Descriptions The Yellow Wallpaper
The descriptive elements in The Yellow Wallpaper do a tremendous amount towards enhancing the reader's perception of the particular kind of insanity that afflicts the narrator. The descriptions, most notably of the wallpaper itself, are multi-sensory, artful and detailed. Using metaphorical images, and surprising combinations of words, the narrator gives numerous ways for readers to experience the wallpaper. In the line regarding the wallpaper: "...they connect diagonaly, and the sprawling outlines run off in great slanting waves of optic horror, like a lot of wallowing seaweeds in full chase." The word pairings of 'optic horror' and the similie are unusual and sensory. This serves to peak the reader's interest and more effectively draw the reader into the description.
Additionally, the range of descriptions of the wallpaper not only cover several intense and detailed visual descriptions, but also an equally detailed olfactory description. The narrator describes the smell of the wallpaper in the following lines:
But there is something else about that paper - the smell! I noticed it the moment we came into the room, but with so much air and sun it was not bad. Now we have had a week of fog and rain, and whether the windows are open or not, the smell is here.
It creeps all over the house.
I find it hovering in the dining-room, skulking in the parlor, hinding in the hall, lying in wait for me on the stairs.
It gets into my hair.
Even when I go to ride, if I turn my head suddenly and surprise it-there is that smell!
Such a peculiar odor, too! I have spent hours trying to analize it, to find what it smelled like.
It is not bad - at first, very gentle, but quite the subtlest, most enduring odor I ever met.
In this damp weather it is awful. I wake up in the night and find it hanging over me.
It used to disturb me at first. I thought seriously of burning the house-to reach the smell.
But now I am used to it. The only thing I can think of that it is like is the color of the paper! A yellow smell.
The two most notable descriptions of the wallpaper also follow (paragraphs removed to save space):
I never saw a worse paper in my life.
In "The Yellow Wallpaper" the setting helps define the action as well as to explain characters behaviors. The setting is which the story takes place is in the narrators room, where she is severally ill, and she is "locked up" in the room which served as her cage. The room in which the narrator is caged in is a nursery, "it is a big, airy room, the whole floor nearly, with windows that look all ways. The paint and paper look as if a boys' school had used it." The narrator describes the color of the walls as repellent, almost revolting, it is an unclear yellow with a dull orange. The condition that the narrator is in, the repulsiveness of the room, and the room haunting her, drives her into insanity.
In “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the author, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, through expressive word choice and descriptions, allows the reader to grasp the concepts she portrays and understand the way her unnamed narrator feels as the character draws herself nearer and nearer to insanity. “The Yellow Wallpaper” begins with the narrator writing in a journal about the summer home she and her husband have rented while their home is being remodeled. In the second entry, she mentions their bedroom which contains the horrendous yellow wallpaper. After this, not one day goes by when she doesn’t write about the wallpaper. She talks about the twisting, never-ending pattern; the heads she can see hanging upside-down as if strangled by it; and most importantly the
- - -. "The Yellow Wallpaper." 1892. Ed. Dale M. Bauer. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 1998. 41-59.
Recently the merits of a race based admission policy to colleges and universities have come under scrutiny by the American public. Take into account the position of black conservatives, who feel that affirmative action merely perpetuates a system of preference in reverse and does nothing to fix the problems African Americans face in lower educational programs. When looking at the arguments of the Black conservatives and comparing them to the view points of the opposition, a certain conclusion may be reached.
In six lines of poetry the author is able to cram three similes all comparing the outer look of a fish to wallpaper. As anyone who has held a trout or a salmon can attest to the natural colors on these animals are not necessarily the brightest. A very good word to describe the browns on a fish are “drab” which makes wallpaper an excellent comparison for multiple reasons. First off, the comparison creates an accurate picture for the readers’ imagination of what the actual caught fish in the poem looks like. Secondly, and arguably more importantly, using the word “wallpaper” helps create a connection for the reader between boringness and objects from the domestic sphere. Throughout her entire poem, Elizabeth Bishop champions nature’s beauty through her...
All through the story, the yellow wallpaper acts as an antagonist, causing her to become very annoyed and disturbed. There is nothing to do in the secluded room but stare at the wallpaper. The narrator tells of the haphazard pattern having no organization or symmetrical plot. Her constant examination of and reflection on the wallpaper caused her much distress.... ...
It is ironic that the author chose a color so bright and usually defined as being a happy and joyful color. However, this story is not at all joyful, but instead is very depressing and sad. The wallpaper is described in such great detail that is very easy for the reader to picture exactly what the author is trying to
Gilman uses this story to show a woman 's struggle with her oppressive limitations. She begins her journal by marveling at the grandeur of the house and grounds her husband has taken for their summer vacation. She describes it in romantic terms as an aristocratic estate or even a haunted house and wonders how they were able to afford it, and why the house had been empty for so long. Her feeling that there is “something queer” about the situation leads her into a discussion of her illness and of her marriage. As the Fourth of July passes, the narrator reports that her family has just visited, leaving her more tired than ever. John threatens
Faith is what drives us to fulfill the things we believe in. If she has faith that the Seahawks will win the Super Bowl, she will live carrying out that perspective. If he has faith that God has a plan for his life, he is going to live fulfilling God’s wishes for him and being the best person he can be. Faith is a powerful tool to influence someone’s life, as we can clearly see in “Crime and Punishment” by Fydor Dostoyevsky. The faith that the characters have in this book completely shape how they live their lives, and they live trying to uphold what they believe in. Their beliefs are what inspire characters to make the tough decisions, and is what shapes them as a whole.
The wallpaper, the narrator's obsession, destroyed the peace of mind for all parties concerned. The imagery, used in the short story "The Yellow Wallpaper", paints a vivid picture and the reader becomes a front row spectator to the mental deterioration of the narrator to utter insanity.
In the perception process we would first look at our environment and select the data from there, to do that we need to use our five senses, which are. Our sight ( using our eyes ), our smell ( using our nose ), our hearing ( using our ears), our feeling (using mostly skin), and our taste ( using our tongue). We use our senses as a window which we use to pass information from our environment into ourselves. In the select...
In today’s modern western society, it has become increasingly popular to not identify with any religion, namely Christianity. The outlook that people have today on the existence of God and the role that He plays in our world has changed drastically since the Enlightenment Period. Many look solely to the concept of reason, or the phenomenon that allows human beings to use their senses to draw conclusions about the world around them, to try and understand the environment that they live in. However, there are some that look to faith, or the concept of believing in a higher power as the reason for our existence. Being that this is a fundamental issue for humanity, there have been many attempts to explain what role each concept plays. It is my belief that faith and reason are both needed to gain knowledge for three reasons: first, both concepts coexist with one another; second, each deals with separate realms of reality, and third, one without the other can lead to cases of extremism.
The first example of an element of fiction used in The Yellow Wallpaper is symbolism. One symbol is the room. There is are bars on the windows to make the reader feel that the narrator is more than likely staying in psychiatric holding room than a room where she can get over her anxious condition. In most sanitariums, there are bars on the windows. The narrator’s husband went against her wishes to stay in the room downstairs with open windows and a view of the garden and put her in a barred prison cell contributing to the theme freedom and confinement. The second symbol is the bed. The bed is big, chained, and nailed to the floor. The reader could say the bed symbolizes sexual repression because a bed is where it happened during the 1900s and with a bed of such large size being nailed and chained down can represent sexual repression.
As humans, we interact with the world around us in five main discernible ways: seeing, hearing, tasting, touching, and smelling. Appropriately, they are known together as the five senses, five clearly distinguishable ways we could familiarize ourselves with an environment or recognize a new situation which we have not encountered before. As discussed in class, they help the brain perceive the world around us in a way where we can understand and react to everything which is happening around us. It is not just humans who have these abilities either, as almost all animals rely on at least one sharpened sense to help them avoid danger on a day to day basis and survive in whatever environment they live in. While none of our sensory abilities may be the strongest ones individually compared to certain ones in certain other animals, what makes humans unique as a species is that we possess an ability to input the information all of
Today, faith is the cornerstone of all major religious knowledge claims because there is no definitive way of...