being raised mainly by woman, they both feel they never had a man around to teach them what being a man is. Tyler and the narrator and the generation of men they represent have been trying for years to regain their masculinity and at the same time find a sense of direction. At the support group for men with testicular cancer the narrator meets Bob. Bob later enters fight club and shows he is one of the better fighters that is there. He is seen as a “true man” for his physical abilities. Later on in the book Bob also joins Tyler’s...
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...Alan Badel English 100/Major Essay #2 Professor Raymond Morris 23 October 2015 The Fight Club Aims to Free Individuals from Society’s Emasculating Shackles Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club is an exciting fictional novel that will hold the audience captive following three revolving main characters in Marla Singer, Tyler Durden, and the narrator himself as they take the reader through confusing twists and perspectives, while providing a most revealing closure. Although the title suggests an exclusive organization focused on violence, the novel describes the emasculation of man in today’s modern age of consumerism, societal associations and family structure along with the main and sub-characters’ exercising of power and submission to power as evident throughout the novel. Chuck Palahniuk’s values illustrate in the novel how humanity is being enslaved by the power of consumerism, brought to general awareness a new mental disorder, and how he portrayed the narrator having experienced or enacted numerous anarchistic efforts in the hopes of being freed from the confines of an industrialized and necessity-driven society. It should also be noted that several rebellious acts were performed by the fight club members and subsequently members of Project Mayhem in order to gain notoriety and power in response to being economically and socially subdued. To understand the novel’s numerous projection of emasculation, masculinity will need to be established. Man’s foundation of masculinity...
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...Gender roles have always existed, but Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s story “The Yellow Wallpaper” shows how these gender roles had extreme consequences for women in the 1900’s. “The Yellow Wallpaper” addresses several topics in De Beauvoir and Gilbert and Gubar’s texts by illustrating the passivity forced onto women, the aura of mystery that subsequently surrounds the feminine, and the mental illness that inevitably follows. Gilman’s text is a tale that warns of the dangers of forcing inactivity onto women. The narrator’s husband, a physician named John, diagnoses her with a “temporary nervous depression – a slight hysterical tendency” (Gilman 648). He prescribes for her uninterrupted isolation: a “rest cure.” This was a common treatment for hysteria...
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...Edgar Allan Poe is known as the master of horror and gothic writing. In a sense, he has taken the meaning of the word “horror” and turned it into an entirely different definition, even a different world. Poe's narrators do not make the reader scared, per se, but they make him or her inquire about things around them. Although people should never assume, they should always speculate and investigate. In “The Fall of the House of Usher,” Poe uses an imperfectly informed narrator because he wanted the reader to play with – and question – reality, to use their senses and imagination, and be able to tell the difference between dreams and reality. One theory on why Poe makes his narrator limited is that he wants the reader to search for the truth, not just have it handed to them. For instance, the reader – nor the narrator – knows anything about Roderick Usher. The narrator says, “Although, as boys, we had been even intimate associates, yet I really knew little of my friend”. What, then, would cause the narrator to travel to the House of Usher after Roderick had written him a letter? A person such as the narrator can only truly call Usher an acquaintance. In reality, who would drop everything and anything for an associate? The unknown information on Roderick Usher only causes more questions that, in the end, still remain unanswered. Little by little, as the tale goes on, the reader, as well as the narrator, discovers that Roderick and his late sister, lady Madeline, are twins. After...
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...The True Demise of Myself Lets take a journey through the mind of a man who is torn between his “id” and “superego.” In the short story “The Tell-Tale Heart,” by Edgar Alan Poe, a man cannot choose between right and wrong. Through the psychological theory I can prove how a man is torn between his “id,” “ego,” and “superego” and to proud to show his true identity of being a psychopath. The man is portrayed as the narrator and has taken on two identities one as a loving and caring man and the other is a psychopath. The “id” will take over his “ego” only to be taken over by his “superego” and eventually taken back over by his “ego.” Our journey starts with the young man, the narrator, telling us his story. The young man is a caretaker of an old man who is really old and has a diseased eye. In “The Tell-Tale Heart” the young man starts out by loving the old man very deeply. He takes care of his every need, until one day “ the old man’s eye fell upon him and his blood ran cold”(Poe 2). The young man then turned to his narcissistic ways and it changed the way he felt about the old man whom “he loved so dearly” (Poe 1). In “ Explanation of: ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’ by Edgar Alan Poe,” which was rewritten by an unknown author, it explains how the narrator is a “paranoid schizophrenic”(pg. 1). The article explains how Edgar Alan Poe was obsessed with “death, madness, and troubled human relationships” (pg. 1). The narrator is definitely a man caught between normality and psychopath. Further...
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...The Narrator is happy in both his career and relationship with a teaching position, a wife and children. However, he is haunted by his seeming failure in taking his brother out of trouble. Meanwhile, Sonny is unable to articulate his hatred and love of his family and the society at large in a way that his brother would easily understand. The interesting resolution in the end of the story is weaved by a touch of musical education and appreciation: how feelings are manifested in music and why good music is born. This documents how repressed feelings of marginalized sectors are translated in music and song. Albert sees such music particularly blues as “a state of being and as music” that is the bone of the story. This reminds us of the historicity and wealth of Black music and artistry that even White Americans later would hail and emulate. Listening is a simple skill yet a hard one for humans. It entails the discipline of valuing others and paying deeper attention to other’s feelings, thoughts and opinions. Individuals may have tendency to be egocentric that sometimes they are not aware that they have not been listening or are not listening enough to others. Instead, they are more drowned in their own pathetic world. This leads to miscommunication and misunderstanding as...
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...novel we see the changing roles and relationships of women in society, various values that are changing, and the entire identity of older Japanese values. The first section begins with the narrator who is a college student, approaching the independence of an adult life but with weak emotions. The narrator begins a friendship and fascination with Sensei. Sensei lives a lives a life of solidarity and tries to avoid other people and will only socialize with friends during special occasions. Sensei has a wife, but he treats her very poorly throughout the book. The student notices that Sensei is secretive and wants to find out more about him. The second section of the book shows the narrator mostly with his family and away from Sensei. The narrator’s father is sick and he stays bedside with him. The parents think that the narrator is their family's future to carry the family into further generations because of his intelligence. Sensei and a previous student known as “K” are in the middle of a love triangle over a young women. Sensei believes that he had caused “K” to commit suicide because of the love triangle. The final part of the book shows Sensei's monolog. He talks about being betrayed and betraying others. We see that Sensei becomes very depressed, and his emotions drastically change after the...
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...Herman Melville (1819-1891) Context and Background “Bartleby the Scrivener” was written in 1853, born in New York City, he was considered an “1870 writer”. Melville was one of the first American writers able to make a living off writing. People were interested in reading fiction, and “Moby Dick” was not common or appealing to the general population but holds merit today. He wrote “relatable” fiction, and people liked to read travel logs and exciting adventure stories (escapist literature). Moby Dick is not a relatable story due to the context of the scenarios, but it is considered an artistic novel because it is obscure and challenging. Melville wrote in two different modes; strange, difficult and unrealistic compared to relatable, realistic fiction. Bartleby the Scrivener contains elements of both; it is set in a New York office yet still continues weird elements. It was meant to be accessible and was considered “Great Literature” because it is symbolic, subtle and ironic. Bartleby the Scrivener * The boss is governed by the obligations of Wall Street, but also contains sympathetic traits towards Bartleby. Bartleby, who we do not know, is insane, stubborn, or stupid, and his behaviour is left up for interpretation. * Historical context: In the right hand corner of America, the Puritans went from England to settle in this area for religious reasons. New York was founded by the Dutch and they intended to set up a trading post. War was fought between these 2 groups,...
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...She is repressed and held captive by her own ambitions. She fears the norms of society, the stresses of cultural conformity and ultimately she fears life's potential. She wishes to find home and feel at ease but she looks outward rather than inward. She runs from her environment believing she can escape confinement without realizing the metaphorical fence surrounding her moves with her, it's inescapable and must be dismantled, not run from. The story ends with Holly falling into uncertain waters. She expresses love for the narrator, separating him from the rest of the men shes dealt with. Ultimately, though, she leaves despite this, and further cements the fact that she remains lost. Certain of finding a place in life to call home, rather than confronting...
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...Death’s Head Revisited vs. Was it a Dream? by Kassim Santone The human psyche is a fragile structure comprised of a series of defense mechanisms held together like a Jenga tower, when the right piece is pulled the entire construct crumbles. Gunther Lutze from “Death’s Head Revisited” and the narrator from “Was it a Dream?” are both prime examples of the vulnerability of the human psyche, both stories depict how suddenly men can have their entire sense of self shattered. A majority of the plot in both stories occurs in a location which holds significant meaning to the main character’s life. Their intentions in returning to these places are to fulfill an unconscious desire to unveil their true thoughts with regard to specific experiences which profoundly impacted them (this is known as introspection). Both characters have a spiritual plight occupying their psyche, however they are unaware of what is causing this (on a conscious level) and so by returning to the place that they deep down know is responsible for their plight they will be able to find the answers they are looking for. The stories’ plotlines both develop in a similar style, in the beginning, both plotlines show the main characters as completely unaware of their true state of mind (fears, desires etc.). As the stories progress you can see an internal struggle occurring between the person they want to be and the person they know they are. As much...
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...unthinkable and finds surrogate to take place of her father.! ! For every strong man there is a flaw in them that can ruin a person. Faulkner wrote of the father/daughter relationship for a specific reason, as if to give the readers a view of her past and to see what may have sparked the flame of insanity. Through the narrator’s point of view Faulkner portrayed their relationship through the eyes of the people by saying; “None of the young men were quite good enough for Miss Emily and such. We had long thought of them as a tableau, Miss Emily a slender figure in white in the background, her father a sprawled silhouette in the foreground, his back to her and clutching a horsewhip, the two of them framed by the back-flung front door” (Faulkner). As the viewers of the story read this they realize Emily didn’t get to embrace the normal life of a young woman, she didn’t get to interact with men, and she wasn’t married at the time although she was “thirty and still single” (Faulkner) when her father was still alive, readers can infer that her social interaction was limited because the Grierson’s believed they were superior to the rest of the town. The hold Emily’s father held over her life repressed the natural way she grew up and caused her to grow an unnatural...
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...An analysis of the Role of Family Disappointment in Joyce’s Dubliners James Joyce, an Irish modernist writer and influential author in the twentieth century, wrote the story collection named “Dubliners”. This collection consisted of fifteen short stories and carried a naturalist style. In “Dubliners”, Joyce rarely uses metaphors, relying on simplicity and attention to detail to create an authentic setting. Joyce often carried hidden similarities throughout each of his novels and poetry. This is seen true within Joyce’s collection, “Dubliners”. A close analysis of “Dubliners” reveals an excellent example of the role of family disappointment as shown in each of the short stories; “Araby”, “Eveline”, and “The Dead”. A direct example or claim of family disappointment can clearly be seen within each of these three short stories. Theses examples will be laid out and explained throughout this essay. Each example having varying circumstance, and outcome. Displayed from the point of view of the characters, to be taken inside their heads, and be shown a different aspect of what family disappointment means to the characters. The theme of disappointment in “Dubliners” is all about the painful experience. Ambiguity so to speak, the misconception of life being grand, only to face the troubles of reality. The characters determine that their own families don’t always have their best interest at heart, that their wives were deceitful, and that the world of business can be bitter...
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