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Affects of physical activity on mental health
Theme of loneliness in literature
Theme of isolation in literature
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In Paul Bereyter,W.G. Sebald uses detailed descriptions of the world around him to distract the reader from Bereyter’s growing depression and seclusion. Like in the story of the boy who cried wolf, Bereyter’s initial suicide attempt numbed people to his later signs of depression and eventual death. His connection to and description of nature draws the reader, and Bereyter himself, into believing in his world of false bliss. This false world comes to an end when Bereyter loses his sight and consequently his connection with nature. After this lost connection, he feels he has no reason to continue living. In Vladamir Nabokov’s essay Good Readers and Good Writers, he defines literature as a place between fantasy and reality. He says: “Literature He creates a new world for Paul Bereyter in which it doesn’t matter what’s real or not real; all that matters is Bereyter’s perception of the world. However, he also uses Bereyter’s connection to nature to downplay his ever-advancing depression. “Paul was in any case in the habit of opening the windows wide, even when the weather was bad, indeed even in the harshest cold of winter, being firmly convinced that lack of oxygen impaired the capacity to think” (Sebald 34). What matters to Bereyter is the world around him and his closeness to it. He goes to great lengths to be closer to nature, even spending his time scraping paint off the windows of his classroom so that he and the students could see out. This happens at a point in which Bereyter’s students described him as a mechanical human (35). They can see that he’s trying to seem normal despite the weight on his shoulders. This mechanical or robotic behavior can often be seen with depression because people try to behave the way they’re ‘supposed to’. He uses nature to distract himself when his job becomes too stressful or when he can’t act normal. By looking out the windows and feeling the wind on his face, he connects himself to the outside world that he longs to be in. The students see him as he would be if he were in the outdoors and therefore are unable to realize that Bereyter is unhappy and uncomfortable in his current “He not only did not attend church on Sundays, but purposely left town, going as far as he could into the mountains, where he no longer heard the bells” (36). Sebald mentions earlier that he and the other students were often told to pray for Bereyter because he was a “lost soul” (36). It becomes hard for him to control his aversion to the church and he is ostracized because of it. He immerses himself in the mountains to drown out the incessant depression the town causes him. This was not the first time he’d felt that isolation. After being told that he wouldn’t be able to teach, “He experienced that insuperable sense of defeat that was so often to beset him in later times and which, finally, he could not shake off” (49). He had wanted to be a teacher his whole life and being told he wouldn’t be able to be one caused him to stumble deeper into depression. While working as a tutor soon after this time, he lost a substantial amount of weight and appeared sullen and downtrodden. It wasn’t, however, until later that he first tried to commit
As a precursor, the common understanding needs to be reached that: literature is an art, and has many mediums. Medium is the material or technique with which an artist works (Dictionary.com), for example: photographs, pastels, canvas, paper, ink, etc... There are technical, recreational, and otherwise artistic uses for all mediums. A small child taking pictures of a puppy with a disposable camera, a reporter taking precise pictures of a sporting event, and an artist taking close-up pictures of the dew as it drips off a tree are all different uses of the same medium in photography. Literature can be created with many different intentions and reasons, but the attempt to determine that something is not art based off of the motivation or intentions of the artist is quit meaningless.
The speaker in “Five A.M.” looks to nature as a source of beauty during his early morning walk, and after clearing his mind and processing his thoughts along the journey, he begins his return home feeling as though he is ready to begin the “uphill curve” (ln. 14) in order to process his daily struggles. However, while the speaker in “Five Flights Up,” shares the same struggles as her fellow speaker, she does little to involve herself in nature other than to observe it from the safety of her place of residence. Although suffering as a result of her struggles, the speaker does little to want to help herself out of her situation, instead choosing to believe that she cannot hardly bare recovery or to lift the shroud of night that has fallen over her. Both speakers face a journey ahead of them whether it be “the uphill curve where a thicket spills with birds every spring” (ln. 14-15) or the five flights of stares ahead of them, yet it is in their attitude where these two individuals differ. Through the appreciation of his early morning surroundings, the speaker in “Five A.M.” finds solitude and self-fulfillment, whereas the speaker in “Five Flights Up” has still failed to realize her own role in that of her recovery from this dark time in her life and how nature can serve a beneficial role in relieving her of her
William Faulkner overwhelms his audience with the visual perceptions that the characters experience, making the reader feel utterly attached to nature and using imagery how a human out of despair can make accusations. "If I jump off the porch I will be where the fish was, and it all cut up into a not-fish now. I can hear the bed and her face and them and I can...
The author wrote this story in response to a magazine company, and eventually published it into a book. He used many styles and techniques to describe the life and death of McCandless. The mood throughout the novel constantly varies with the excitement of McCandless’s adventures and the emotions caused by his disappearance. Krakauer’s ability to engage multiple senses of a reader truly makes his novel special.
Many times people tend to allow their thoughts to have an overtake in which it clouds what is actuality. Some can revoke from their right state of mind and make their own make-believe world with these thoughts. Authors, Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Edgar Allan Poe both demonstrate this perception in their short stories, “The Tell-Tale Heart,” and “The Yellow Wallpaper.” In The Tell-Tale Heart, the narrator murders the old man he lives with because he is disturbed by the man’s eyes. Similarly, in The Yellow Wallpaper, the narrator is dealing with depression, and feels that she is being watched by the wallpaper and starts to study it and decoding the meaning. Hence, these two characters start to analyze their thoughts in a way where they become
At other times, nature can be a source of solace for those who have suffered. Following the death of Gladys and Kate, Grainier looks to the horizon to seek comfort from his crushing loss. “All his life Robert Grainier would remember vividly the burned valley at sundown, the most dream-like business he’d ever witnessed waking – the brilliant pastels of the last light overhead, some clouds...
Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” depicts the human mind through the struggle of distinguishing reality and imaginary. Poe utilizes the narrator/agonist to demonstrate how the suffering of one’s perceived acuteness of senses, in relation to anxiety, leads to an unwanted culmination. The narrator labels his own nervous behavior as “disease” that has “sharpened [his] senses” (691). Poe’s use of “disease,” indicates disorder and destruction, and also foreshadows the spread and consumption of the narrator’s fear. The confidence that results from the narrator’s justified senses proves to draw him further from his own morality. By example, he states, Moreover, his senses stem from his overarching obsession and hatred for the old man’s eye. This is demonstrated by his continued distinct characteristics he places on the eye—“eye of a vulture,” “pale blue eye,” “Evil Eye,” and “damned spot” (691-693). The collection of descriptions throughout his efforts to kill the old man shows the torment he suffers from his psychosis. The narrator’s statement, “it haunted me day and night,” displays his motivation for killing the old man. However, the significance of the narrator actually committing the murderous act demonstrates the definitive loss of his rationality and morality. Poe displays, that the dark side of the mind is a result of this los...
Under the orders of her husband, the narrator is moved to a house far from society in the country, where she is locked into an upstairs room. This environment serves not as an inspiration for mental health, but as an element of repression. The locked door and barred windows serve to physically restrain her: “the windows are barred for little children, and there are rings and things in the walls.” The narrator is affected not only by the physical restraints but also by being exposed to the room’s yellow wallpaper which is dreadful and fosters only negative creativity. “It is dull enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounced enough to constantly irritate and provoke study, and when you follow the lame uncertain curves for a little distance they suddenly commit suicide – plunge off at outrageous angles, destroy themselves in unheard of contradictions.”
The Tell-Tale Heart puts forward an idea that ego can alter our perceptions resulting in madness because it will destroy accurate understanding. “The narrators insanity is figured forth in terms of the murder of reason and moral sense and an utter breakdown of the three aspects of the human identity…”(Edward.) The absurdity of this murderer being sane is clear to read.
Throughout this book, Paul’s voice sounds more colloquial and chatty, where the tone is quite informal. This is shown with the use of a conversational and story-telling style of writing. First person pronouns are exceedingly common as part of his writing. By writing “When Breath Becomes Air” as a memoir, Paul allows the audience to see deep into his philosophies behind death and life. With a first-person narrative, it allows the reader to feel if they were in the same boat as Paul, carefully listening to his voice and opinion, which creates a strong connection between the reader and the
Like many other modernist texts, William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying employs many unreliable narrators to reveal the progression of the novel. One of the most interesting of these narrators is the youngest Bundren child, Vardaman. Like the rest of his family, Vardaman is mentally unstable, but his condition is magnified due to this lack of understanding of life and death. Because he doesn’t grasp this basic concept, Vardaman’s attempts to understand his mother’s death are some of the most compelling aspect of the novel. Over the course of the book, Vardaman attempts to rationalize his mother’s death through animals, particularly a fish. Through these rationalizations, Vardaman comes to a seemingly logical conclusion about the nature of life and death. While these conclusions seem perfectly logical to Vardaman, they are nonsensical to the reader. This concept helps illustrate the use of subjective narrators in As I Lay Dying, and defines it as a Modernist text.
Although Tennyson’s use of landscape indeed creates a strong vivid impression, I feel that it also serves a higher purpose: namely, to express the psychological state and mood depicted in the protagonists of the poems.
Edgar Allen Poe shows what really happens when someone experiences anxiety and terror that drives his or her mentally ill when given the obstacles inside his mind. The obstacles described inside Tell-Tale Heart bring the narrator to an ironic end. These hindrances slowly build up to a chilling end for the narrator. This end is drawn out with the beating of a heart that doesn’t go away and reminds the narrator that the old man is still haunting him. The narrator has an idea in his head that he is not crazy and in fact is too calm to be mad and has an ironic story behind it.
Throughout Frost’s poetry he draws upon the beauty of nature to build up vast amounts of scenery. “I felt my lungs inflate with the onrush of scenery—air, mountains, trees, people. I thought, "This is what it is to be happy.” (Plath). Sylvia Plath was on the same track as Frost, nature sustains life. Both believe that the beauty of nature gives energy to those in it and the poetry it inspires. Examples of this can be found in Birches. Frost metaphorically re awakes his childhood when he takes a stroll outside to see the trees he once swung from. From my own experience, I know that the cool spring breeze makes me feel a whole lot better about life. Nature has the ability to reawaken one’s inner youth.
The poem “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” by William Wordsworth is about the poet’s mental journey in nature where he remembers the daffodils that give him joy when he is lonely and bored. The poet is overwhelmed by nature’s beauty where he thought of it while lying alone on his couch. The poem shows the relationship between nature and the poet, and how nature’s motion and beauty influences the poet’s feelings and behaviors for the good. Moreover, the process that the speaker goes through is recollected that shows that he isolated from society, and is mentally in nature while he is physically lying on his couch. Therefore, William Wordsworth uses figurative language and syntax and form throughout the poem to express to the readers the peace and beauty of nature, and to symbolize the adventures that occurred in his mental journey.