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Human Nature In 'All My Sons'

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Literature has had a deep impact to human nature either implictly or explictitly. There are numerous short stories in which you can glean the context of human nature such as greed,pride and selfishness. Through a great deal of time Literature has provided us with deep insights to what our human nature actually is. For example, if we take the short story "The Yellow Wallpaper" contains many insights into human nature. The story focuses on a young married woman who is suffering depression and her wild obsession with the wallpaper. The narrators husband John can be considered the villain of the story although this is subtly implied. John can be classified as being ignorant as he thinks he knows what is best for his wife and disregards her opinions …show more content…

The play contains strong elements of guilt,shame,selfishness. "All My Sons" arguably contains the biggest insight into human nature as it reflects the darkness of individuals and how individuals can committ a sin and carry on living with that sin for a majority of their lives. Guilt is a central theme in the play as it is revealed that Joe Keller has entirely blamed the death of twenty-one pilots on Steve Deever and this concluded with Steve Deever falsely being convicted of a crime he has not committed whilst Keller walks home free. The injustice of the story is astonishing and it shows that human beings can be selfish as far as ruining someone else 's life rather than their own. Another theme is blame as each character in the play has a different experience of blame. Joe Keller tries to blame anyone and everyone for crimes during the war first by letting his partner go to jail. Later when he is confronted with the truth he blames business practice and the U.S. Army and everyone he can think of except himself. When he finally does accept blame after learning how Larry had taken the blame and shame on himself Keller kills himself. Chris meanwhile feels guilty for surviving the war and for having money, but when the crimes are revealed he places the blame squarely on his father 's shoulders. He even blames his father for his own inability to send his father to prison. These are just a

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With this time period in mind, the audience can infer the financial situation of their family is very dire and that they are holding on by a thread to even live a normal life. Moreover it explains how the play is narrated and held in the point of view of the main character, Tom, and it is a memory play which illustrates that the play is taking place in Tom's memory which recalls events from a person's life that may be exaggerated and described in a sentimental way thus showing how many parts may become fairly unrealistic. Furthermore, in scene two, where the audience is told that Laura, the sister, dropped out of college due to an incident involving a panic attack, the audience is able to understand her personality by demonstrating that she has a very anxious, shy, and coward-like personality, thus adding to the exposition of the character traits. Also, with her dropping out, it explains that the tuition for her college was fifty dollars which was a lot of money, and that it was their mother's, Amanda's, plans and ambitions thrown down the drain which further supports that the family is in need of money because of the Depression. These overall, add to the exposition of the plot by explaining the setting, adding to the character traits, and things as such, but it may also include the rising action which is when Laura decided to drop out of her college, wasting the fifty dollars her mother paid for her

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She proceeds to explain the contributing factors of the narrator succumbing to her “disease” of hysteria which was isolation from social interaction and the restriction of her own thoughts. She points out that the narrator is confined to a simple square room with nothing to offer in terms of mental health therapy. The narrator’s lack of the ability to interact with anything or anyone leads to infatuation with the wallpaper, which turns out to be “the

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Initially, the narrator is disgusted and irritated by the paper, claiming, “I never saw a worse paper in my life. One of those sprawling flamboyant patterns committing every artistic sin” (339). This reaction mirrors that of a sane person’s--fearing the unknown, they distance themselves from insanity and any iteration of it, seeing it as grotesque and shameful. Yet, as she spends more time in the room, she grows interested in the wallpaper and begins to investigate. She comes to the conclusion that: “I didn 't realize for a long time what the thing was that showed behind, that dim sub-pattern, but now I am quite sure it is a woman” (346).

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The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a short story told through diary entries of a woman who suffers from postpartum depression. The narrator, whose name is never mentioned, becomes obsessed with the ugly yellow wallpaper in the summer home her husband rented for them. While at the home the Narrator studies the wallpaper and starts to believe there is a woman in the wallpaper. Her obsession with the wallpaper slowly makes her mental state deteriorate. Throughout The Yellow Wallpaper Charlotte Perkins Gilman uses many literary devices such as symbolism, personification and imagery to help convey her message and get it across to the reader.

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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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