Janus, a Roman God, is the god of transitions and has two faces allowing him to look into both the future and the past. In Ann Beatties short story "Janus", she uses a bowl allowing her to symbolically depict Andreas two-faced life and her transition to loss of composure. Firstly, the bowl is used to represent her extramarital affair with her lover.
Similarly, it is used to show her and her husbands defective relationship. Finally, the bowl represents Andreas deteriorating self-control. By using the bowl symbolically, Beattie is able to show Andreas downward spiral to a chaotic life. Andrea, the protagonist, is very much like the Roman God Janus as she lives a two-faced life. Her extramarital affair is essentially what leads to her loss of self-control. The bowl is symbolic of her and her lovers affair because,
"[he] bought it for [her]" (320, Beattie). The bowl symbolizes her affair because Andrea is extremely attached to the bowl, just as she is to her lover. Being so attached to the bowl, her lover, stimulates Andreas lack of self-control.
Similarly, the bowl is symbolic of how fragile her affair is. Andrea is very uneasy of the fact that she may lose her lover and the reader learns this when she says, "the idea of damage persisted" (319, Beattie). This shows how two-faced
Andrea is because she is married yet cares more about a bowl, which symbolizes her lover, than she does her husband.This in turn leads to her loss of self-control. Furthermore, the bowl is always put in a place where it is shown off to everyone else. However, her affair is very enigmatic. When Ann Beattie states, "instead of just moving a pitcher or dish, she
[removes] all the other objects from [the] table," the reader is shown how two-faced A...
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...o loss of self control because she could not control her feelings and is her life has become very inconclusive.
The story ends with a "vanishing point on the horizon"(320, Beattie) which leads the reader to believe that her life will
go on. Therefor showing that Andrea is going to try and fix her life but from what the reader has learned, her life is too
chaotic to fix.
Throughout the story, Beattie uses a bowl symbolically to characterize Andrea and show the reader how her life is two-faced and that she is losing her composure. The bowl symbolizes three main components which represented Andreas life; her affair, her marriage and her loss of self-control. The bowl allowed Beattie to show the reader that something so important in someone's life can essentially lead to their downfall or even make them a hypocritical person.
Works Cited
"Janus" by Ann Beattie
moreover, it shows us that she is like an animal that is trap in a cage suffering from the burden of not enjoying herself. Thus, lashing out at her husband while disregarding the danger she is putting her family through mentally traumatic events. As well as strains on the fact that she is not acknowledging the effects and extent of her addiction. Thus, shutting everyone out and eating herself apart. Therefore, she avoids discussing her issues with her husband on the movement to the city which might help with resolving her issue or lessen the magnitude of the stress she is going through.
Afterwards, she understood why he hated her after she prevented him from playing the stock market when their stock would increase on stanza 3, additionally demonstrating the equity between them. Moreover, proof of their equity is further shown through their dedication. “I put on eyeliner and a concerto and make pungent observations about the great / issues of the day / Even when there’s no one here but him,” shows the wife’s efforts for the husband. The husband’s dedication is revealed on stanza 2 when she asks “If his mother and I was drowning and / he had to choose one of us to save, / He says he’d save me.” A relationship deprived of equity would be illustrated in “The Chaser”. The love potion described by John Collier will cause the drinker to “want to know all you do” (Page 200) and “want to be everything to you” (Page 200). “Then the customers come back, later in life, when they are better off, and want more expensive things” (Page 201) imply many of his customer’s return for the poison. This suggests that many of the relationships will be unable to develop beyond a certain point after buying the “love
word “art” which may imply something about the materialistic world that she tries to be a part of. Interestingly, and perhaps most symbolic, is the fact that the lily is the “flower of death”, an outcome that her whirlwind, uptight, unrealistic life inevitably led her to.
In this way the novel ends on the course of despair that it began in
...eisz. She can hear her playing the piano and thinks of her talking about art. She wonders if she is a real artist. She becomes exhausted and knows that she is too far out to return. The water that she was so mesmerized with throughout the novel and that was the beginning of her new life, was also the end.
living in such a manner. I did not know the exact cause of her anxiety
When the man and the women start arguing about the baby, they both “knocked down a flowerpot.” (Caver 124). Flowerpots are usually broken into pieces when knocked from large heights, flower pots usually contain flowers and are kept to show beauty. The flowerpot symbolizes the couples relationship with one another: the couple was trying to put an effort to keep their relationship beautiful, but the relationship ended up falling apart. Using symbolism, Caver implies that one has a tendency to ruin the beauty that one has created oneself. He continues on showing the outcome of the couple’s fight using
...shachari, Neila C. . "Ann Beatie - Interview." PICTURING ANN BEATTIE: A DIALOGUE. Version Volume 7.1. N.p., n.d. Web. 30 May 2012. .
...aining jar to Mrs. Wright, in prison, to present her with a symbolic gesture of their support. Cherries are very sweet and used mainly as a garnish, a topping, something one doesn’t need but enjoys. The fact that they want to go beyond her request for clothing and bring her something more gratifying illustrates their desire to offer her some relief. As with their efforts to hide her uneven stitches, sure to be seen by the men as proof of guilt, they commiserate with her through objects that symbolize their commonality.
...her to feel despair. Her misery resulted in her doing unthinkable things such us the unexplainable bond with the woman in the wallpaper.
In a subtle way, Brush also makes the wife’s actions selfish. Even though her husband was wrong to react in the way that he did, she was also selfish in her actions. Clearly, her husband has a shy personality because “he was hotly embarrassed” (13) in front of “such few people as there were in the restaurant” (11). Using a couple of this age (“late thirties” (1)), Brush asserts that the wife should have known her husband’s preferences and been sensitive to them. The author also uses the seemingly opposite descriptions the couple: “There was nothing conspicuous about them” (5) and the “big hat” (4) of the woman. The big hat reveals the wife’s desire to be noticed.
Zeena's first weapon against Ethan is neglect. Ethan needs human interaction to function properly. But Zeena, being the villain she is, deliberately deprives Ethan of it. Wharton symbolizes Zeena's neglect with the pickle dish that was never used. When the cat shatters this pickle dish, Mattie cries, "[Zeena] never meant it should be seem not even when there was company; and [Mattie] had to get up on the stepladder to reach it down from the top shelf..." (63). Zeena has placed the red pickle dish, which represents love, passion, and marriage, where it is not easily accessible. Symbolically, Zeena stores away her love and marriage in the drawer, effectively freezing her marriage. Also, the cat, which represents Zeena, breaks the pickle dish. This implies that Zeena destroys all possible love and affection when they surface from oppression. Mattie also states that the pickle dish is never meant to be used, which means that Zeena's intention is to to neglect Ethan's thirst for love as long as she desires. Zeena also decides to neglect Ethan's desire for friends. Zeena knows that Ethan is able to carry himself because he has Mattie by his side. Zeena, being the villain she is, decides to neglect Ethan's desire for friend and expel Mattie. During her heated discussion with E...
Throughout the life of Emily Grierson, she remains locked up, never experiencing love from anyone but her father. She lives a life of loneliness, left only to dream of the love missing from her life. The rose from the title symbolizes this absent love. It symbolizes the roses and flowers that Emily never received, the lovers that overlooked her.
... love for her husband and once she got rid of him she never ended up moving on from her past, she wanted to keep making additional changes to her life, like she was never satisfied.
with throughout her life, leads her to a shattered future filled with confusion and a lack of stability. In the novel, one