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Flatliners By Peter Filardi And The Yellow Wallpaper By Charlotte Perkins Gilman

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In the realm of literature and film, the portrayal of suspense and fixation captivates audiences in numerous ways. These qualities of a story invite the audience to question the boundaries between reality and imagination. Both Flatliners by Peter Filardi and “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman have similar levels of suspense as well as share obsessiveness archetypes. Both having this similar mindset raises the question of the mind and boundaries pushed to find the answers they are desperately looking for. During the duration of the movie Flatliners, the audience is kept on the edge of their seats as the suspense develops as each medical student flatlines. As the movie continues, they go down for longer and longer periods of time. …show more content…

The characters must figure out a way to atone for their sins, or else those sins might end up killing them. Similarly, in “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the narrator's suppressed thoughts and feelings appear directly in the wallpaper as she spirals deeper and deeper into madness. The narrator states “There are things in that paper which nobody knows but me, or ever will. Behind that outside pattern, the dim shapes get clearer every day” (Gilman 4). This quote is the author's example of creating suspense by progressively adding more detail to the narrator's hallucinations until finally, she snaps. Both the movie Flatliners and the short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” feature an obsessive main character archetype, whose fixation gradually leads both characters to their demise. In the movie Flatliners Nelson, one of the central characters develops an obsession with medical science. He is relentless in pursuing and unraveling the mysteries of the afterlife. This is shown when he says, “I want to know.what’s out there”. I want to see what lies beyond” (Filardi). This quote reflects his insatiable curiosity and willingness to push the boundaries of the human

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Together the themes of manipulation and mental illness will trigger a series of events that change their lives. In “The Yellow Wallpaper” the protagonist becomes increasingly obsessed with the yellow wallpaper in her bedroom and seclusion from human contact. This was a cure that her husband John prescribed that proved detrimental to her mental health. As she spends more time alone in the room, she becomes fixated on the patterns and images, slowly becoming convinced there is a woman behind the wall that is trapped and that she must free, "The front pattern does move—and no wonder!

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Paula A. Treichler from the University of Illinois analyzes “The Yellow Wallpaper” and its effects of the diagnosis given to the main character effectively in her article “Escaping the Sentence: Diagnosis and Discourse in ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’”. In her article, Treichler emphasizes the reasons why the main character was lead to believe her diagnosis from her husband and the other contributing factors that played a role in her hysteria, such as lack of social interaction and confinement. In the introduction to her article, Treichler gives the background of the story and hits on every area of importance. The diagnosis made by the narrator 's husband is highlighted by Treichler in her opening paragraph to illustrate the significance and informality of the diagnosis and its unreliability.

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Gilman shows the progression of the main character’s insanity through the woman in the wallpaper, John, and the bed. Like most individuals, the narrator in “The Yellow Wallpaper” gradually shows increased symptoms of insanity. She begins the summer as a sane individual. As time progresses, she starts acting

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Since her husband, a physician of high standard, has prescribed a "rest cure" for her nervous condition, the protagonist is forced to suppress her creative urges and conform to societal expectations of a submissive and passive wife who is to remain still in a room with “the yellow wallpaper.” This suppression ultimately leads to her descent into madness as she struggles to reconcile her own desires with the expectations placed upon her. While the lady narrates the entire story, it is interesting to note that she is not in control of her own life and decisions. Rather, she is a victim of societal norms and gender roles that restrict her agency and

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The narrator is disgusted and repelled by the wallpaper, originally describing the wallpaper as “sprawling flamboyant patterns committing every artistic sin,” but as the story progresses her hatred turns into an obsession. The narrator sees figures with the pattern of the wallpaper and starts to stay up at night to analyze what she is seeing. One definition of madness is “mental delusion or the eccentric behavior arising from it, which her actions can be described as delusional to a normal eye, yet to a “discerning eye” the reader can infer that the figure the narrator describes behind the wallpaper is the narrator herself and her way of expressing how she feels trapped as she states “the faint figure behind seemed to shake the pattern, just as if she wanted to get

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At night, her intense observation of the paper seems to change her very personality. She watches it as the patterns come to life to form the bars of her postpartum and her longing to be liberated. Darkness has the power to release the mask disguising human nature. In the story of "The Yellow Wallpaper", the main character is trapped by her sickness, constantly feeling as though she has no power to change the course of her life.

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This observation also serves as the narrator recognizing the paper’s, or boundary’s, relevance to herself; she sees a “woman”--a reflection of herself--trapped behind the paper, confined by that thin line that separates herself from total insanity. Her behavior becomes obsessive: she keeps a constant vigil of the wallpaper at night, and claims that the woman behind the wallpaper “is all the time trying to climb through” (348). And the narrator aids her escape--as soon as she is given the opportunity: “I shook and she pulled, and before morning we had peeled off yards of that paper” (349). The destruction of the wallpaper is symbolic of her fully delving into the world of insanity. From this point

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The narrator is a woman who is imaginative trying to make her mind think and realize the meaning of the yellow wallpaper. She describes the wallpaper as, “repellant, almost revolting; smouldering unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow turning sunlight” (Gilman 641). This specific wallpaper makes the narrator feel a certain way. At first, she does not like the color or how it looks. But then not having anything else to do in the room, she starts examining the wallpaper.

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Secondly, throughout the story, the narrator describes seeing an evolving woman trapped inside of the wall. Although readers can assume that this woman is merely a product of the narrator’s mind, the woman can also be seen as a symbol of the narrator and her feelings of being trapped. Eventually, the woman in the wall aids the narrator in her escape. In conclusion, many elements of the narrator’s increasing madness throughout The Yellow Wallpaper contributed to her freedom from the confines of the room, the confines of society, and the confines of her

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As this progresses, the woman starts to go mad from ignorance and starts to believe there is someone behind the Wallpaper. In her room, the narrator starts to obsess over the Wallpaper. The Wallpaper symbolizes women starting to realize how unfair they were treated and how responded to this. As the women’s illness keeps getting subdued by her husband, she starts to go mad and the wallpaper demonstrates this. In the third entry of her diary she says, “Of

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Martin states that the narrator’s confinement in the upstairs bedroom fortifies her mental illness developing into “a frightening hallucinatory world constructed around the pattern of the yellow paper on the wall.” This shift in her identity happens as the shift in her disposition towards the wallpaper changes. The wallpaper is a visible metaphor that eventually becomes her identity. In the beginning of her stay in the bedroom she says the wallpaper is “committing artistic sin” (Par34) and can push anyone to “suddenly commit suicide” (Par35) These comments show her despise towards the wallpaper and the separation she originally has from it.

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(Böker 1) This is a clear demonstration that acquaintances’ consistent negligence could prevent individuals from expressing their thoughts, which would lead to the deterioration of hysterical symptoms. “The Yellow Wallpaper” also exposes the correlation between interior decoration and pathology, in which the colors and shapes of the wallpaper can aggravate the symptoms of hysteria. The protagonist of the story lives in a spacious, airy room with smoldering unclear yellow wallpaper, which makes her feel repulsive. The protagonist considers the design of the wallpaper a broken neck and two eyes gazing at her upside down.

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(678) in this statement she is challenging herself and this shows the reader she is facing some confusion. The yellow wallpaper in the main characters (the narrator) bedroom is a major point in the story. The yellow wallpaper plays a major role in the woman’s insanity. The woman’s obsession with the wallpaper creates her problem and affects her mind and judgment. This is shown in, “It dwells on my mind so!”

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Enclosed to the four wall of this “big” room, the narrator says “the paint and paper look as if a boy’s school had used it” because “it is stripped off” indicating that males have attempted to distort women’s truth but somehow did not accomplish distorting the entire truth (Perkins Gilman, 43). When the narrator finally looked at the wall and the paint and paper on it, she was disgusted at the sight. The yellow wallpaper, she penned, secretly against the will of men, committed artistic sin and had lame uncertain curves that suddenly committed suicide when you followed them for a little distance. The narrator is forced to express her discomfort with the image to her husband, he sees it as an “excited fancy” that is provoked by the “imaginative power and habit of story making” by “a nervous weakness” like hers (Perkins Gilman, 46). Essentially, he believes that her sickness is worsening and the depth of her disease is the cause of the unexpected paranoia.

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