Nikolai Gogol's Petersburg tales give rise to an image of Petersburg as a ghostly and mysterious city inhabited by poor clerks and artists. Among all the aspects of Petersburg myth the author creates, the idea of madness is a prevailing theme. Characters' madness in the short stories intertwines with the demonic elements and constant reference to dreams. Lack of a clear boundary between the reality and fantasy, sleeping and waking create a specific "gogolian" atmosphere of a surrealistic and mystical city. Even the main characters such as Chartkov in "The Portrait", Major Kovalyov in "The Nose" and Piskaryov in the "Nevsky Prospect" themselves do not fully realize whether the action takes place in dream or in reality. Therefore, in order …show more content…
The three elements that construct the notion of madness are the protagonist, the reader and the "city" (secondary characters) because "madness is not only a certain state of mind but also the attitude of the people around and the reader to the hero embodied in the term crazy" . The reader's and the secondary characters' perception is what defines the way in which the author discloses madness in the three stories examined. One way is when the author depicts madness of a single person, which is demonstrated through the correspondence of the reader's and the secondary characters' perspectives. In this case, both the reader and the minor characters perceive actions that take place in the story as absurd and unreal. Since the events are described from the point of view of the protagonist, it is his imagination that is inflamed, while the reader's and the minor characters' views are sensible. Another way in which madness is represented is the insanity of the whole city, which is communicated through the discrepancy in the reader's and secondary characters' perception of the action. Here only the reader remains sane and considers the events unrealistic, whereas even the most absurd incidents appear normal to the characters. In this case we are dealing with the insanity of the whole
The plot of this tale revolves around a crazy man of humble descent, who contrives in his mind a life of wealth and fame for himself. In his phantasmagorical dreams, the madman imagines himself as a general, a governor and even an emperor of Spain. He commonly disassociates himself from the peasants, describing them as the rabble. The Diary of a Madman is not just a ridicule of a single madman; it is instead a denouncement of the entire ruling class.
Madness in its most broad definition is a concept that is frequently used, but not fully explained or understood by Stoker “…the idea of insanity was an integral part of the Stoker 's conception, but his reading
Insanity is a deranged state of the mind. Not everyone has the same experiences nor the same symptoms which lead to their mental disorder. In her story “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Charlotte Perkins Gilman presents a peculiar case of insanity. The main character is put on bed rest to overcome her temporary nervous depression. However, while being stuck inside the room, the unreliable narrator increasingly becomes more and more symptomatic.
“Insanity: n. mental illness of such a severe nature that a person cannot distinguish fantasy from reality, cannot conduct her/his affairs due to psychosis, or is subject to uncontrollable impulsive behavior” (Hill). This definition describes the narrator, a sweet yet deadly man, of “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allen Poe seamlessly. (Appositive) A few prominent characteristics demonstrate the narrator’s insanity, and those include his motives, his actions, and his thoughts.
The heavy bedstead, which was nailed to the ground, was another feature that represents the room as a jail cell. Therefore, the room that she is prisoned shows how the madness benefited her to gain control and achieve a way to escape her confinement. In conclusion, the diverse literature 's do share a common theme that shows women fighting to overcome societal expectations due to the female gender not valued as thinkers capable of being their equals and mental illness can be caused by society’s stereotypical
Madness often occurs when somebody desires something that is not accessible to them. When somebody cannot have what they want most, they can go insane yearning for it. For example, if an individual struggling with alcoholism attempts to go sober, they will likely experience withdrawal symptoms because their body is so used to having alcohol that it has forgotten how to function without it. During this withdrawal period, the individual may crave alcohol to the point that their psychological instincts take over and they will do absolutely anything for a drink. In The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the narrator goes insane in her longing for freedom.
What exactly defines one as “insane” versus “sane”, and where is the boundary between the two? Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” explores exactly that: the short story initially seems to be a tale of a 19th century woman forced into the notorious rest cure popularized at the time by male doctors--however, as the plot progresses, it becomes a much deeper commentary not only on societal limitations imposed on women, but also on the blurred line separating sanity from insanity. Gilman explores the boundary between sanity and insanity with the usage of different literary elements; she expresses how the boundary is “paper-thin” through the usage of symbolism, shows the subtle conversion to insanity by utilizing a stream of consciousness
He uses descriptions of spaces in St. Petersburg to morph protagonist Raskolnikov’s mind and his surroundings into an indistinguishable amalgamation of confusion and claustrophobia, showing the Westernized city’s stifling effect on the internal workings of a traditional Russian man bombarded by new ideas. Dostoevsky focuses on St. Petersburg on the scale of individual rooms as opposed to full cityscapes. This use of space is most evident in his repeated descriptions of the cramped living quarters which act as barriers to Raskolnikov’s achievement of his full potential. At many points in the novel, Raskolnikov appears stuck in his own mind as well as in his physical space. The first description of his living-quarters immediately conveys this feeling of entrapment: “His closet was located just under the roof of a tall, five-storied house, and was more like a cupboard than a room.”
To properly determine whether or not the narrator in Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Tell Tale Heart” is insane a definition of insanity must be brought to light; possible explanations for his transgression must be examined, and the scope of information that has been provided must be understood for what it is. To understand if someone is insane or not, American society must lay bare a universal definition for insanity. As a whole, society today does not shy away from using words such as insane or crazy. This careless use of words leads to the definitions becoming less clear.
Obsession, internal conflict, and underlying guilt are all aspects of being human but when it’s associated with paranoia and insanity it may be just the recipe for the perfect crime as perceived by Edger Allan Poe in “The Tell-Tale Heart”. Poe uses this as one of his shortest stories to discuss and provide an insight into the mind of the mentally ill, paranoia and the stages of mental detrition. The story 's action is depicted through the eyes of the unnamed delusional narrator. The other main character in the story is an old man whom the narrator apparently works for and resides in his house. The story opens off with the narrator trying to assure his sanity then proceeding to tell the tale of his crime, this shows a man deranged and hunted with a guilty conscience of his murderous act.
In Henry James’s novella, The Turn of the Screw, the topics of sanity and insanity are commonly argued among the readers. Insanity is the state of madness or being irrational while sanity is reasonable behavior. It is up to the audience to decide on whether the author intended for the governess to be sane or insane. Despite this dissension, the governess is insane throughout the whole story because she possesses all the symptoms of a paranoid schizophrenic, has an obsessive personality, and is the only one who claims she sees the apparitions.
Williams seems to have taken the ideals of Freud to build his characters in Freudian molds. Psychoanalytic ideas are revealed through the actions of the three main characters as Stanley is the Id, Stella as the Ego, and Blanche as the Superego. Creating an understanding of each individual as they pertain to a psychological approach, reveals the reasons they had for acting the way they did throughout the play. The first of the three psyche components are the id, or someone 's instincts to their personality.
In Edgar Allan Poe’s tales of criminal insanity, the first-person narrators confess unsound confessions. They control the narrative, which only allows us to see through their eyes. However, they do describe their own pathological or psychological actions so conscientiously that they exhibit their own insanity. They are usually incapable of stepping back from their narratives to detect their own madness. The narrator 's’ fluency is meticulous and often opulent.
Saint Petersburg, the setting of Crime and Punishment, plays a major role in the formation in Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s acclaimed novel. Dostoyevsky’s novels focus on the theme of man as a subject of his environment. Dostoyevsky paints 1860s St. Petersburg as an overcrowded, filthy, and chaotic city. It is because of Saint Petersburg that Raskolnikov is able to foster in his immoral thoughts and satisfy his evil inclinations. It is only when Raskolnikov is removed from the disorderly city and taken to the remoteness of Siberia that he can once again be at peace.
Throughout the story, you start to notice that the narrator starts to become clinically insane as she develops childlike behavior such as demolishing the yellow wallpaper and biting some of the old nailed down furniture. The reader is able to tell how hysterical the narrator is getting as she describes how violently she starts to act towards the end of the story. Even the way the narrator starts to describe her dark thoughts and self-opinions show dangerous signs of how her mental health had gone downhill. “On a pattern like this, by daylight, there is a lack of sequence, a defiance of law, that is a constant irritant to a normal mind. ”(Gilman 801) Her transformation from being able to have self-control to eventually growing clinically insane correlates to characterizations such as horror, madness, and fear that are expressed in the writing styles of gothic