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Modern American Literature: Rise of Realism **__ THE YELLOW WALLPAPER __** By: Jacob Lyman Have you ever wondered what I would be like to have decisions made for you and you having no control over what decision was made? Well in the story The Yellow Wallpaper this exact situation comes up in the form of depression. In the story there is a protagonist whose name is Jane she is a woman oppressed by a man who is her husband and she keeps her locked in a room all day by herself and she really has no human interaction whatsoever, which I take as an example of how back when the story was written women basically had no rights whatsoever and they were basically slaves to a males orders. There are many examples of imagery in this story, one of the better examples is when she is describing the women “creeping” across the street, also when the author is describing the yellow wallpaper itself. There are also many Round and Flat characters in this story, one of the round characters is Jane herself she is a round character because throughout the story you get to see many sides of her, there is the side that is prim and proper, then there is the side that crawls on the floor across the fainted body of her husband just to keep crawling. The motivation behind this story is that the author was a woman in a time when it was not fun to be a woman and she got tired of being oppressed by men and if she spoke out against the men she would be punished for it so she just wrote down what she felt and published it. There is also an example of Colloquialism in this story, one of them is Jane she is from the north and she speaks very properly. I cannot think of a counter-example but one would be if there was a man from the south who spoke with a heavy accent and kind of made up words as he went. So that should give you some insight in what it would be like to have decisions made for you and not having a choice in the matter.

Choose one of the stories to apply feminist criticism to the reading. Identify the protagonist and antagonist and describe their relationship as it relates to the theme. How does the relationship to the foil, if there is one, reflect the theme? Identify whether the protagonist is round or flat, dynamic or static. Support your response with examples from the text.
 * Chopin’s “Story of and Hour” and Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper”**

THE YELLOW WALLPAPER The protagonist is the narrator who is going mad in a room all alone with the Yellow Wallpaper and is certifiably crazy by the end of the book. **How do you know that it's the wallpaper that's making her crazy? What is certifiably crazy?** The antagonist is the husband who locks her away because since he is a doctor he thinks he knows how to treat everything but he doesn’t and ends up making it way worse. **How does the husband make it worse? Is there a passage in the text where you can back this up?** Her relationship with the foil which is the Yellow Wallpaper is a rocky one because it’s the wallpaper that is making her insane because every time she looks at it she sees faces and new patterns and how it relates to the story is that the wallpaper represents the oppression of men towards women and how it will eventually drive a woman mad to be held down by “the man of the house.” The narrator who is also the protagonist is a round character because you get to see her change from a calm woman to a crazy lady who crawls on the floor and leaves a groove in the wall because she does it so much. **Where does it say this in the text?** And she is also dynamic because you can see many sides of her including the side that tears down the wallpaper and throws they key outside and crawls everywhere and the contrary the mild mannered polite quiet and submissive wife who is following whatever her husband says. **How is the side that tears down the wallpaper different from her submissive side? Is it something that is a character trait or something about her character that developed through the story?**

Jacob,

I thought that this was really good and I was impressed by how well you related this to feminist criticism. I think that it would be beneficial for you to refer back to the text. It would make your claims a lot stronger and you'd have a better paper overall. It might also be good for you to expand on some of the claims that you're making drawing from knowledge you have outside the story and even outside the classroom. I think knowledge that you have of what it is to be crazy would help you out in your first sentence of the response. Hopefully this helped and I will get to your Crane response probably around 5.

Therese

Select an example of imagery that creates the mood of the story? How does the mood of the setting reflect the character’s motivations driven by their id, ego, and superego?
 * Crane’s “Mystery of Heroism”**

MYSTERY OF HEROISM STEPHEN CRANE This story was a very good book but the reason I liked it so much is the fact that somehow even though it was a book it gave you almost a movie like experience with all the imagery it uses in describing the situation that was going on in the Civil War. **You could also include //how// it uses the imagery, like what part of the story most reminds you of the movies.** The imagery that defined this whole story is when it described what happened to the horses and how they all got blown to bits and led into battle and shot up as they were carrying the artillery for the people. **Some examples from the story would be good here.** The mood of the story made you feel like you were there because they were very descriptive about what was going on around them, like when they were talking about the house they said that the barn was obliterated and the house was in shambles and missing a lot of its wood and I think that is somehow a symbolism of the desolation and sometimes hopelessness of war by showing that nothing in this case a house cannot survive the horrors of war in one way or another. **I really liked your discussion of symbolism and mood here. How does it reflect what the characters are thinking and talking about?** The hopelessness is when everybody thinks Collins is going to die when he goes to get the water, but in this case there was hope because he came back but it was a false hope because he came back with like a gallon of water for a whole platoon and he wasted most of it on the dying commander which symbolizes in my mind the fact that if you have hope it is still not enough you have to use your brain to because if you don’t you will make bad decisions and basically screw yourself. **These are good ideas, but could you expand on them a little bit to strengthen your argument?** So I think in a nutshell that this story is a very visual experience and that imagery made the book. My point? I don’t know if I really had one in the long run I just kind of typed it and made it sound good.

Jacob,

You did a really good job talking about mood and a few of the symbols in the stories. You really have some good ideas, you just need to make sure that you can back them up with evidence from the text. You need to make sure you cite specific examples and not give general descriptions of where your examples are in the text.

Therese

How does the author indirectly characterize the protagonist through the use of dialect? What does this tell us about the character? How are they influenced by their id, ego, or superego?
 * Wharton’s “April Showers” and Twain’s “The Invalid’s Story”**