The Most Unreliable Narrator In The Yellow Wallpaper

The story, “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Stetson, reflects the life of many women during the difficult times they were living in. The narrator can relate to many people during the Victorian age where the woman’s role was to be a wife and a mother only. The narrator is a woman who is imaginative and is dissociated from herself and from the world.

In “Where Have You Gone Charming Billy?” by Tim O’Brien, the narrator demonstrates imagination in his attempt to distract himself from stress. An example of the narrator’s imagination is when he revisits memories “camping with his father” (1). This shows his original thought process; he is envisioning his father instead of focusing on the current war, he is thinking of a fun point in his life. Another time the story teller exhibits originality is when he was “pretending that the steps were dollar bills and for each step through the night made him richer and richer” (1). Lastly, the narrator demonstrates creative thinking when he thought of the letter that Billy’s family would receive that would say “SORRY TO INFORM

By doing so, the audience experiences everything through the eyes of the narrator. The narrator, also being the story’s protagonist, attempts the attract the sympathy of the reader through his perspective of the exposition. For example, in the beginning of the short story, the narrator explains the blind man’s connection to his wife. It is during this phase of narrative that we get glimpses of a jealous undertone that will follow the narrator for the majority of the piece. This is first demonstrated on page 33 when he describes his wife’s ex-fiance: “Her officer—why should he have a name? he was the childhood sweetheart, and what more does he want?” This jealousness of another man’s affection towards his wife is again shown on page 34 when the wife reveals the narrator has no friends. This is an important fact used to show the significance of the wife, a person that actually cares for him and someone he doesn’t want to lose. The audience feels sympathy towards the narrator at this point as we observe the situation through his first-person perspective. This perspective influences the way the audience experiences the story and the reader can understand the narrator’s reasoning for being against housing a man that had a long and powerful connection to his

A writer may choose to let several narrators tell the story from different points of view. Then it is up to the reader to decide which narrator seems most reliable for each part of the story. It may refer to the style of the writer in which he/she expresses the paragraph written. See for instance the works of Louise Erdrich. William Faulkner 's As I Lay Dying is a prime example of the use of multiple narrators. Faulkner employs stream of consciousness to narrate the story from various perspectives.

Short stories tend to cover a plot, a setting, and a small quantity of characters in such a limited amount of time. Two examples of a short story would include “Cons” by Jess Walter and “Killings” by Andres Dubus. Even though these stories contain their own unique storyline with different personas, they both can relate to one another by looking at them from multiple perspectives. “Cons” and “Killings” are very much alike as they are told from a third person narration, both men learn that they are capable of doing terrible things, and two individuals view death as problem solver.

The three authors touch on literature with passion, "The portable phonograph" written by Walter Van Tilburg Clark, "The Lamp At Noon" written by Sinclair Ross, and "The Possibility Of Evil" written by Shirley Jackson are filled with elements of good literature which makes each of them a good read. Each short story is example of good literature because they deal with subjects of lasting significance, they are beautifully written, and the authors illuminate the world of nature. All of the stories are good but "The Possibility Of Evil" written by Shirley Jackson soars above with it's intriguing touch on on dual personality, which makes the story a beautiful read. These authors really illuminate the world of nature with their description and exaggeration

Charlotte Perkins Gilman and John Steinbeck, authors of The Yellow Wallpaper and Of Mice and Men respectively use techniques such as dialogue, foreshadowing, symbolism, and unreliable narration in order to portray the idea of femininity – or rather, the flaws in this idea. Both fictional stories are based on real and human experiences, and in order to portray this, both authors have used a variation of techniques to help the reader understand the complex social context of the texts. To paint the idea that women are only used as object, Steinbeck and Gilman use dialogue heavily between both the males in the novel and the female characters. Symbolism is also used to show the objectification of women in Of Mice and Men. In the duration of both

Repetition is used vigorously throughout the short story. She uses the rhetorical question “What can one do?” (1) several times throughout the first page. By asking this question over and over, the reader can characterize the narrator as confused and unsure. The narrator also uses antithesis to convey a point about the condition of the woman. “It is dull enough to confuse the eye... for a little distance they suddenly commit suicide--plunge off at outrageous angles, destroy themselves in unheard of contradictions” (2). The woman is talking about the wallpaper at this point in the story, and she refers to it as dull.

There are over seven billion people in the world, everyone experiences life through his/her own perspective and creates an individual truth. In the text, “The Yellow Wallpaper”, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the narrator struggles to determine who she is and as a result finds difficulty living a sane life. First, it is human nature for people to be influenced by others and therefore the narrator’s personal truth is vulnerable to be altered by others. Moreover, one’s daily activities can affect stress relief methods resulting in the narrator defying her own husband. Furthermore, one’s childhood has a future impact and as a result the narrator decides her truth with the aid of past experiences. Ultimately, the influential factors in the narrator’s life emphasize that truth is corresponding with reality while being unique for everyone as the human mind distorts truth through one’s personal perspective of the world.

The unreliable narrator in the short story “ The Cask of Amontillado” draws the reader's attention.Edgar Allan Poe uses an unreliable narrator in “The Cask Amontillado” and his theme is revenge.Poe’s use of an unreliable narrator in his short story successfully creates a nervous effect for his readers. Poe uses an unreliable narrator by how he is very sneaky with his ways and how he wants to get back at someone for insulting him he is probably going to kill them.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Yellow Wallpaper, which was published in 1891, stirred controversy among US physicians as it raised issues that were on the agenda at the time. The perception of insanity was evolving throughout the 19th century. Mad people used to be considered as criminals or idiots that needed to

From the beginning of the story, the narrator claims there is something queer about the house (Perkins 380). Throughout the story, she voices her concerns about the house. She claims she can “feel” something strange about the house (Perkins 380). The narrator believes that the paper looks at her with viciousness (Perkins 382) and says that it has eyes everywhere. She also infers that there are things about the wallpaper that only she knows about and they come into focus more each day (Perkins 380). The narrator convinces herself that there is a woman trapped in the paper who is trying to get out (Perkins 385). She also claims that the woman behind the paper shakes it in hopes to escape (Perkins 388). The narrator becomes obsessed with the ghostly woman, who is in the paper, and convinces herself that she too was once trapped in the paper and escaped. The narrator is determined to catch the creeping woman. She believes that there are others who are trapped in the wallpaper by night and are free during the day. The protagonist's fantasy about people in the wallpaper addresses the idea of supernatural elements in its most prominent form.

The unnamed narrator has many mental problems. First of all, according to Freud, the unconscious affects the conscious in the form of guilt. The narrator always has an overwhelming sense of guilt. For example, the narrator says "he takes all care from me, and so I feel basely ungrateful not to value it more." (648). The feeling of guilt intensifies more when she feels that she is "a comparative burden" when she was "meant to be such a help to" him. (649). She does not want "to make him uncomfortable." (649). Secondly, there is also a sense of confinement throughout the story. The Yellow Wallpaper fits the winter or the anti-romantic phase of Northrop Frye's monomyth diagram as it, "tells the story of imprisonment … and fear." (Bressler 152). The narrator is imprisoned in the room which has yellow wallpaper. Basically, the room where the narrator is staying in is like a prison. The "windows are barred" (648), and the unmovable bed "that is nailed down" add to her feeling of imprisonment. (650). Thirdly, the narrator suffers from oppression.

In the short story, The Yellow Wallpaper, Charlotte Perkins Gilman represents how wretchedness is overlooked and changed into blended sentiments that eventually result in a significantly more profound enduring incongruity. The Yellow Wallpaper utilizes striking mental and psychoanalytical symbolism and an effective women's activist message to present a topic of women' have to escape from detainment by their male centric culture.

To be trapped in one's own mind may be the worst prison imaginable. In Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper", the narrator of the story is constantly at battle with many different forces, such as John, her husband, the yellow wallpaper that covers the walls of her room, and ultimately herself. Throughout the story the narrator further detaches herself from her life and becomes fixated on the yellow wallpaper that surrounds her in her temporary home, slowly driving her mad.