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Deeper meaning of madness is divine sense
Theme of insanity in literature
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It is unquestionable that irregular conduct one may go so far as to call it franticness has penetrated our writing this semester. While the lexicon characterizes franticness as "mental fancy or the whimsical conduct emerging from it" Emily Dickinson once composed that "Much Madness is divinest Sense-/To a discerning eye" Have the writers like Mary Shelley,J..D. Salinger,Toni Morrison and F. Scott Fitzgerald shown an "discerning eye? In making writing 's most unusual, apparently silly characters? On the other hand have these scholars put forth an alternate expression about whimsy? Even though these characters like Jay Gatsby, Victor Frankenstein, Holden Caulfield, Daisy Buchannan and Sula Peace carry themselves in an eccentric manner, These writers of these novels (F. Scott Fitzgerald, Mary Shelley J.D. Salinger and Toni Morrison.) have gone against the stereotype of what classifies someone as being mad because the persons in the novel were aware of …show more content…
The dictionary defines madness as a state of severe mental illness however this Emily Dickinson has helped people go against this description with her poem Much Madness is divinest Sense—" because it prompts people in society that it is perfectly normal to march to the beat of your own drum like the characters in these novels do. The poem "Much Madness is divinest Sense—" is a poem that flips the sterotype of what and who is crazy. It is a poem for someone who has ever seen the world around them and realized It 's a piece for anybody who 's ever looked at the world around them and said “am I really crazy?”. The characters discussed in this paper exemplify this poem because these novels basically are saying that “crazy people” are reasonable and sensible people are
The most insane people are the ones who were kept sane the longest. In the stories “ A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner and “ Lamb to the Slaughter” by Roald Dahl the women are both completely insane. They both kill the ones they love because they don’t want them to leave. Although Mary and Emily both have different stragities of killing them. They are both very sneaky about hiding it up and how they get away with it.
Madness, madness, madness. It is but a word, yet those who possess it are capable of doing the most amazing or terrible of things. According to the Merriam-Webster online dictionary, madness is defined as “a state of severe mental illness.” Perry Edward Smith is the best individual to depict this characteristic. Throughout Truman Capote's novel “In Cold Blood” the main character, Perry Smith, as Dr. Jones says “. shows definite signs of severe mental illness” (Capote 296).
Through the use of insanity as a metaphor, authors such as William Shakespeare, Edgar Allen Poe, William Blake, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman, have utilized the extreme feelings of fear, love, hate, anger, and revenge to illustrate: the creation of a weakened psychological state that renders the victim susceptible to bouts of madness; the internalization of stimuli that has permeated the human psyche resulting in the chasm between rational and irrational thought; and the consequences of the effects of the psychological stress of external stimuli demonstrated through the actions of their characters.
Intelligence is often mistaken for brilliance, and conversely genius is mistaken for madness. Some of the greatest minds have been misconstrued in there time, and it is not until their whole life is taken into observance from the outside looking in, that their genius is realized and appreciated. Websters dictionary defines madness as "the act of being foolish or illogical." Ironically this form of thought has prompted some of the greatest advancements in government, science, and technology. It was the thought that every common man and woman should be included in his or her respective governments that prompted Democracy, a form of government unheard of before the signing of the Magna Carta. It was scientists and inventors thinking outside of the lines that inspired the cure for Small Pox and the invention of the computer. It can clearly be seen that serious thought is often the by-product of irrational thinking, this is also true for literature. It is while in madness, both feigned as well as sincere, that the characters in William Shakespeare's Hamlet are able to practice true mental clarity and express themselves in a manner free of treachery and falsehood.
In the late eighteenth century arose in literature a period of social, political and religious confusion, the Romantic Movement, a movement that emphasized the emotional and the personal in reaction to classical values of order and objectivity. English poets like William Blake or Percy Bysshe Shelley seen themselves with the capacity of not only write about usual life, but also of man’s ultimate fate in an uncertain world. Furthermore, they all declared their belief in the natural goodness of man and his future. Mary Shelley is a good example, since she questioned the redemption through the union of the human consciousness with the supernatural. Even though this movement was well known, none of the British writers in fact acknowledged belonging to it; “.”1 But the main theme of assignment is the narrative voice in this Romantic works. The narrator is the person chosen by the author to tell the story to the readers. Traditionally, the person who narrated the tale was the author. But this was changing; the concept of unreliable narrator was starting to get used to provide the story with an atmosphere of suspense.
The controversial topic of insanity manifests itself commonly in Romantic writing, and has been one much disputed over time. Some say that people who seem crazy are so above our own level of thought and understanding that we can’t possibly begin to identify with them and that we can find genius in the form of ordinary lunatics who connect to God and divinity in ways “normal” people don’t comprehend. Throughout works such as “The Cask of Amontillado and “The Castaway”, the authors question insanity with ideas that show the possible outcomes when one looks deep inside themselves for a divine spark or intuition. Both of these stories address madness in different forms, and madness itself is Godly experiences gone wrong; the person who receives the divine vision is unable to handle its raw truth.
Edgar Allen Poe may just be both-- a 19th-century genius and a literary lunatic. His tales mentioned here, of mystery and murder, are wrought with insanity, instability and the ramblings and doings of mentally deranged psychopaths. Though his themes are many, and the character motives always up for interpretation, the theme of madness and insanity seem to grab hold of the reader and pull him or her directly into the story. Critic Patrick Mcgrath ends his essay, “Method to the Madness,” by stating, “The reader who’s been successfully enlisted as a kind of psychiatric detective will find herself engaged with minds blind to their own dysfunction, which makes them as rich in complexity as any in our literature.”
According to Webster's New World Dictionary madness is defined as "mental derangement that makes a person incapable of what is regarded as rational conduct or judgement." There is much madness in Shakespeare's Hamlet; written around 1600, but Prince Hamlet is not included in the insane camp. Throughout the play Hamlet's seemingly irrational behavior served quite rational and sometimes ingenious ends. The Madness of Hamlet is certainly counterfeit and was recognized by Hamlet as being necessary to complete the revenge of the Murder of his father.
Hamlet shows many signs he has gone completely mad. Hamlets personality has changed many different times, from melancholy to playing in between the two roles of madness and sanity. His father’s sudden death and his mother’s rushed marriage to his uncle were major factors in Hamlet’s melancholy. His melancholy changed to madness when he first met with the ghost of his father. He transfers his personality between madness and sanity but madness took over. He lost his ability to be sane and created madness all around him as well. Hamlets pure madness is a pure act that turns into his identity.
Emily Dickinson's Obsession with Death. Emily Dickinson became legendary for her preoccupation with death. All her poems contain stanzas focusing on loss or loneliness, but the most striking ones talk particularly about death, specifically her own death and her own afterlife. Her fascination with the morose gives her poems a rare quality, and gives us insight into a mind we know very little about. What we do know is that Dickinson’s father left her a small amount of money when she was young.
Otis Wheeler describes how the surge in sentimental dramas was a direct reaction to the coarse comedies of the Restoration wherein man was depicted as ridiculous and nonsensical. In contrast “the drama of sensibility” was a display of the infinite promise of man. In this way the beginnings of the Cult of Sensibility is inextricably linked to the birth of Romanticism, yet where Romanticism preferred the superfluous and exaggerated the Cult of Sensibility preferred the delicate, softer emotions that would bring people together in harmony. As such it is fair to say that although these two styles were borne of a similar distaste for the neoclassical, they developed into very different types of drama. Romanticism created antagonistic protagonists, such as Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights.
Psychological criticism is known as the type of criticism that analyses the writer’s work within the realms of Freud’s psychological theories. Such approach can be used when trying to reconstruct an author’s position throughout their literary writings, as well as understanding whom the author was and how their mind created such works. When considering the work of Emily Dickinson, psychoanalytic criticism comes into play with the role of explaining the many meanings behind her poetry, as to make the reader relate to such poetry on a deeper level or not to who she was as a human being.
Nature is the most beautiful places for anyone to enjoy peace and stability in the human minds. Emily Dickinson is a naturalist poet that she wants the world to know that peace does exist in the human world and she wants to tell the world. Dickinson's poems are mostly written by "nature", "love", and "death" according to Anna Dunlap in her analysis. Dickinson's sister, Lavinia, is the one who published Dickinson's work, on her first attempt the editor that was responsible was taking her sweet time. This editor had Dickinson's work for two years so Lavinia decided to find another editor and Loomis Todd is the right person and editor for this job.
Madness is a state-of-mind were a person loses their sanity, they are mentally ill. In the play Hamlet, Hamlet meets his deceased father in a ghost form only to inform him of who caused his death and wants revenge. Now Hamlet must avenge his father's death, and the only way he can do it in a less obvious approach is by acting mad. But as the play continues, it becomes a lot harder to tell if Hamlet is still sane due to his actions. In the play Hamlet, William Shakespeare makes Hamlet's madness appear real but only to prove that he was only acting as if he were mad.
In the play Hamlet, the author, Shakespeare portrays madness or insanity through most of its characters. What is madness, it is a state of mind in which doesn’t let ones ideas flow normally or think with a clear mind. In this case it is evident that there is something wrong with almost all the main characters. All the characters in the play in some form or fashion display madness either through thoughts, actions or words.