Blessed Are The Lonely A common theme throughout American literature was the loneliness and alienation of people in society. Discrimination and hatred of others played a major role in the way people treated one another. The realism time period displayed an obvious separation of men and women. During the realism period, war and the cruelties of it played a major role in society, while the modernism time period displayed a major separation of whites and blacks. These feelings of alienation and loneliness are expressed in American literature today. The “Yellow Wallpaper,” was a story in the realism time period(Gilman). The author, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, wrote a story about the isolation of a woman in her own house. The girl was considered …show more content…
The story starts off explaining that the teacher has assigned a writing project to all of the students(Hughes). Right away the story is in first person by an African-American student. During the modernism time period, many African-Americans were slowly becoming migrated into the white culture after years of segregation. Many white folk were still biased of the black community, but we're in many ways forced to accommodate them in settings such as public school. This girl is the only African American child in her class, and it very well known by the students and the teacher. The little girl takes the time to explain she deserves a good grade because she put in as much time if not more than some other students, but is afraid she will be graded more critical than the other white students. The beauty of this literature is how she makes the teacher notice that we all come from the same place and have the same hope and aspirations for our lives. This ideal is a very modernistic thinking process moving away from the realism time period. The student felt alienated in her own class and was daring by bringing up the issue with her teacher. She is just as talented as other children in the class and the color of her skin should not define her abilities in the classroom. Today racial prejudice is not as severe in education, but still remains a factor …show more content…
"Fiction." Fiction: An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge. Web. 22 May 2017. Black, Macknight and Washington, DC. National Center for Education Statistics (ED). Minority Student Issues: Racial/Ethnic Data Collected by the National Center for Education Statistics since 1969. 01 Mar. 1989. European Journal Of English Language And Literature Studies. THEME OF ALIENATION IN MODERN LITERATURE (n.d.): n. pag. Sept. 2014. Web. 23 May 2017. Gilman, Charlotte. "The Yellow Wallpaper, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman; The Yellow Wallpaper Page 1." Page By Page Books. Read Classic Books Online, Free. Page By Page Books, 2004. Web. 22 May 2017. Hughes, Langston. "Theme for English B." Poetry Foundation. Poetry Foundation, 1994. Web. 22 May 2017. Lande, RG. "Felo De Se: Soldier Suicides in America's Civil War." Military Medicine, vol. 176, no. 5, May 2011, pp. 531-536. Robinson, Edwin Arlington. “Richard Cory.” Poetry Foundation. Web. 22 May
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. “The Yellow Wallpaper.” 1892. Ed. Dale M. Bauer. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 1998.
Like most, the stories we hear as children leave lasting impacts in our heads and stay with us for lifetimes. Hughes was greatly influenced by the stories told by his grandmother as they instilled a sense of racial pride that would become a recurring theme in his works as well as become a staple in the Harlem Renaissance movement. During Hughes’ prominence in the 20’s, America was as prejudiced as ever and the African-American sense of pride and identity throughout the U.S. was at an all time low. Hughes took note of this and made it a common theme to put “the everyday black man” in most of his stories as well as using traditional “negro dialect” to better represent his African-American brethren. Also, at this time Hughes had major disagreements with members of the black middle class, such as W.E.B. DuBois for trying to assimilate and promote more european values and culture, whereas Hughes believed in holding fast to the traditions of the African-American people and avoid having their heritage be whitewashed by black intellectuals.
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. "The Yellow Wallpaper." The Norton Anthology of American Literature. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2007. 1684-1695.
would not say it to a living soul, of course, but this is dead paper
Hughes, a.k.a. Langston, a.k.a. “Harlem [Dream Deferred]” The Bedford Introduction to Literature. Ed. Michael Meyer.
“There are things in that paper which nobody knows but me, or ever will. Behind that outside pattern the dim shapes get clearer every day. It is always the same shape, only very numerous. And it is like a woman stooping down and creeping about behind that pattern. I don’t like it a bit. I wonder—I begin to think—I wish John would take me away from here!” The late 19th century hosted a hardship for women in our society. “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman expressed a form of patriarchy within the story. Gilman never addressed the woman in the “The Yellow Wallpaper” by a name, demonstrating her deficiency of individual identity. The author crafted for the narrator to hold an insignificant role in civilization and to live by the direction of man. Representing a hierarchy between men and women in the 19th century, the wallpaper submerged the concentration of the woman and began compelling her into a more profound insanity.
The “Yellow Wall Paper “ by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, is a chilling study and experiment of mental disorder in nineteenth century. This is a story of a miserable wife, a young woman in anguish, stress surrounding her in the walls of her bedroom and under the control of her husband doctor, who had given her the treatment of isolation and rest. This short story vividly reflects both a woman in torment and oppression as well as a woman struggling for self expression.
In recent decades, violent crimes in the United States of America have been on a steady decline, however, the number of people in the United States under some form of correctional control is reaching towering heights and reaching record proportions. In the last thirty years, the incarceration rates in the United States has skyrocketed; the numbers roughly quadrupled from around five hundred thousand to more than 2 million people. (NAACP)In a speech on criminal justice at Columbia University, Hillary Clinton notes that, “It’s a stark fact that the United States has less than five percent of the world’s population, yet we have almost 25 percent of the world’s total prison population. The numbers today are much higher than they were 30, 40
Narration is one literary element of a story that controls the meaning and themes perceived by the reader. The author uses this as a way of putting themselves in their writing; they portray a personal reflection through the narrator. We see this in pieces of literature, such as Charlotte Gilman’s, “The Yellow Wallpaper”, an intense short story that critics believe to be an autobiography. Charlotte Gilman wrote this piece in 1892, around the time of her own personal mental depression, after the birth of her child. This story invites the readers into the mind of a well-educated writer who is mentally ill, and takes you through the recordings of her journal, as her mental health deteriorates so does the credibility of her writing. The author uses the element of the narrators’ mental health to create a story with different meanings and themes to her audience. Gilman uses the role of an unreliable narrator to persuade the audience’s perception of protagonists’ husband John and create a theme of entrapment.
Poems, Poets, Poetry: An Introduction and Anthology. 3rd ed. Ed. Helen Vendler. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s,
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.
Gilman, Charlotte. Perkins. The “Yellow Wallpaper” is a new feature. The Story and Its Writer. Ann Charters.
Hughes, Langston. "Harlem (A Dream Deferred)." Literature and the Writing Process. Elizabeth McMahan, Susan X. Day, and Robert Funk. 6th ed. Upper Saddle River. Prentice, 2002. 534.
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. “The Yellow Wallpaper.” The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Stories. Mineola: Dover, 1997. Print.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote The Yellow Wallpaper in 1890 about her experience in a psychiatric hospital. The doctor she had prescribed her “the rest cure” to get over her condition (Beekman). Gilman included the name of the sanitarium she stayed at in the piece as well which was named after the doctor that “treated” her. The short story was a more exaggerated version of her month long stay at Weir Mitchell and is about a woman whose name is never revealed and she slowly goes insane under the watch of her doctor husband and his sister (The Yellow Wallpaper 745). Many elements of fiction were utilized by Gilman in this piece to emphasize the theme freedom and confinement. Three of the most important elements are symbolism, setting and character.