After reading Charlotte's article about why she wrote "The Yellow Wallpaper", I understand now why she gave the male character in this story ignorance. In the story, John ( her husband ) is a physician and everytime she tries to tell him how she feels or that something is different about her, he rides it off by saying that she needs to strictly follow her medications, sleep more and not lift a finger, for that will make her stronger. Those were the same instrucitons given to Charlotte, but right at the brink of madness, she picked her up her pen ( which she was told not to do ), and started writing. I thought the short story was a perfect blend of patrial male-heiarchy and the wilting innocent woman plus the idea of horror because we don't really know what causes her to go mad, but we do know that she is very fascinated in this wallpaper that seems to grow more intersting each day to her.
In "Good Man", I believe the misfit is grotesque mainly because he seems to know what he is doing is wrong, yet feels no remorse for doing it. Almost like he doesn't care for anyone else but himself and will literally stop at nothing to keep his appearance a secret. In "A Rose for Emily", I believe that Emily is grotesque but i'm torn between Emily and Homer, not because they are mainly the only two characters you read about, but because it seems like they both have qualities about themselves that are different from other people. In the end, I am SURE that Emily is insane in "A Rose for Emily" because she has this dead rotting body in her bed and then the people find a silver hair, one of hers I believe, under the pillow next to the corpse. I just think that's disgusting. I do though see another revised southern belle in "Good Man", the grandmother. She has such a sweet side and sees the good side of things and never says many bad things throughout the story and even tries to talk some sense into the Misfit by telling him to pray. I know that if I had a guy with a gun who is known for murder standing right in front of me, I wouldn't do anything that might anger him! But the grandmother tries, even though she knows she keeps hearing gunshots.
I notice that time stands still in "Good Man", but in "Emily", times seems to progress rapidly and on a downward side at that. The "yankee" I believe is Homer Barron in "Emily", not jsut because it says so in the story, but because he is much different from the people in the town h's at. He's loud and disrespectful, always causing trouble. The white perceptions of Black americans in the story, I could only find in "Emily" when Homer Barron would "...cuss the riggers..".
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
In "Yellow Wallpaper" it is easy to see how she showed her own experiences in her writing. All authors put aspects of there life in their writing but she appears to put exactly what happened to her. The suffering that she had to go through was displayed in her writing and she was able to put a political spin into the writing as well. I also agree that the Misfit and Emily are insane and grotesque characters. The grandmother in "A Good Man is Hard to Find" is an interesting character for sure. Although she talks to the Misfit while everyone is dying it just seems like she is trying to save herself. Honestly if she had kept her mouth shut in the beginning, everyone might not have been killed.
ReplyDelete