Preview

Home In William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying

Powerful Essays
Open Document
Open Document
936 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Home In William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying
Sophia Garcia
McDonald
Comp 2 P 12
March 6, 2017
Essay 2 “How often have I lain beneath rain on a strange roof, thinking of home.” In this quote, William Faulkner references his longing for the familiar comforts of his own home in his novel As I Lay Dying. To Faulkner, a home represents more than just a space or a private sanctuary. It represents stability, memories, security, and happiness. Home portrays multiple meanings to many people. For Charlotte Perkins Gillman, home represents happiness as well but happiness achieved through action. She refers to happiness as an attainable attribute one may work towards. “To attain happiness in another world, we need only to believe something, while to secure it in this world we must …show more content…
The room she stays in, once a nursery, fills with light from the windows that adorn it. Her misery lies in the absence of others and her seclusion in the room with the yellow wallpaper, but as time passes, she becomes more comfortable with her surroundings and finds amazement in the pattern on the wallpaper. She begins to hallucinate and see things that do not exist in reality. The patterns of a woman, or what she thinks is a woman control her mind. The house begins to take over her psyche, over-powering her, and leading her to a state of mind she cannot return from. The place of happiness, comfort, and refuge no longer exists and in its place a terrifying reality takes hold of her mind. The home she works so hard for becomes her worst …show more content…
Even the townspeople feel sorry for her stating that “The house was all that was left to her” (Faulkner). Her home, once full of life, becomes a dark place of solitude. After Miss Emily’s father passes away, her reclusive lifestyle worries the townspeople, leading to an intervention in order to save Miss Emily from the dark road she steadily retreats towards. When Homer Barron enters Miss Emily’s life, a new attitude of hope fills the once darkened home and new possibilities emerge. However, when Mr. Barron comes up missing, the townspeople simply believe their relationship dissipated, leaving Miss Emily alone once
Continue Reading
View Writing Issues

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Better Essays

    Literary Evaluation: The Yellow Wall-Paper. A Story.
    • 841 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Literary Evaluation: The Yellow Wall-Paper. A Story.

    In the summer of 1855 a mentally ill woman moves into a secluded estate with her husband. She immediately voices her concerns about the eerie feeling she gets in the house and how much she hates the yellow wallpaper, but like always, her husband disregards her concerns and insists that he knows best because he is a doctor. She also believes that she was born to be a writer, but her husband forbids her from writing or communicating with other people and insists that she stay in bed to rest. Much like a prisoner in solitary confinement, the narrator starts to lose her mind. She begins to fixate her entire life on the wallpaper while she spends her days in bed. She started keeping a journal which he hid from her family, and in it, she writes about how she ‘discovered’ a creeping woman trapped behind the pattern. She centers her life on freeing this woman by locking the door and attempting to tear off all of the wallpaper. When her husband comes home from work, he breaks down the door, sees the mess, and faints. Then the woman crawls out of the room and the story seems to be over, but there has got to be more. This woman is not simply your Martha Stewart of the 1800s that doesn’t like her bedroom wallpaper. The job of the reader is to break down the roles of each character, analyze the major symbols, evaluate the theme and use them like the pieces of a puzzle to understand what the author, Charlotte Perkins Stetson, was trying to say.…

    • 841 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Better Essays
    Read More
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Imagery In Faulkner's As I Lay Dying
    • 187 Words
    • 1 Page

    Imagery In Faulkner's As I Lay Dying

    In As I Lay Dying, the mother, Addie, only has one chapter (and the point she has it is quite strange because she's already dead). In Chapter 40, Addie recounts her life up until her death, where she has several moments of existentialism. Most of which come in the beginning of the chapter.…

    • 187 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    An Analysis Of William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying
    • 408 Words
    • 2 Pages

    An Analysis Of William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying

    In William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying death is a very central theme as the characters are all dealing with the passing of Addie Bundren. The town doctor, Peabody, comes to see Addie just before she dies, knowing that it is too late to save her and reveals how he feels about death:…

    • 408 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    The Yellow Wallpaper Analytical Essay
    • 667 Words
    • 3 Pages

    The Yellow Wallpaper Analytical Essay

    She is a very imaginative person. She believes that her house is haunted and terrors herself with nightmares about big scary monsters. She turns her imagination on to neutral objects like the house and wallpaper so she can somewhat ignore her frustration. The narrator becomes very focused on the wallpaper in her house. She later identifies herself as the lady trapped in the wallpaper. She’s able to see that other women are forced to hide behind domestic patterns of their lives when she is the one who truly needs to be rescued. In the end, she is “free’ of the constraints of her marriage, society, and her own efforts of her…

    • 667 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Family In William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying
    • 835 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Family In William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying

    Throughout the novel, As I Lay Dying William Faulkner gives the delusion that the family will be all right through the journey to Jefferson. As the novel goes on, a family member on his selfish quest for more destroys the family.…

    • 835 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Character Analysis: The Yellow Wallpaper
    • 1141 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Character Analysis: The Yellow Wallpaper

    The further she focuses on it, the more obsessed she becomes. She begins to observe how it varies in different light and notices a sub pattern within the wallpaper. This she perceives as a positive side to the wallpaper. All of this stimulates her mind and she even becomes excited about life because of the wallpaper. As she continues to study the wallpaper, she notices that the woman in the wallpaper is behind bars and shakes the bars powerfully. Since she only focuses that wallpaper, she begins to put herself in the place of that woman she claims to observe. Had she been taken away from that house or given other activities, she would not have continued with the delusion that she is in the…

    • 1141 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    The Yellow Wallpaper Summary
    • 1417 Words
    • 6 Pages

    The Yellow Wallpaper Summary

    Within the room that Jane spends most of her time, one of the first things she describes in detail is the wallpaper. Jane believes the “wall and paint look as if a boys’ school had used it” and she continues, “I never saw a worse paper in my life” (Gilman, “The Yellow Wallpaper, 610). As the weeks pass, Jane spends more and more time in the room, where she is locked away from society and social interaction. Gilman writes that Jane sees that the wallpaper has, “a recurrent spot where the pattern lolls like a broken neck and two bulbous eyes stare at you upside down” (“The Yellow Wallpaper” 611). Jane begins to see patterns and images within the wallpaper because she is confined by her husband’s treatment. When John stripped her of the opportunity to write, Jane was forced to find a new way to engage her mind and express herself. Jane wants to keep this new found way of expressing herself out of the hands of her husband and his sister, Jennie. Gilman writes, “I have watched John when he did not know I was looking, and come into the room suddenly o the most innocent excuses and I’ve caught him several times looking at the wallpaper! And Jennie too. […] I am determined that nobody shall find it out but myself!” (“The Yellow Wallpaper” 615). Jane slowly comes to the realization that there is not only a pattern within the wallpaper, but also a woman trapped behind it. Rula comments on the woman within the wallpaper and how it affects…

    • 1417 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Theme Of Insanity In The Yellow Wallpaper
    • 616 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Theme Of Insanity In The Yellow Wallpaper

    In the beginning, the protagonist sees the pattern as a woman trapped in the wallpaper and trying to escape, “The faint figure behind seemed to shake the pattern, just as if she wanted to get out,” (652). This metaphor symbolizes the protagonist’s mind beginning to realize that the room may not be the best environment for her. During the middle of the story, the protagonist claims that she sees the woman in the wallpaper creeping, “I see her in those dark grape ' arbors, creeping all around the garden,” (654). This description increases the feeling of unease and concern. As the story continues, the protagonist realizes that she is the woman in the wallpaper, “I kept on creeping just the same” (656). By the end of the story, the protagonist finds herself trapped inside the pattern of the wallpaper, symbolizing her captivity in the room. This yellow wallpaper metaphor occurs several times throughout the story and helps the reader follow the protagonist’s experience of developing…

    • 616 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    A Rose For Emily Quote Analysis
    • 555 Words
    • 3 Pages

    A Rose For Emily Quote Analysis

    In the passage the author quotes, “It is a shrine to the living past, and the sealed upstairs bedroom is her macabre trophy room where she preserves the man she would not allow her to leave” (Sparknotes). This quote states that Homer thought Emily was a nice women, but did not know she was up to no good, and did not know his life had gone go by so suddenly. The neighbors could tell something was wrong with the house because it had gasoline pumps and other trappings surrounding the house. The house can also be an important symbol throughout the…

    • 555 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Better Essays

    yellow
    • 1442 Words
    • 4 Pages

    yellow

    Constantly alone and forbidden to leave her bedroom, the lack of something to occupy her time causes the protagonist to become delusional. With “barred windows for little children and rings and things in the walls” the room is much like her prison (Gilman 174). Even the pattern on the wallpaper (which at first was completely random) “at night in any kind of light, twilight, candlelight, lamplight, and worst of all moonlight, becomes bars” as if she is caged (Gilman 182). Both times here she refers to aspects of her room as bars. As she begins to feel imprisoned she projects her feelings onto the wallpaper, but the idea of the room being her prison goes from figurative to more literal as the isolation deepens her need for an escape.…

    • 1442 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Better Essays
    Read More
  • Powerful Essays

    Conflicts of the Narrator- the Yellow Wallpaper
    • 1469 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Conflicts of the Narrator- the Yellow Wallpaper

    The most obvious conflict the narrator has to deal with is living in the room with the yellow wallpaper and differentiating creativity from reality. The narrator becomes fond of the wallpaper and feels an excessive need to figure out the pattern. She says, “I know a little of the principle of design, and I know this thing was not arranged on any laws of radiation, or alternation, or repetition, or symmetry, or anything else that I have ever heard of” (Gilman 224). Her days become preoccupied with the wallpaper and she feels a distinct connection to it. While she tries to decode the wallpaper’s pattern, her creativity allows her to see a face in the wallpaper. She says, “There is a recurrent spot where the pattern lolls like a broken neck and two bulbous eyes stare at you upside down” (Gilman 223). As she continues to study the wallpaper, she comes to believe that she sees a woman creeping in the chaotic wallpaper who is trapped behind it: “The front pattern does- and no wonder! The woman behind shakes it!” (Gilman 227). She begins to have a bond with this woman and can relate to her. The woman in the wallpaper is essentially the narrator. They are similar in the sense that they are both trapped and unable to escape. Towards the end of the story, the narrator reaches a state of insanity where she can no longer differentiate herself from the figure she sees in the wallpaper. She tells us, “I suppose I shall have to get back behind the pattern when it comes night, and that is…

    • 1469 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    The Yellow Wallpaper Analysis
    • 663 Words
    • 3 Pages

    The Yellow Wallpaper Analysis

    At first the narrator sees the wallpaper as just an unpleasant decoration with a horrid pattern. However, as the story goes on she starts to see what appears to be a sub-pattern behind the main pattern. This later comes to view as a woman who seems to be trying to escape the…

    • 663 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Life For Women In The Yellow Wallpaper, By Charlotte Perkins Gilman
    • 951 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Life For Women In The Yellow Wallpaper, By Charlotte Perkins Gilman

    It is within the wallpaper that the narrator finds her hidden self and her eventual freedom. Her obsession with the paper begins subtly and then consumes both the narrator and the story. Once settled in the gothic setting, the narrator is dismayed to learn that her husband has chosen the top-floor nursery room for her. The room is papered in horrible yellow wallpaper, the design of which “commits every artistic sin”. The design begins to fascinate the narrator and she begins to see more than just the outer design. At first she sees “bulbous eyes” and “absurd unblinking eyes . . . everywhere”. The wallpaper consumes the narrator offering up more intricate images as time passes. She first notices a different colored sub-pattern of a figure beneath the top design. This figure is eventually seen as a woman who “creeps” and shakes the outer pattern, now seen as bars. This woman-figure becomes essentially the narrator’s doppelganger or double trapped behind the bars of her role in…

    • 951 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Powerful Essays

    A Rose For Emily Loneliness Analysis
    • 1905 Words
    • 8 Pages

    A Rose For Emily Loneliness Analysis

    Her inability to adapt and accept the change society challenged her with, lead to her isolation from society and overall loneliness. This is accentuated through the use of the first person point of view from the narrator that shows her disconnection, and the various instances were she neglects to accept and conform to new change. The narrator representing the majority of Jefferson’s perspective of Miss Emily’s highlights the events that occurred throughout her life giving the impression of the assumptions society made regarding Miss Emily. She was quite disconnected from everyone yet they knew everything about her or they thought they did. At Miss Emily’s funeral, the narrator notes that, “Alive, Miss Emily had been a tradition, a duty, and a care; a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town.” (317). This quote reveals her status within the community as they portray her as an object of sort, degrading her existence as she herself had no real connection with the society of Jefferson. Since they consider as an object it shows how her self-imposed isolation resulted in her status within the society of Jefferson. This is interesting because from the narrator’s tale of Miss Emily’s events the people of Jefferson are portrayed to be obsessed with her. Their obsession with the relationship Miss Emily and Homer Barron is key to this…

    • 1905 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Powerful Essays
    Read More
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Yellow Wallpaper
    • 301 Words
    • 1 Page

    Yellow Wallpaper

    While reading the short story, I came across a paragraph that gave me a clue of what the yellow wallpaper meant to her. She talks about how she discovers new findings by the day and therefore it gives her comfort. I think when she finally discovered what it was about the yellow wallpaper that drew her in, she made it her mission to rip it down. As she rips down the wallpaper it could relate to the fact that she has to tear herself apart to be free. She then questions herself, “… if they all [came] out of that wall-paper as [she] did?” (237). It is strange that she finds such frustration and relief from it. This resembles her, herself because she too is trapped into that home, within that room, and not being able to write. She mentions that there are many faces in the wallpaper, which tells me that these faces are women who are in the same position as her. She also says that “there are so many of those creeping women, and they creep so fast” (237). This line describes her situation because she too is creeping on others as she is kept inside. I think the theme in this short story is about how women are not allowed to do certain things and how men are dominant. She wants to be a writer but her husband does not allow that due to her mental illness. Although the narrator has a mental illness, believes that inanimate objects come to life, and that she was trapped in the yellow wallpaper; She makes a point of how women live by men’s rules and how they are limited to the amount of things they are able to do.…

    • 301 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
    Read More

Related Topics