Symbolism in "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

I always start out by reading the author introductions at the beginning of every story, and I found the introduction about Charlotte Perkins Gilman to be one of the most insightful introductions - at least in terms of the story that followed. It said, "After the birth of her one daughter, she experienced a severe depression. The rest cure her doctor prescribed became the basis of her most famous story, "The Yellow Wallpaper (265)."

What is significant about this is that those very elements are present in the story - the protagonist's bed confinement, her baby whom she is not allowed to see, and the severe mental disease she is inflicted with - and the story became so much clearer to me. It was immediately obvious from the very beginning that the protagonist is an unreliable narrator. The reader is informed that "...there is really nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression - a slight hysterical tendency- what is one to do? (266)"

 In the story, the protagonist is confined to a room and is highly disturbed by the yellow wallpaper on the walls, seeming to find strange shapes and forms everywhere she looks. She feels that her husband, John, a physician, does not think that she is as sick as she says she is. She went on to say, "John does not know how much I really suffer. He knows there is no reason to suffer, and that satisfies him. (267)" I wonder if this symbolism pertains not only to the protagonist but also to the author. It is written to sound as if depression is a minor disease and something that should not be taken seriously. Gilman was inflicted with depression and had to rest; it seems as if she is frustrated about this "unnecessary" cure and is channeling her frustration through the protagonist in the story.

The wallpaper becomes a point of obsession for the protagonist and she starts to think that it may be alive. She talked about the wallpaper in this quote, "Behind the outside pattern, the dim shapes get clearer every day ...I wish John would take me away from here! (272)" Although she is talking about the wallpaper, I think the author may be hinting at how stifling rest cure is, and how it could drive someone to commit suicide. There are numerous other words about the wallpaper, such as "The color is hideous enough, and unreliable enough, and infuriating enough, but the pattern is torturing. (273)" The wallpaper is like a symbol of the aggravation of the rest cure. "I find it hovering in the dining-room, skulking in the parlor, hiding in the hall, lying in wait for me on the stairs. (275)" This could hint at the measures taken by other people to make sure that the protagonist (and perhaps the author) stays confined in her bed.

The last part of the story is quite disturbing as the protagonist starts to go out of her mind (although she does not know this). She defiantly gets out of bed and starts to peel off all the wallpaper she could reach, making "All those strangled heads and bulbous eyes and waddling fungus growths just shriek with derision! (278)" The bed where she is regularly ordered to stay in becomes the last standing obstacle to her freedom when it refused to move. "I tried to lift and push it until I was lame, and then I got so angry I bit off a little piece at one corner - but it hurt my teeth. (277)" At this point, the protagonist is starting to hurt herself to tear off the wallpaper. She finally succeeds and said, "It is so pleasant to be out in this great room and creep around as I please. (278)" Free from the rest cure, the protagonist feels liberated and probably better than she felt for a while, although she is at the most serious stage of her disease.

"I've got out at last in spite of you and Jane. And I've pulled off most of the paper, so you can't put me back! (278)" This sentence has the most meaning in the story because the wallpaper is the symbol of aggravation. By tearing down this barrier, the protagonist is finally free from the rest cure. "I've got out at last... you can't put me back!" could also express the author's hopeless dream to be free from rest cure.

It is almost melodramatic that in the end, the author committed suicide. Her battle with depression has evidently been lost. The story ended with John fainting and the protagonist unaware of her dangerous mental state, and it is not unlikely to imagine the protagonist eventually committing suicide, like the author who penned the story. "The Yellow Wallpaper", with its symbolism and dark tone, serves as an unintentional reminder that depression is a disease not to be taken lightly.

The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien

Immediately after reading the first paragraph of the story, I knew that although it is about American soldiers at the Vietnamese war, it is mostly about just how very detached from the war, both emotionally and physically, these soldiers were.

There was very little about the actual war itself in the story. O'Brien instead focused his attention on the things each soldier carried. The tone throughout the story is light, although there were moments when the author reminds you of the gravity of the situation these soldiers were in. The protagonist is probably First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross because he is in both the beginning and ending of the story, and we are given more insight into his mind than any of the others. The story begins with Jimmy Cross apparently more focused on his love for Martha than on the war. This becomes the prevailing theme of the story - soldiers who were risking their lives, but whose thoughts were occupied with anything but the war. Jimmy Cross' thoughts were forever with Martha, and "he had difficulty keeping his attention on the war (345)."

The second paragraph of the story started with "The things they carried were largely determined by necessity." This line is funny especially after I read of the things these soldiers carried - along with the vital things like canteens of water and C rations, the soldiers carried cigarettes, packets of Kool-Aid, chewing gum, and other things you would not normally expect soldiers in such a heavy war to carry.

The title becomes clear to me as I continued reading the story. It seems that the things each soldier carried reflected their individual personalities and characteristics. Hygienically-inclined Dave Jensen, for instance, carried "a toothbrush, dental floss, and several hotel-sized bars of soap he'd stolen on R&R in Sydney, Australia (341)." Religious, spiritual Kiowa carried "an illustrated New Testament (342)" and his grandfather's hunting hatchet, and Mitchell Sanders carried condoms with him.

I think the author is trying to say that these soldiers are really just kids at war. There is a line in the story that captures this perfectly - when Lieutenant Cross was looking at the tunnel, he could not help but think of Martha instead of the dangers that could be awaiting the soldiers. He was "just a kid at war, in love. He was twenty-four years old. He couldn't help it." Although this line refers to Jimmy particularly, I think it applies to the soldiers under his command (except for the love part). They make light of their situation at war, and are even able to make jokes. It is not the intense, 24/7 life-threatening situations we see in Hollywood movies depicting the war.

The soldiers in the story are brave, but it is not courage. "Rather, they were too frightened to be cowards (353)." Other than the physical objects, they carried their fear inside of them and maintained tough, fierce exteriors when really, they were scared and were just trying to endure each day to the best of their abilities.

The end of the story finds Lieutenant Jimmy Cross realizing that Martha never loved him. Whether this is actually true is never imparted to the reader, but this epiphany changes his character. This "loss" hardens his heart, and he decided to himself to "not tolerate laxity. He would show strength, distancing himself."

Jimmy Cross somehow lost meaning in his life when he lost his love. I interpret the quote to mean that as long as the soldiers still find meaning in their lives, whether through devotion to religion like Kiowa, or through the love of food like Henry Dobbins, they could never be fully attentive to the war because there are more important things in life for them. The war is really just a duty, and a duty the soldiers were not particularly interested in.

This line captures the whole meaning in the story: "It was very sad, he thought. The things men carried inside. The things men did or felt they had to do. (354)."

A Pair of Tickets by Amy Tan

"A Pair of Tickets" by Amy Tan was written in 1989, a year after the author's trip to China with her mother. The story takes place in the cities of China, such as Shenzhen, Guangzhou, and Shanghai - in modern China, perhaps around the late eighties or early nineties. The story mainly takes place in downtown Guangzhou, and there are occasional descriptions of Chinese life in the story, such as when June May Woo's (the protagonist) father looked out the train window to gaze at a Chinese countryside with its low rising hills, green and brown fields, and people in blue jackets riding in an ox-driven cart. When June and her family were at the train station, the landscape was described to be gray, with many low flat cement buildings and old factories. The Chinese people are mostly dressed in Western clothes and the old ladies wore gray tops and pants that stopped mid-calf (probably traditional Chinese clothes). Downtown Guangzhou, where June and her family stayed in, is more modern and looks like a "major American city (126)" from afar, but the congested part of the city contains many little shops crammed next to each other, and there is an traditional-looking Chinese building where its front has scaffolding made of bamboo strips. It was October in the story and the heat was sweltering (123). These settings are very important to the story as the protagonist feels very much like a fish-out-of-water, having lived in America all of her life and never being able to truly get in touch with her Chinese roots and culture.

 

This is the Guangzhou train station entrance/exit. I thought this picture of the train station fit the image of the station the protagonist described in the story perfectly. There are streams of people with boxes, plastic bags, and other belongings, the landscape is gray, and there are low, flat buildings in the background, just like how June described it. It is perfect how the people in this photo are dressed in "drab Western clothes (123)" - drab as in plain-looking. The majority of them are dressed in drab colors like white and gray.

This is downtown Guangzhou. From far away, it looks just like "a major American city, with high rises and construction going on everywhere (127)." I picked out this picture not only because of the high rises against the gray sky, but because of the construction going on in the middle of the picture. It was as if I was looking through June's eyes when I found this.

 

This is the actual Garden Hotel that June and her family stayed in. I was quite excited when I found this on Google, because I initially thought that the author just made up the name of the hotel. I was surprised at just how huge and grand it looked in this picture! June is right when she described the hotel to be a "grander version of the Hyatt Regency (127)."

This is the Garden Hotel lobby, which I found in one of the tourism websites on Google. I wanted to see what the lobby looked like because it was described to be "magnificent (127)."

Finally, this is the countryside that June's father looked at through the train window. This picture suits the image I have in my head of what he saw the best, because there are sectioned fields with low-lying hills in the distance. I wanted to find a picture where there were people riding in an ox-driven cart, but the backgrounds in the pictures were not nearly as picturesque as this one. The author painted a romantic picture of the countryside, so I wanted this sentimental view to be reflected in the photo.

Questions on Cathedral by Raymond Carver

Blog about one of the stories you read for today (your choice). In your blog entry, answer each of the questions in the Checklist on page 94. Type out the question and then your answer. Find an image of someone (famous or not) who you would cast as the protagonist if you were making a movie of this story. Include the image in your blog entry.

Checklist: Writing About Character
1. Who is the main character or protagonist of the story?
The protagonist is the narrator.

2. Make a quick list of the character's physical, mental, moral, or behavioral traits. Which seem especially significant to the action in the story?
The narrator is the typical macho male - possessive of his wife while at the same time dismissive of her interests, blunt, and oftentimes insensitive. He initially seems to be especially insensitive and unsocial as he makes snide comments about Robert and during Robert's stay. Even before meeting Robert, the narrator already felt resentful towards him. For example, he thought, "So when the time rolled around, my wife went to the depot to pick him up. With nothing to do but wait - sure, I blamed him for that -... (84)"

3. Does the main character have an antagonist in the story? How do they differ?
The narrator makes it clear from the very beginning that he is displeased with the notion of his wife's old friend, a blind man, sleeping under their roof. From this point onwards, it is clear that this blind man, Robert, is the antagonist (even though he has done nothing wrong - in fact, the protagonist seems to fit the general qualities of an antagonist better than the antagonist himself). Robert is more sensitive, social, and open, unlike the protagonist. He enjoys company and kept in touch with the protagonist's wife by sending tapes to each other for years. When the narrator's wife fell asleep, Robert said to the him, "No, I'll stay up with you, bub. If that's all right. I'll stay up until you're ready to turn in. We haven't had a chance to talk... I feel like me and her monopolized the evening (89)." Robert is also less rigid than the narrator in the sense that he does not feel like he always has to have his way. When the narrator apologized for the channel they were watching, Robert said, "Whatever you want to watch is okay. I'm always learning something. (89)." Another distinction is that while the narrator seems to be more of the silent type who keeps to themselves, Robert is described to have a "big voice (85)" and a "big laugh" (88).

4. Does the way the protagonist speaks reveal anything about his or her personality?
There are many lines in the story that provide valuable clues to the narrator's personality. For example, when his wife was expecting her old friend, Robert, a blind man, to stay over at their house, the narrator thought, "I wasn't enthusiastic about his visit. He was no one I knew. And his being blind bothered me." He even suggested taking the visitor out bowling to his wife. The protagonist is also unsocial, and the thought of a visitor coming to sleep in his house made him grumpy. His wife said to him, "You don't have any friends. Period. (83)" The narrator is probably slightly racist as well. When he heard Robert's wife's name (Belulah), he immediately thought, "That's the name for a colored woman. (83)" However, there are also times when I see a more sensitive side to the narrator. When his wife told him about the Robert's wife's recent death, the narrator started to feel sorry for this stranger he disliked even before he met him. After meeting Robert, the narrator also became more thoughtful and perhaps respected Robert more. When Robert asked him to describe the cathedrals on the television, the narrator did his best to help the blind man imagine them. He even thought to himself, "How could I even begin to describe it? But say my life depended on it. Say my life was being threatened by an insane guy who said I had to do it or else. (90)."

5. If the story is told in the first person, what is revealed about how the protagonist views his or her surroundings?
The narrator is highly territorial of his space and his wife. He dislikes outside company, like Robert, and is even more resentful of Robert owing to the fact that his wife is old friends with him. Otherwise, the narrator is very comfortable with his home surroundings.

6. What is the character's primary motivation? Does this motivation seem reasonable to you?
At first the narrator's primary motivation was to have as little to do with Robert as possible. This was highly unreasonable to me, especially since Robert had recently faced the tragic death of his wife and was the narrator's wife's old friend. Any well-mannered person would go out of his or her way to make a visitor feel comfortable.

7. Does the protagonist fully understand his or her motivations?
It seems to me that the narrator is not fully aware of his motivations. He was just feeling sorry for himself that he had to go out of his way, and step out of his comfort zone, with a visitor in the house. Therefore, he was acting moody and sometimes rather rude to Robert. I do not think he was aware of his later motivations either, when he whole-heartedly tried to describe a cathedral to Robert. He did not realize that by doing his best to make something unknown vivid to a blind man, he was being sensitive - a character trait he hardly makes use of. When he was drawing the cathedral, he was doing his best to make the cathedral look as lifelike as possible for Robert, even though he remains as gruff as could be - "First I drew a box that looked like a house. It could have been the house I lived in. Then I put a roof on it. At either end of the roof, I drew spires. Crazy. (92)."

8. In what ways is the protagonist changed or tested by the events of the story?
The narrator becomes more sensitive towards the end of the story. He becomes more open with Robert, whom I think he feels that he can relate to. The narrator started out being dismissive, even disturbed, by blind people. In the end, he gains a respect for Robert, who is a jovial person even with his blindness and the recent loss of his wife. When the narrator finished drawing the cathedral, he continued closing his eyes even when Robert told him to take a look. "But I had my eyes closed. I thought I'd keep them that way for a little longer. I thought it was something I ought to do. (93)." The last sentence conveyed the narrator's newfound respect for the blind. He said, "It's really something. (93)."


I would probably cast John Wayne in the protagonist's role because the typical John Wayne character in all the cowboy movies (especially his role in The Searchers) fits so well with the protagonist's personality. It is almost a perfect match - both the protagonist and John Wayne (at least the cinematic version of John Wayne) are gruff, territorial people, slightly sarcastic, and closed-minded (at least in the beginning of the movie). Of course, John Wayne has passed away. However, if he was still alive, he would be perfect for the role. Jeff Bridges would be a good contemporary alternative option as well.

Blog about “A Rose for Emily.” What is the point of view of the story? Who is telling the story? How is this unusual? Why would Faulkner select this point of view? How does the point of view fit with the theme of the story? What specific lines in the story give you clues about who is telling the story? Quote them and include page numbers.

Just like the previous story I blogged about (“A Good Man Is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Connor), “A Rose for Emily” is a story with a title as misleading as could be. Both titles, in my opinion, suggest stories with light content and a happy nature. I have become accustomed to the fact that Southern-style authors use misleading, seemingly innocent titles to further highlight the dark and subtly grotesque content of the actual stories.

I found “A Rose for Emily” to be suspenseful, partly because of the slow pace of the story, but mostly because of the mysterious nature of the arrogant and eccentric protagonist, Emily Rose. The story is told from the white townspeople’s (white because the black people in the story were referred to as Negroes) point of view. This is apparent from telltale lines in the story, such as “People in our town… believed that the Griersons held themselves a little too high for what they really were (36)” and “We had long thought of them as a tableau, Miss Emily a slender figure in white in the background, her father a spraddled silhouette in the foreground, his back to her and clutching a horsewhip, the tow of them framed by the back-flung front door. (36)” Another giveaway is the fact that Emily is referred to as “Miss Emily” throughout the story. This signifies that Emily and the narrator are acquaintances. It is logical to deduce that the narrators are the townspeople.

The townspeople narrating the story seem to hold Emily in high regard. When Emily was alive, she was described as “…a tradition, a duty, and a care; a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town… (34)”, and when she died, the whole town attended her funeral, with the men having a “respectful affection for a fallen monument (33)” while the women were just curious to see the inside of Emily’s house, which no one but an old black manservant had seen in at least ten years (33).

I find it interesting that Faulkner chose to group the townspeople into one narrator and one voice. It suggests that these Southerners share similar attitudes and a similar point of view of the life of Emily. The townspeople, as a collective bunch, are very ordinary curious neighbors who place Emily on a pedestal – probably because of her glaring oddities among their thoroughly ordinary lives. They like gossiping among themselves about Emily’s activities, and even knew what she bought when she visited the druggist. Of course, it could just be that Faulkner had to use such detail to make the story more interesting, and not because the townspeople were spectacularly nosy.

Emily is quite a character. She seems unable to accept the passing of time and the changes that come with it. Her house was described to be covered in dust, a metaphor for the Emily’s desire for time to be still. When the next generation with its more modern ideas (34) visited her home to notify her of taxes, she said, “See Colonel Sartoris. I have no taxes in Jefferson.”, even though the Colonel had been dead for almost ten years.

Another event that showed her unwillingness to accept change was her father’s death. When the town’s ladies came to her house to offer their condolences, Emily “met them at the door, dressed as usual and with no trace of grief on her face. She told them her father was not dead. She did that for three days… (36)”

The story became more suspenseful when Emily visited the druggist and purchased arsenic for rats. By then, Homer Barron had already appeared in the story, and I immediately thought that the eccentric Emily could have bought the arsenic to murder him. Homer himself said that “he was not a marrying man (38)” and it is already apparent in the story that Emily has an interest in him – “Presently we began to see him and Miss Emily on Sunday afternoons driving in the yellow-wheeled buggy and the matched team of bays from the livery stable. (37)”

My suspicions were half-confirmed when later on in the story, the townspeople saw the last of poor Homer Barron, and they were fully confirmed when the townspeople discovered the remains of his body in the dust-filled room which had “not been seen in forty years (40).” The last sentence of the story, “One of us lifted something from it, and leaning forward, that faint and invisible dust dry and acrid in the nostrils, we saw a long strand of iron-gray hair. (41)” has a special significance because Emily died with iron-gray hair. The strand of hair was lifted from a pillow next to where the corpse lay. This probably means that Emily slept next to this corpse up until her death.

This story is as grim and sinister (though not quite as sinister as “A Good Man is Hard to Find”) as I expected from an author writing in the Southern style. The relation of the title to the story is difficult to infer, although it seems to suggest the townspeople’s farewell to Emily, like a rose they place upon her grave. The townspeople’s regard, then, holds throughout Emily’s life, even when they discovered that she murdered Homer Barron. The title “A Rose for Emily” echoes their respectfulness for this woman who filled their ordinary town with much gossip that carried throughout the generations.

My impressions of "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" by Flannery O'Connor

Blog about “A Good Man Is Hard to Find.” Does the plot surprise you? Why or why not? When you started reading the story, what did you think would happen? If you have seen any films by the Coen brothers (especially No Country for Old Men), can you see how they were influenced by Flannery O’Connor?


I had some expectations before reading the story by Flannery O’Connor. There was a short description of the writer before the story, and it described O’Connor as a “Southern Gothic” writer because of her “fascination with grotesque incidents and characters.” I expected an untold amount of blood and gore, and as soon as I read about a serial murderer called The Misfit in the first paragraph, I immediately knew that this murderer would somehow be tied in to a seemingly ordinary family’s trip to Florida. The grandmother is the obvious protagonist of the story as she does the most talking in the text. The author has made sure to describe the grandmother with meticulous detail, from her mannerisms and her habits to the clothes she was wearing on the trip. I already felt a sense of foreboding the moment I read the story, and I felt for the grandmother, who I was sure would be fated for an ill end.

I noticed that the author did not provide names for the majority of the characters. John Wesley and June Star’s mother, for instance, was only referred to as the “children’s mother.” Red Sam’s wife was also only referred to “Red Sam’s wife”. Even the protagonist of the story was only referred to as “Grandmother.” This could be because O’Connor did not want readers to become attached to any of the characters in this short story. It could also suggest the utter ordinariness of the characters – at a glance, they could be any ordinary squabbling family, with an ordinary bossy grandmother. Indeed, the majority of the characters eventually died in the hands of The Misfit.

The story is rather dark, with sinister overtones. It also progressed slowly, with not much happening until the very end, when the family encountered The Misfit. The title is rather misleading as well – there was not much in the story to suggest that “a good man is hard to find”. I was hoping the grandmother would be alive in the end, as she was the protagonist of this story. I found it strange that she died in the end; I am not used to a protagonist’s death in a story. The evil villain usually dies at the end, not the heroine! The loss of the grandmother was to me a bigger loss than the other members of the family, who were more or less disrespectful and unappreciative towards the grandmother.

The climax of the story progressed much more quickly – this was when the family was met with an accident and met The Misfit and his men. The title starts to make more sense when the grandmother, afraid for her life, said to The Misfit, “I know you’re a good man. You don’t look a bit like you have common blood. I know you must come from nice people! (364)” At this point onwards, the reader starts to wonder whether The Misfit could actually be a good man and spare the old lady’s life. However, The Misfit shot the grandmother three times in the chest and the title of the story comes full circle: that a good man is hard to find.

There is a twist in the story where the grandmother said to The Misfit, “Why you’re one of my babies. You’re one of my own children!” Although it is likely that The Misfit already knew that the grandmother was his real mother before killing her, I find it more likely that the grandmother, in the moments before her death, became crazed and mistook The Misfit for one of her own. If The Misfit was indeed the grandmother’s son, this would doubly reinforce the title of the story.

I was intrigued that a devout Roman Catholic writer like Flannery O’Connor would write such a dark story. Nothing in the story suggested her devout Catholic faith, instead, the story was largely skeptical of prayer and how religion could change a person’s life. There is nothing hopeful in the tone of the story – the author has written it in a cynical view of life, with the flaws of human character obviously exposed. Although I did not enjoy the story (I prefer stories with a more hopeful outlook on life), it was well written and very vivid – one could immediately be immersed in the setting the author has created, making the reader that much more impacted by the somber feeling throughout the whole story.

Introduction

Hi, I'm Carolyn. I've never had a blog before so this feels pretty weird! This blog will be kept strictly school-appropriate, so no chance of finding any personal stuff around. To random stragglers who come upon this blog, be warned: it's all English 1B stuff from here on out, so English haters, stay away. To those who like English, I congratulate you. There are lots of great books in the English language... and... random.