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Literary devices in turning of the screw
The turn of the screw literary devices
Literary devices in turning of the screw
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The decisions people make are what ultimately shape their lives the most. But as important as our decisions are, choosing a course of action often follows a strenuous decision-making process. This is precisely what the governess undergoes in Turn of the Screw. Caught between two compelling and conflicting desires, the governess is torn between revealing and concealing her supernatural interactions at the estate of Bly with Bly’s owner, conclusively teaching the reader that prolonging a decision can result in the suffering of many. The governess’s inability to make a speedy decision leads to her own distress. After witnessing the ghost of Peter Quinn, a former valet at the Bly estate, the governess describes herself as “stricken with death” (James 16). These emotions escalate consistently through the course of the novel, causing her to ponder more seriously whether or not she should tell the owner of Bly of these strange sightings. Due to the shaken mental state the governess develops because of the ghosts, and because one of the children under her care died during her time of service, the governess soon relieved herself of her duties at the country home estate. Conversely, had she written to the owner of Bly, detailing her concerns about …show more content…
One night, Peter Quinn appeared distantly through a window while the governess and Miles were together. Out of instinct and agitation, the governess “sprang straight upon him (Miles)… press[ing] him against [her]” when her eyes landed on the ghost (James 86). The governess noted that Miles shook as she held him in her grasp and began asking him questions, ending with his death, as she felt “his little heart… stop” (James 87). The governess failed to realize how much the ghost consumed her behavior, including her physical actions, and the boy’s death would have likely been prevented had she informed Bly’s owner of the ghosts haunting her and the
Jack then shoots Boyce because he didn’t follow Jacks orders and killed Peter’s family instead. Jack then pours gasoline all over the house and sets the old abandoned house on fire. Meanwhile, the hallucination of Peter's wife is on the brink of yelling, urging Peter to wake up. When he finally awakens, he takes Anne out of the burning house where she is reunited with her daughter. Boyce traps Jack in the fire by pouring gasoline on him before dying.
Elizabeth Proctor, Abigail Williams and Mary Warren helps recapitulate how powerful manipulation has over the average human being as it can do a lot of damage and cause anyone to be forced to do things that they commonly wouldn’t do. To help prove the old saying “sticks and stones make break my bones, but will never hurt me” is wrong is an excellent way to bring up the power of manipulation because in an instant of a short transfer of words over top a bounty that may lay on top of your head, even you could be lead to do things that you never thought you would do, just to protect what you have established.
One issue which, like the rest, can be answered in more than one way is why Mrs. Grose believes in the Governess when she tells her about her ghost encounters. Usually one would second-guess such outlandish stories as the ones that the governess shares throughout the story, yet Mrs. Grose is very quick to believe our borderline-insane narrator. One of the explanations for such behavior could be the underlying fact that Mrs. Grose and the governess have a similar socio-economic background, therefore making them somewhat equal even if the governess does not always seem to think that way. This fact makes them susceptible to trusting and believing each other, and to believing that the ghosts are there, for the people that the ghosts are presenting used to be servants and therefore from a similar socio-economic background. To add on to that, Bruce Robbins proposes in his Marxist criticism of The Turn of the Screw that the idea of a ghost is synonymous to that of a servant, subconsciously making the two lower-class workers of Bly more vulnerable to believe that the ghosts were real; in other words, servants were ghosts....
The existence of the ghosts in The Turn of the Screw has always been in debate. Instead of directly discussing whether the ghosts are real or not, this essay will focus on the reliability of the governess, the narrator of the story. After making a close examination of her state of mind while she is at Bly, readers of The Turn of the Screw will have many more clues to ponder again and to decide to what extent the governess can be believed. While critics like Heilman argue that there are problems with the interpretation that the governess was psychopathic, textual evidence incorporated with scientific research show that the governess did go through a period of psychical disorder that caused her insomnia, out of which she created hallucinations.
Within the first 24 hours of the governess arriving at Bly the governess immediately notes that she “slept little that night” (7) . She attributes it to excitement, but the most common sign of insanity is restlessness. Not only was she not sleeping that night, but she thought she heard a child crying and footsteps outside her door and chose to ignore them. Her job as the governess is to handle things like that, but instead she stays in her room, wide awake. Later in the book, after the ghosts had been introduced, she again, didn’t sleep. Instead she went to Miles’s room where an odd conversation ensued and “a gust of frozen air”, which turned out to be Miles, blew out the candle (64). Only an insane governess would have a long conversation with her pupil in the middle of the night. The next time we catch her not sleeping, she runs into Peter Quint late at night, only to come back to her room to find that “Flora’s little bed was empty” (40). Time and time again we see the governor’s restless sleeping patterns and moreover, we see what odd things seem to occur during these
The classic ghost story, the Turn of the Screw, is filled with loose-ends and ambiguity. Are the ghosts real or imagined? Is the Governess a heroine or anti-heroine? Are the children really as innocent as they seem? In the novel, Henry James rarely provides an in-depth character that the reader actually gets to know. From the young romantic governess, to the intelligent ten year old, James keeps his characters morally ambiguous in order to further the “Unsolved mystery” style.
...was a desperate act of a lonely, insane woman who could not bear to loose him. The structure of this story, however, is such that the important details are delivered in almost random order, without a clear road map that connects events. The ending comes as a morbid shock, until a second reading of the story reveals the carefully hidden details that foreshadow the logical conclusion.
In conclusion, it is not the ghosts, as the governess suspected, that are corrupting the children, but the governess herself, through her continually worsening hysteria that is corrupting the children. Both Peter Quint and Miss Jessel are not real ghosts that have the peculiar habit of appearing before the governess and the governess alone but they are merely the signs of the fragmenting mental state of the governess.
The governess sees a woman on the other side of the lake and jumps to the conclusion that Flora has seen her and is choosing to act like she didn’t. The child was playing with a boat and had her back turned to the lake. Why would she think that she had to have seen her? There is no proof and does not even ask the child if she saw anything. She automatically assumes it’s Miss Jessel, the previous governess who died and that she is after Flora. She tells her story to Mrs. Grose drawing her in more deeply into believing her crazy hallucinations and Mrs. Grose asks her if she is sure its Miss Jessel and the governess replies “Then ask Flora—she’s sure!” and then immediately comes back to say “no, for God’s sake don’t! She’ll say she isn’t—she’ll lie” ((James 30). She comes to the conclusion that the child will lie about it when there is no reason to suspect that she would. Again, this is her jumping to conclusions, because there is not any proof to say that the children have seen or know anything about the ghost’s. “Thus a very odd relationship develops between the governess and the children, for the more she loves them and pities them and desires to save them, the more she begins to suspect them of treachery, until at last she is convinced that they, in league with the ghosts, are ingeniously tormenting her’ (Bontly 726). “The ghosts appear, thus, when the governess is both aware of the corruption which threatens the children and convinced of her own power to preserve them untainted” (Aswell 53). It’s the governess fabricating all this up in her mind again so she can play the part of
...t want to be the only one who does. It is another feeble attempt to prove her sanity to herself and to others. However, because she “is so easily carried away”, she soon believes that the children do in fact see the ghosts by reading into their every remark and behavior. By piecing all of this together, the governess proves to herself that she is not insane. The governess in The Turn of the Screw, is a highly unreliable narrator. From the beginning of the story, her energetic imagination is displayed to the reader. With this knowledge alone, it would not be irrational to conclude that she had imagined the appearances of Peter Quint and Miss Jessel. However, these facts in addition to her unsubstantiated inferences allow the reader to intelligently label the governess as an unreliable narrator. Works Cited Poupard, Dennis. “Henry James.” Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism: Volume 24. Ed. Paula Kepos. Detroit: Gale research.; 1990. 313-315.
... through her hug, squeezing the life out of him because of her own fears of the supposed ghosts. Miles response is so ambiguous it leaves the reader with only theories with no way of knowing for a fact what really happened.
Life at Bly runs smoothly until the governess receives a letter from Miles' school informing her that he has been exp... ... middle of paper ... ... e contaminating and corrupting of the idea of innocence by the governess and not by the apparitions. There seems to be answers for the happenings at Bly however these answers appear to lie in the mental state of the governess. She seems to have developed delusions, resulting in the obsession with the ghosts and their relationship with the children.
Fortunately, Boy Willie sees everything that Berniece has been trying to tell him. He finds out about this when Sutter’s ghost came to the Charles’ house who tried to stop him from taking the piano away and started a big chaos.
There is no reason for the governess to be afraid. The existence of the ghosts has not even been confirmed. However, because she is insane, she overreacts. In addition, the governess wrongly convinces herself that the “ghosts” have corrupted her charges. While conversing with Mrs. Grose, she worriedly exclaims that Miles and Flora are “his and they’re hers!”
In his 1948 essay, Robert Heilman explores the suggestion that The Turn of the Screw is a symbolic representation of the conflict between good and evil. Heilman interprets the apparitions of Peter Quint and Miss Jessel as evil forces. He explains that the ghosts only appear to the governess because evil lurks in subtlety before it strikes. It is the duty of the governess to "detect and ward off evil." She must protect the children from the awful ghosts. The governess describes Miles and Flora as beautiful little cherubs whose only fault is their gentleness (James, 18-19). Heilman views the children's beauty as a "symbol of the spiritual perfection of which man is capable." Heilman explains the ghosts' attempts to reach the children by explaining that evil forces will always try to conquer and possess the human soul. Heilman continues to draw from the descriptions of Miles and Flora to support his theories. He points out that the two children are described as having an "angelic beauty" and a "positive fragrance of purity" (James 9, 13). The governess describes them as if they are perfect and beautiful in every way. This repeated vision of beauty, radiance, and innocence parallels the image of Eden. The house at Bly also resembles this image, "I remember the lawn and the bright flowers..." (James 7). The governess makes mention of the "golden sky" and of Flora's "hair of gold," which Heilman believes connects Bly and Flora with these images of golden hues (James 7, 9).