Essay on Crimson Peak and William Wilson
The movie Crimson Peak directed by Guillermo Del Toro and short story William Wilson by Edgar Allan Poe have their plots set in the Victorian era. During the time, family status was distinct by classes. In the upper class, there was an overwhelming sense of boredom and the constant prodding to be proper and what the parents want with very little parent to child communication (Price). However, in both pieces, there is either spoiling or family violence happened that makes the children grow up in a dysfunction environment. Comparing Crimson Peak and William Wilson together, it is conveyed that family has an important influence on who the protagonists become, not only on their behavior to people,
…show more content…
but also their own will of freedom, and it causes the conflicts to occur in both pieces. According to the protagonists’ behaviors, family has a significant influence on determining their personalities.
In Crimson Peak, Thomas and Lucille’s parents leave them in the attic. Their mother has always been beaten them, which unintentionally indicates them to use violence as the only way to handle things. Lucille protects Thomas from mother’s beating, therefore, Thomas becomes submissive to her and couldn’t say a word about his sister’s violence. Since their parents used to lock them in the attic, they couldn’t seem to step out of the limited space even after they grow up. Their world now is still as small as the attic. They don’t have a normal social circle, and they are caught in their own thoughts: “We try to maintain the house as best as we can, but with the cold and the rain, it’s impossible to stop the damp and erosion. And with the mines right below, well, the wood is rotting and the house is sinking.” They are trying to live a life only relying on each other. The house is a …show more content…
shadow and a substitution of their home when they were children. The house makes them have nowhere else to go. On the other hand, Thomas never gets his dream out of the attic. It is shown in the film that he has his inventions all over the attic, but he never successfully gets a mining machine outside the house. The shadow of their claustrophobic family is within them all the time, as if what Lucille says, “I like to think she can see us from up there. I don’t want her to miss a single thing we do.” Family is affecting every single behavior of the children. The two of them grow up with bitterness in this land. They need to get out of here: “I’m afraid nothing gentle ever grows in this land. You need a measure of bitterness…not to be eaten.” This land symbolizes the claustrophobic home and the fruit symbolizes the Sharpe children. In William Wilson, family affects personality and behaviors as well, “I am the descendant of a race who is imaginative and easily excitable temperament has at all times rendered them remarkable; and, in my earliest infancy, I gave evidence of having fully inherited the family character.
(Poe 67)” Parents indulge him and listen to him all the time. No one has competed with him, “Thenceforward my voice was household law; and at an age when few children have abandoned their leading-strings, I was left to the guidance of my own will, and became, in all but name, the master of my own actions. (Poe 67)” Unlike Thomas and Lucille in Crimson Peak, William Wilson was raised in a completely opposite way. He uses violence to deal with things as well in order to have people at school and in society listen to him. His dominant personality was caused by her dominant position at home, “In truth, the ardor, the enthusiasm, and the imperiousness of my disposition, soon rendered me a marked character among my schoolmates, and by slow, but natural graduations, gave me an ascendancy overall not greatly older than myself. (Poe
70)” Along with the development of the plot and the growing up of the protagonists, the role of “family” has slowly gone and been replaced, and conflicts start to take place. They get into new environments with their family-affected personality. In Crimson Peak, Thomas slowly gets rid of the shadow of being submissive to sister. He breaks the wall of doing things for her sister and the Sharpe name in the results of not only having his own mining machine worked with the encouragement from Edith, but also telling Lucille that he loves Edith with his will of leaving the place. Thomas seems to be able to find exist to get himself realized that he can’t live like this anymore. When Thomas asks if the character in Edith’s novel make it all the way through, Edith says, “It’s entirely up to him. Well, characters talk to you. They transform. They make choices. As to who they become.” Edith plays an important role of freedom and independence. She has a mind different than anyone else Thomas knows, a mind that contains dreams and family-independent. Although she is an only child in an upper-class family, her family is well-educated and properly restrained which makes her a high cultivated person. The new interaction between Thomas and Edith brings new ideas and new understandings to life and pulls him out of the old thoughts he got from his family and childhood. There’s also anther moment which Thomas loses faith on his machine, Edith gives him encouragement. She is why Thomas gets self-confident, and she encourages him to chase his dreams and shouldn’t tide himself up too much with his family. In William Wilson, however, the main character doesn’t get out of the shadow like Thomas does. He is trapped by the label of who he was all the time. At school, he considers it as a substitution of home. When he wants to consider the school principle as the same role which his parent could play, he found the principle’s behavior so contradictory that is not what he thoughts. “This reverend man, with countenance so demurely benign, with robes so glossy and so clerically flowing, with wig so minutely powdered, so rigid and so vast, --could this be he who, of late, with sour visage, and in snuffy habiliments, administered, ferule in hand, the Draconian Laws of the academy? (Poe 68)” He was once the “law” at home, he was never like this contradictory. He couldn’t really accept this person, and make him confuse about what he is doing. He goes from extreme loose restraint environment to extreme intense and contradictory environment, which causes his split in personality. “After the lapse of some months, spent at home in mere idleness, I found myself a student at Eton. The brief interval had been sufficient to enfeeble my remembrance of the events at Dr. Bransby’s, or at least to effect a material change in the nature of the feelings with which I remembered them. The truth—the tragedy—of the drama was no more. I could now find room to doubt the evidence of my senses; and seldom called up the subject at all but with wonder at the extent of human credulity. (Poe 75)” As long as he goes back home, his other half of the personality will completely disappear. Since he goes back to his extreme comfortable place from a place he fails finding replacement of home, he enjoys this over-cared family more than before and he now becomes a kind of person who loses his ability to live in the society. He feels that no matter what he does, his parents will protect him from the consequences. “…the uncalculating vanity of my parents furnishing me with an outfit and annual establishment, which would enable me to indulge at the will in the luxury already so dear to my heart—to vie in profuseness of expenditure with the haughtiest heirs of the wealthiest earldom in Great Britain. (Poe 77)” Parents spoil their child with giving him a lot of money, which creates chances for him to waste his time gambling. He turns from a person who wants to win at school to someone that wants to win among wasters. Family helps further developing the bad behaviors by giving him comfort mentally, therefore, wherever he goes, he doesn’t care about what bad things he is doing. The other William Wilson appears less often than he was at the academy, is because he is feeling less and less guilty and that good side of him is slowly gone away. Deeply, his thought is still attached to the “warmth” of home, which he is in charge of, and his childhood with no one against his will. While facing various kinds of people in society, he is never able to balance the normal competition among people with his free will, and he ends up with stabbing himself. In comparison, Thomas in Crimson Peak doesn’t stab the doctor in heart as his sister asks. This action accurately shows Thomas’s engagement from his family-influenced behavior and his old self.
The father and son are separated by class. To further illustrate, the father has a blue collar job. The father in the story “makes his living on the outside,” (Lubrano 342) meaning that after he does the work, he is not necessarily welcome into the establishments. He has to perform hard labor in order to uphold his position as a bricklayer. Following his blue-collar way of living the father is more gruff when handling situations also. The son possesses a white collar job. He does not have to physically exert himself in order to make his living. Unlike his father, he tends to handle situations more timidly. The son’s job still holds him to a standard of labor even
In conclusion, a family is presented as a haven of care and love and a social unit of teaching values, especially for growing kids. However, the family does not seclude a person from the larger society, thereby giving all the members a choice to live their own life. Through the review of the movie, Tom and Matt were used by the director to define family and cultural values.
They endured extreme cold weather inside their home. “it got so cold in the house icicles hung from [their] kitchen ceiling. The water in the sink turned into a solid block of ice” (176). That’s not even the worse of it, when the pipes froze like that they had to melt snow and the icicles on their stove for source water. They fought over the dogs too because they kept them warm. The poor children were even force to walk around in their home and go to bed with their coats on (176). Their house was shabbier than ever and falling apart every step they took due to their unfortunate conditions of termites. Also, they had a toilet that didn’t work causing them to throw this waste outside in a hole in the back of their home. Imagine extreme conditions outside and you have to go out there because you have to throw out your waste.
Values are one of the most important traits handed down from parent to child. Parents often pass lessons on regardless of whether they intend to do so, subconsciously acting as the conductor of a current that flows through their children and into generations beyond. This is the case with Ruth, James McBride’s mother and the subject of his memoir The Color of Water: Despite her disgust with Tateh’s treatment of his children, Ruth carries his values into parenthood, whether or not she aims to do so.
Upon watching the movie and understanding the concepts of these two theories it becomes apparent that William was in a state of anomie and he used all five of the modes of adaptation in order to adapt to his strain. William’s ability to enter into the four delinquent modes of adaptation, innovation, ritualism, retreatism, and rebellion, were a result of the breakdown of his social bonds, attachment, involvement, commitment, and belief.
Even though both stories take place in collective societies family life differs greatly. A “normal” family for “Harrison Bergeron” is two loving parents and a child raised by the offspring’s parents. While in Anthem, there is no family, parents don’t know the children and no one knows what love is. Sixty nine percent of American families with children under the age of eighteen live in families with two
Each person in the family starts to develop a job or rule that that play in the family that others can’t really fill. For example Jeannette and Brain’s relationship with each other are almost stronger than anyone in the family. The role that Brain plays is the one that is extremely quiet unless with his family and even though he is a younger sibling he sees it as his goal to protect Jeannette, even if it evolves fighting older bigger girls but if it’s for his family he will do it. Lori is always lost in a book but he is like the mother of the family even though their real mother is around. Their father is bright man that the kids get to see from time to time but then there alcoholic father appears and that’s when problems arise. When it comes to functioning at younger ages they were almost completely dependent on their parents like all kids are, as they started to reach teenage they started to rely less on their parents and more on each other. They started to get their own jobs, when they needed resources they would rather depend on each other or themselves. The communication was free for the kids if they had a question or a problem they would voice their concerns but the only time they didn’t was when they saw that their father was drinking or was drunk. They left the
Family relationships are our first introduction to living with other people. In the novel, Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk, Billy Lynne is part of a small family that lives in Stovall, Texas. He lived with his mother, father, and two sisters. Like most families they were not without drama and were as dysfunctionally close as some families. Billy’s sister, Kathryn states, “Some days I think I am living in a bad country song.” [79] Kathryn is referring to the father’s infidelity and their mother’s crass attitude toward the now disabled provider. A sentiment that that they all share, in some small way in their hearts, but they still loved each other. This was evident through the chapter entitled: “Bully of the Heart.”[74] The scene that was described when Billy arrived for his short visit home was a hallmark moment for the family. The tears and hugs mixed with laught...
...parents were much more successful in the working world encouraged him to complete many daily activities such as choir and piano lessons. His parents engaged him in conversations that promoted reasoning and negotiation and they showed interest in his daily life. Harold’s mother joked around with the children, simply asking them questions about television, but never engaged them in conversations that drew them out. She wasn’t aware of Harold’s education habits and was oblivious to his dropping grades because of his missing assignments. Instead of telling one of the children to seek help for a bullying problem she told them to simply beat up the child that was bothering them until they stopped. Alex’s parents on the other hand were very involved in his schooling and in turn he scored very well in his classes. Like Lareau suspected, growing up
Family; a family is any group of individuals living together under a common roof. August Wilson’s “Fences” portrays extremely well the significance of family and what key elements go into each and every family. However, occasionally some members do not have similar values as others when it comes to the responsibility expected by others as a member. The use of metaphors and symbols throughout the play such as baseball and fences illustrate exactly why Troy Maxson’s family life was destined for failure.
The narrator William isn 't the best person to people he 's a bully and by the other William coming in Poe is trying to show the narrator how he acts. William has an alter ego and by having another William in the story Poe is trying to help him understand his actions. The main example of self-loathing in William is throughout the whole story, instead of trying to understand the other William he is constantly arguing with him and doesn 't even realize he was in a fight with his own self. Evil plays a role in this story because of Williams’s actions throughout it. At the beginning of the story William is torturing a boy at school and continues to torture people throughout. Evil is also in this story by Poe there’s a certain evil to it that
In the play “True West” by Sam Shepard, there are two main characters Austin and Lee that are so different and similar due to their family culture of dysfunction. A dysfunctional family is one in which that shows conflict, hostile environments, inappropriate behaviors to not only upon them, but to those around them. In most dysfunctional families you will find children that have been neglected or abused by parents, to which most of these children tend to think that these such behaviors are normal. Shepard shows this relationship of dysfunction of a family between two brothers that shows one brother who thinks he has escaped the dysfunction, and one that has carried out the dysfunctional family culture.
As a literal deathbed revelation, William Wilson begins the short story by informing the readers about the end of his own personal struggle by introducing and immediately acknowledging his guilt and inevitable death, directly foreshadowing the protagonist’s eventual downward spiral into vice. The exhortative and confession-like nature of the opening piece stems from the liberal use of the first person pronoun “I”, combined with legal and crime related jargon such as, “ crime”, “guilt”, and “victim” found on page 1. Poe infuses this meticulous word choice into the concretization of abstract ideas where the protagonist’s “virtue dropped bodily as a mantle” (Poe 1), leading him to cloak his “nakedness in triple guilt” (Poe 1). In these two examples, not only are virtue and guilt transformed into physical clothing that can be worn by the narrator, but the reader is also introduced to the protagonist’s propensity to externalize the internal, hinting at the inevitable conclusion and revelation that the second William Wilson is not truly a physical being, but the manifestation of something
“Men have called me mad; but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest of intelligence,” Edgar Allan Poe. Poe is famous in the writing world and has written many amazing stories throughout his gloomy life. At a young age his parents died and he struggled with the abuse of drugs and alcohol. A great amount of work he created involves a character that suffers with a psychological problem or mental illness. Two famous stories that categorize Poe’s psychological perspective would be “The Fall of the House of Usher” and “The Tell-Tale Heart.” Both of these stories contain many similarities and differences of Poe’s psychological viewpoint.
In Persuasion by Jane Austen, Austen comments on the dynamics of friends and family. During Austen’s time, one’s family was their most influential connection. A person’s family determined their class, and therefore, supposedly, their happiness and ability to succeed. Someone in a high ranking family was considered fortunate solely because they were part of the elite group of society. Austen however, sees folly in this way of thinking and creates a character named Anne. Anne has almost every advantage in society. Her father is a baron and owns a beautiful estate. Society saw Anne as in the perfect spot to reach an ultimate, coveted societal position. She was expected to marry well and only associate with those who would be deemed good connections.