Sunday, October 31, 2010

Exam

Part I

Protagonist: The narrator, woman, “Jane”
Plot: The narrator has been deemed mentally unwell, and must remain house/bed ridden until her “disease” is curable. She walks the reader through her day by day imprisonment, and her relationship with the yellow wallpaper. While being forced to stay in the house, she begins to hallucinate a woman inside the pattern of the old wallpaper in her bedroom. In the end, the woman trapped inside the pattern, represents her and many other women who have their problems silenced.
Character: The narrator of The Yellow Wallpaper is a very normal woman. Through her “prescription” to stay bed ridden, we see her morph into insanity. Her intense asphyxiation on the wallpaper engulfs her into obsession and the polite woman who laughed and joked and was in love, suddenly becomes a crazed individual creeping around her room.
Rising Action: The narrator discovers a woman/women moving within the pattern of the wallpaper. She wishes to free them.
Epiphany: She decides to release the women from the wallpaper when John is away. The narrator realizes that John and Jennie are distant from her and cannot see her sickness. She is going to try to prove that there are women trapped behind the wallpaper.
Resolution: The narrator no longer is trying to free the women from the wallpaper, but associates herself as being trapped within the pattern. She finds comfort in the wallpaper, as a new home, instead of fearing it.
The narrator’s sickness is overlooked because she is a woman. If we look back to the date in which this piece was written, 1899, women’s primary directive was to be seen and not heard. Women couldn’t even vote yet, until 1920, so who should listen to them? And their “made up problems.” Gilman definitely channeled the ignorance most displayed to women at the time. Even today, men can put down women in the same sense. Women are seen not to have any real problems, if we’re sad or angry it’s because we’re on our period. Gilman created a voice and a scenario for the silenced women suffering from a sickness paralleled with the narrator’s.

Part II

I go down.
Rung after rung and still
The oxygen immerses me
The blue light
The clear atoms
Of our human air.
I go down.
My flippers cripple me,
I crawl like an insect down the ladder
And there is no one
To tell me when the ocean
Will begin.

            The narrator clearly expresses that she has to do this alone. Yet, when the oxygen immerses her, she describes the air as belonging to more than one person. Our air. This stanza represents her struggle to discover the wreck. She is shrouded with fear, comparing herself to a lone insect and being without the knowledge or compassion of others. No one is by her side, and she starts to feel out of place. Her flippers “cripple” her, and her journey down the ladder seems torturous. “Rung after rung and still” is discussing how the narrator continues to descend, continues to search, yet her realization of being alone frightens her.
            The narrator of this poem is expressing this part of her journey as if she does not have a choice. She keeps repeating that she is alone, that she is in awkward equipment, that the place she is searching for is empty, like her. For example, why would she compare herself to an insect? Bugs aren’t the most pleasant thing to think of, and many people dislike them. Most insects will drown in water. Is she considering this journey to be her fate? The narrator is hesitant to continue down the ladder, comparing herself to an insect, and noting once more that she is alone. Through this stanza we can determine that the narrator is nervous about her journey and finds herself second-guessing the dive into the wreck.


1 comment:

  1. You have correctly identified the parts of the story and attributed meaning to those parts—well done! I will review your story post in class.

    Your poem post is also effective as you incorporate specific symbols and work to explain them all the while guiding your reader smoothly from point to point. I agree with you that she is alone and that her journey is frightening, but I guess I'd like to know where you think she is going and why you think she is going there—you allude to the journey as her fate, but I'd like a better understanding of this aspect of your analysis.

    ReplyDelete