Humanities Homework Help

For this assignment, write a 4-5 page essay that presents an original interpretation of The Yellow Wallpaper By Gilman. Use any combination of the literary terms we have discussed to analyze the work and explain how these formal aspects contribute to the meaning or influence the reader’s perception. Remember that it serves no purpose to merely point out metaphors, first-person narration, or other devices without showing how these elements contribute to the meaning–go beyond simply identifying these aspects and interpret the work as a whole. Be sure to refer to specific passages to support your interpretation.

Although looking at overviews or summaries of works to increase your understanding–especially when you find the work difficult–is encouraged, further research is not permitted for this assignment. The purpose of the assignment is to practice using literary terms to analyze a text, and knowing how work has been traditionally interpreted may interfere with your ability to make original insights or identify details that have gone unnoticed. Moreover, there is no need to reproduce well-known interpretations. Try to look at the work from a unique perspective founded on the details you observe in the text.

Please include as much evidence from the text as possible and use as many literary devices as possible. (Symbolism, foreshadowing, etc)

Things we have talked about in this class:

Genre is a category of literature. There are broad categories, such as fiction and non-fiction, and narrower categories, such as poetry, drama, short stories, and novels. And there are even narrower categories, such as a bildungsroman, a tragedy, or a detective story. Most works can fall into multiple categories. Depending on how you classify a work, you may have different expectations about what kind of story it will be, what kind of characters it will have, even what kind of descriptions or methods of narration the author will use. These are called the conventions of a genre.

Genre can be useful when comparing stories of the same type and may serve as a kind of blueprint of a work. However, because genre creates certain expectations, the category we use may determine which aspects of work we notice and which we ignore. For this reason, we may classify readings in this course in a non-traditional way. For example, plot is a term usually applied to fiction, but what would it mean to discuss the plot of a poem? What new insights about the work may emerge when we switch categories? Since many of the works we will be reading are classics that have been read and interpreted for sometimes hundreds of years, it is necessary to look at them with a fresh set of ideas in order to generate an original interpretation.

Plot is the arrangement of events in a story. It is different from “story,” which refers to the events in chronological order. An essential part of plot is the relation between each episode, or scene, and the larger conflict that runs through the work. For this reason, it is also important to understand what is meant by conflict (as a literary term).

Conflict is the struggle between the protagonist and the antagonist in a story. The protagonist is the main character or the character whose struggle is the focus of the story. The antagonist is the obstacle that stands in the protagonist’s way (it may be a person, but it can also be non-human). You may have heard about the following types of conflict: human vs. human, human vs. nature, human vs. society, etc. The “human” is the protagonist; the second term is the antagonist. Conflicts may also be categorized as internal or external. Each episode is a story that usually develops the conflict by either complicating it or bringing it closer to resolution.

There are different types of plots. For example, detective stories and tragedies have specific plot structures (you may be familiar with Freytag’s pyramid, below, which contains the five traditional elements of the tragic plot structure–the exposition, the rising action, the climax, the falling action, and the resolution, or denouement).

The point of view from which a work is told may influence the impression it makes upon us. Compare the two images of the violinist Paganini above. On the left, the drawing (by Ingres) portrays Paganini in a realistic manner. The painting on the right (by Delacroix), although less realistic, conveys the musician in a more romantic manner, using fluid lines and contrast to add an emotional dimension to the portrait. Even though the images contain the same subject matter, they offer quite different interpretations of the person portrayed.

As a literary term, point of view refers to the type of narrator used in a story. You may be familiar with the following types:

1. first person: This is when the story is narrated by a character within the story. It is easily identified by the narrator’s use of the first person pronoun, “I.” “The Yellow Wallpaper” employs this type of narrator. The use of a first person narrator allows the reader to understand the thoughts and motivations of the character, but it is limited in the way that other characters may be closed off. The first person is often psychological and may present a distorted view of the world.
2. third person: This type of narrator speaks from a position outside of the story and may be classified as omniscient(all-knowing) or limited (the events surround the actions and experiences of a central character). Omniscient narrators can be identified by the way they narrate, often objectively, from multiple angles and use indicators such as “meanwhile” to signal a shift to events occurring simultaneously. Limited narrators often keep critical information from the reader, which allows for plot twists and surprises. Detective stories sometimes use this method.

The textbook also discusses the ideas of perspective and impressionism, which derive from the visual arts. Perspective refers to the way painters attempt to make a two-dimensional canvas appear to have depth through the use of geometry. This style of painting relates to realistic narration, which attempts to portray the world in a scientifically objective, detached way. Impressionism comes from paintings such as those of Monet or Renoir, which may seem blurry or incomplete. This style of narration attempts to portray life the way it is experienced by the individual mind and suggests that objective representation is impossible and artificial, since there is always a consciousness organizing sensory information into a deceptively “factual” worldview.

A final type of narration you may encounter is stream of consciousness, which, like impressionism, attempts to present the world as it is experienced by an individual, but often refuses to use complete sentences or connections between ideas in order to portray the chaotic stream of impressions before language itself makes sense out of them and provides them with meaning. Some famous writers who have used this method include William Faulkner, James Joyce, and Virginia Woolf.