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Don Robertson and Charlotte Perkins Gilman explore the theme of personal identity throughout their works, from Robertson’s The Greatest Thing Since Sliced Bread, to Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper. Though both Don Robertson and Charlotte Perkins Gilman both illustrate and explore the theme of personal identity in very different ways, there are also many similar ways it is illustrated and explored by both authors as well. Don Robertson shows this theme of personal identity through Morris Bird’s cautious sense of right and wrong and how he tries to atone for his mistakes throughout the book and wanting to earn self-respect for himself as well as through his journey to see his best friend, Stanley Chaloupka while Gilman shows this through the narrators fight for sanity, illustrating the fight for selfhood by a women in not only an oppressed environment but in an oppressive environment as well. The theme of personal identity is prevalent in almost every part of Robertson’s, The Greatest Thing Since Sliced Bread. Whether it is from Morris Birds little stories and sense of right and wrong throughout the book or how he tries to atone for his mistakes in order to earn self-respect for himself or through the journey he makes to see his dearest friend, Stanley. For example, when Morris Bird starts talking about the salami sandwich incident with Logan McMurray when Morris tried to give his sandwich to another kid named Alex Coffee but when Coffee does not want the sandwich, Morris Bird decides to throw the salami sandwich. When the sandwich was found it had landed against the side of Mrs. Ochs’ car “smearing it with mayonnaise and making it absolutely reek of salami…” (Robertson, 14). This shows the theme of personal identity because of the f... ... middle of paper ... ... seemingly trapped inside the yellow wallpaper, when she sees that constant face of the woman trapped inside, again she sees or is just seeing herself because her, herself is trapped and falling into insanity. In conclusion, both Don Robertson and Charlotte Perkins Gilman illustrate and explore the theme of personal identity in very different ways throughout both of their works of literature. Don Robertson showed it through his protagonist, Morris Bird and through his yearning for finding self-respect, through his journey to see his best friend Stanley Chaloupka, and through his immense bravery during the explosion while Charlotte Perkins Gilman showed it through the constant face of the woman seemingly trapped inside the ugly yellow wallpaper who was seen by the narrator in the story seeing her own personal identity being shown through the woman in the wallpaper.
The Yankee man then tried to offer Richard a dollar, and spoke of the blatant hunger in Richard’s eyes. This made Richard feel degraded and ashamed. Wright uses syntax to appropriately place the conversation before making his point in his personal conclusions. In the analogy, “A man will seek to express his relation to the stars.that loaf of bread is as important as the stars” (loaf of bread being the metonymy for food), Wright concludes, “ it is the little things of life “ that shape a Negro’s destiny. An interesting detail is how Richard refuses the Yankee’s pity; he whispers it.
Quawas tells how there is a “sharp contrast between male and female nature.” Quawas reveals that Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s true purpose is to fight for women’s rights and equality, instead of being seen as just an object to nurture the children and do the chores at home. Quawas suggests that since Charlotte Perkins Gilman cares so deeply about presenting the deeply hurtful ways women can be treated like because she lived through the era of the women being the stay-at-home-smiling-trophy-wives and got to witness the incline of women’s rights movements and the empowerment of women. Quawas says that “The Yellow Wallpaper is a particularly interesting and rich example of her audacious and defiant writing.” she says this because The Yellow Wallpaper explores the feminine rebellion against the “rest cure”. Though the narrator’s doctor husband believes in the “rest cure”, the narrator steadily makes efforts to express herself in private, such as through her journal entries. Historically the author of the yellow wallpaper went through the oppression of women and the rise of empowerment of women. She got to witness both, which allows for the inference of women empowerment being hidden throughout the yellow
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.... ...
Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story, “The Yellow Wall-Paper”, is a first-person narrative written in the style of a journal. It takes place during the nineteenth century and depicts the narrator’s time in a temporary home her husband has taken her to in hopes of providing a place to rest and recover from her “nervous depression”. Throughout the story, the narrator’s “nervous condition” worsens. She begins to obsess over the yellow wallpaper in her room to the point of insanity. She imagines a woman trapped within the patterns of the paper and spends her time watching and trying to free her. Gilman uses various literary elements throughout this piece, such as irony and symbolism, to portray it’s central themes of restrictive social norms
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. "The Yellow Wallpaper." The Norton Introduction To Literature. Eds. Jerome Beaty and J. Paul Hunter. 7th Ed. New York, Norton, 1998. 2: 630-642.
In the 19th century, women were not seen in society as being an equal to men. Men were responsible for providing and taking care of the family while their wives stayed at home not allowed leaving without their husbands. In The Yellow Wallpaper, Charlotte Perkins Gilman writes about a woman named Jane who is trapped by society’s cage and tries to find herself. Throughout the story, the theme of self-discovery is developed through the symbols of the nursery, the journal and the wallpaper.
She is left with no choice but to stare at the wallpaper endlessly and begins to see things within the pattern. She insists there is a woman behind the paper "and she is all the time trying to climb through. But nobody could climb through that pattern-it strangles so" (667). This is representative to women's power being "strangled" by man and that there are women everywhere trying to escape and break free from the suppression and she sees herself as one of those woman behind the wallpaper creeping around trying to get out.
Gilman also demonstrates man’s desire for social repression through the interaction of her narrator in “The Yellow Wall-Paper.” Throughout the short story, the narrator’s actual name is unknown. Gilman uses another technique in taking away the identity of the woman. As previously stated by other critics, there is a loss of the self-conscious during this time in history, and writers knew this fact: “For all literary artists… the creative ‘I am’ cannot be uttered if the ‘I’ knows not what it is. But for the female artist, the essential process of self-definition is complicated by all those patriarchal definitions that intervene between herself and herself” (Gilbert & Gubar 17). Women have the ultimate loss of self because of the male’s ability
The two common threads that connect Charlotte Perkins Gilman and the narrator in her story are depression/postpartum depression, and entrapment within their roles as of women. Specifically, Gilman and the narrator are trying to escape the function society has placed on them. First, after fulfilling their expected duties as wife and mother, both Gilman and the narrator become depressed after the birth of their child. It is this depression that leads them to the infamous rest cure...
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. “The Yellow Wallpaper.” Booth, Alison and Kelly J. Mays, eds. The Norton Introduction to Literature. 10th ed. New York: Norton, 2010. 354-65. Print.
The woman in "The Yellow Wallpaper" is slowly deteriorating in mental state. When she first moves into the room in the old house, the wallpaper intrigues her. Its pattern entrances her and makes her wonder about its makeup. But slowly her obsession with the wallpaper grows, taking over all of her time. She starts to see the pattern moving, and imagines it to be a woman trapped behind the wallpaper. The total deterioration of her sanity is reached when she becomes the woman she imagined in the wallpaper and begins creeping around the room.
Her tense mind is then further pushed towards insanity by her husband, John. As one of the few characters in the story, John plays a pivotal role in the regression of the narrator’s mind. Again, the narrator uses the wallpaper to convey her emotions. Just as the shapes in the wallpaper become clearer to the narrator, in her mind, she is having the epiphany that John is in control of her.
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. “The Yellow Wallpaper.” Making Literature Matter: Anthology for Readers and Writers. Fifth ed. Ed, John Clifford and John Schilb. Boston, Ma: Bedford, 2012. 955-968. Print.
In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s story, “The yellow Wallpaper”, the main character is used as a symbol to express the feeling of all the oppressed women in her time. Most of the women had no voice and were enslaved by “masculinist” ideas and a cult of domesticity (Gilman 685), which would explain why the main characters name was never mentioned in the story alluding to the fact that the women of her era simply lacked their own personal identity. Her husband and brother, who were both Physicians, treated ...
Everyone at some point in their life has felt like they were almost driven crazy by someone or something. This is the case for the main character in Charlotte Perkins Stetson’s short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper”. During this story, the protagonist is locked in a room in which she despises simply because of the wallpaper. As the story progresses, she starts to notice figures that seem to be trapped in the wallpaper. I firmly believe that the figures that seem to be trapped in the wallpaper not only represent the main character’s struggles, but also other woman who have suffered the horrible mistreatment of mental illness and women that were subject to punishment for trying to break out of their domestic spheres.