Un-packing, The Yellow wall paper

ENG101

Prof.Alexander

Andrea.A

11/3/14

   

     “Now why should that men have fainted? But he did, and right across my path by the wall,so that I had to creep over him every time”

        

     In this short quote from “ The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the readers have a full taste of the narrator's mind. Here, the narrator has gone completely insane about a new house she and her family moved into and that there is this old yellow wallpaper that for some disturbing reason haunts her, Scares her, drives her completely insane. So insane that she begins to rip the yellow wallpaper down ,crawling freely all over the floor and as her husband comes in to see what has happen a quick sweep off his feet as he faints to the view of his wife.

      I believe based on the facts given in this short quote, that this is a ghost story.

The narrator was experiencing horrific images of a woman being behind the paper. She couldn't sleep at night, she didn't like being alone, and she was afraid of what was behind the wallpaper. I know in the basic, a ghost is something that is “an apparition of a dead person that is believed to appear or become manifest to the living, typically as a nebulous image.”But we know there is nothing dead in the house but the the narrator's belief of that there is something wrong with the wallpaper can be included of what is a “ghost”. Also the “manifest to the living” is another proof of there being a ghostly like feeling in the house because the wallpaper first haunts the main character but then surprisingly flows to the husband and nanny; in making them touch and stare at the paper. Making everyone question,what is with the wallpaper.     

     What bothers me though is that in her insanity of this wall, she has the questionable response of her husband fainting. She gives this soft surprise tone of “Now why should that man have fainted?” Its so jigsaw and almost unbelievable that she would question her husband fainting when she looks like a bloody beast, crawling and running all over the floor. Maybe she is questioning the symbol of how men are always strong and able to handle situations and her husband just fainting seems as if she is the strong headed one now. All this does point out that she is insane but insanity of the mind is part of a “ghost” type feeling because we do know know what goes on in the mind, so the suspense and the chilling ,and the unknown and unreasoning depth of the main characters mind does give a feeling of a ghost.

    

Flying paintings

       When a caterpillar turns into a butterfly, it looks like the most magical thing that nature has created. Something you see so rarely. Maybe its their curious wings that makes us always wanting to see them. Thousands of tiny scales that cover each other,turning out to look like a flying painting. All the patterns are used to amazed us but to butterflies they're meant to either scare off predators or to tell which sex they are. But their wing is like an explosion of brilliant primary colors, ultraviolet patterns, and when it flies its like motion pictures have nothing on the realism of a butterfly actually flying.  People always used a “butterfly” as an expression for “ He gives me butterflies, whenever he's near.”or to simply make something sound pretty but to me, a butterfly symbolizes time.