Essay on The Yellow Wallpaper, A Rose for Emily and Babylon

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The Yellow Wallpaper, A Rose for Emily and Babylon

It is amazing how differently people see the world. People from different walks of life interpret everyday experiences in different ways. This is ever so apparent when discussing the gaps that occur in stories by great authors.

In The Yellow Wallpaper, a woman is being "treated" by a doctor (her husband) for a condition he refers to as anxiety. She is placed in a room, apparently one that was previously inhabited by a mental patient, and told to rest. Over the course of a few weeks the woman begins to exhibit signs of paranoia and regularly has hallucinations. Through the course of the story, the woman continuously makes reference to the yellow wallpaper. The first, and possibly the greatest, gap in the story comes when interpreting the meaning(s) behind the wallpaper. Does the color yellow infer something about insanity? The woman repeatedly refers to the patterns that the peeling wallpaper makes. Do the patterns suggest order from chaos? It is apparent, from the number of times that it is mentioned, that the wallpaper plays a role in the mental changes the woman experiences (and details her changes) throughout the story. Part way through the story, she begins seeing a woman moving behind the wallpaper, as if trying to escape it. Is she actually seeing herself in the wallpaper, as suggested by Chris Tildon, or is the hallucination what she fears she is becoming? At the end of the story, she takes on the role of the "creeping" woman and follows a smudge around the room and over her fainted husband. This supports the idea that she is the woman that has been trapped in the paper. Maybe she feels trapped and tormented by John's lack of sympathy for her condition.

Another story that benefits from gaps is Babylon Revisited by F. Scott Fitzgerald. The gaps in this story are numerous, but the most important gaps involve Charlie's previous bout with Alcoholism, and his struggle to retrieve his daughter Honoria. Charlie claims to be a reformed man. However, after reading deep into the story, it is apparent that Charlie plays a role in his own downfall. Does Charlie actually try to rid himself of his past, or is he actually perpetuating it? In the story, Charlie visits his old "haunts", maintains a "one drink a day" attitude, and inadvertently brushes elbows with a couple of old drinking buddies.

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