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The Symbolism Of Margaret Atwood's 'The Window'

235 Words1 Pages
One characteristic of the house; the window; symbolizes not only the opportunities of the outside world but the feeling of being trapped by her husband and other men in the world. The window shows her the way that everything could be and the things she wants. The narrator gets sick of looking out the window explaining “I don't like to look out of the windows even - there are so many of those creeping women, and they creep so fast.”(656) The narrator has to hide and lay low, believing that in order to be like the rest of society she had to creep through the window. She also does not want to see all the other women in society because she knows that they are also having to creep and it is a reflection of her and the way society is. She explains
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The windows are a representation of what Esperanza does not want to be. Her goal is to leave Mango Street and become something better. She does not want her life to be sitting by a window wishing for something better. She wants to be able to live her life without being tied down to something.

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Mildred feels like she has a deep attachment to the walls. . The real reason she likes the parlor is because all her friends have the parlor also. “I went to Helen’s last night” (Bradbury, p.47). Helen is one of Mildred’s friends. Mildred goes to her house so they both could engage with the parlor together.

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From the outside, Jane and the house remain unharmed,but the inside is wounded unrecognizable. A window never broke or even smudged is Jane's never faulty appearance (Cormier 91). The trashing left the house empty and without a purpose; Jane is weakened and numb (Cormier 8). The permanent,staining smell in the house represents how Jane can't rid her emotions (Cormier 37). Simply looking at the stains, reminds Jane she is surrounded by the stench.

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Fearing more damage to the house, the facade a family puts up to tell society they do not have trouble, the narrator mentions the “Roots in the cellar drains”; meanwhile, the mother of the narrator

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Another major character in the book, Sally, marries a man. Sally may think that she has escaped from her dad’s cruel treatment but has not realized that being dependent on another person will only end her up in the cycle of abuse again. For many women on Mango Street, looking out of the window is seen as the last hope of freedom, and her husband even bans her from doing so. “ She likes looking at the walls, at how neatly their corners meet, the linoleum roses on the floor, the ceiling smooth as wedding cake. (102)”.

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As Geyh argues in her essay, the window is the boundary of the house, which simultaneously separates and connects the inside and the outside (111). By turning the light on, it goes dark; “[f]unctioning as a mirror, it creates a circle of inwardness” (111). It sustains the illusion that what is inside is the only reality that exists, since the outside is no longer visible. The window then emerges as a separation tool from nature outside rather than a means of

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672 Words | 3 Pages

Rear Window by Alfred Hitchcock is a fillm full of symbolism and motifs that provides viewers with a bigger meaning. It shows these rhetorical appeals through Hitchcok’s eyes that would not be recognized if not analyzed. Through these appeals I have recognized the window as being a symbol and marriage and binoculars as motifs. After understanding much more than what the eye anitially sees when viewing this film there is a fine line between understanding what is going on in the film and observing what the protagonist Jeff is viewing.

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Which shows that she did not want to be an outcast in Flathead so she is choosing not to do the thing that she believes is right. This ties into the theory that people are all social creatures and if something is going to affect how a person is seen to the public then they will choose not to do it. So that they may still be accepted by the people around

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From the start Booker T. Washington always had a burning desire for education in which he saw a way to escape ignorance and become equipped to help others. After the war had ended, it leads him to leave home and with the value of hard work and the help of the headmaster of the school, General Samuel C. Armstrong. Washington was able to accomplish his goal and graduate from Hampton in 1875. Throughout the years, Armstrong offered Washington a position to run a new school in Tuskegee, Alabama for African Americans. Then rather join politics education was important for Washington in the sense that he saw this opportunity to give back to his community by cultivating them not just through basic education, but as well as industrial education.

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The home in the story is symbolic of human beings' relationship with nature. The machines that run the home have replaced natural elements such as sunlight and rain. The home's windows are made of Veldt glass, which resembles mechanical eyes, and the walls are a product of plastic that creates an artificial environment. The author's intention in creating an automated home is to showcase how humans have replaced nature with machines and how they have taken it for granted. The home's machines continue to function despite the absence of humans, showing that humans have created machines that are out of their control and capable of causing widespread destruction.

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In House of Leaves by Mark Danielewski it discusses the experiences everyone endures once entering the house, although the people that enter the house are primarily males as the reader I become part of the book. Resembling to the characters we all symbolize something different, however by the end the characters all become interconnected by causing some harm to themselves or become insane because they cannot determine what is occurring in the house. However, I have learned to not be afraid of the unknown because they are made as a path to learn from. In addition, I changed from being someone that wanted to know everything to having a mystery is fine and not necessary for it to become an obsession. Danielewski when making reference to the house, it appears to be blue, and he does not interchange between house and home because of the distinct definitions.

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Knowing this true meaning helps the reader to develop a deeper thought of the novel, creating a feeling of fear. Another important piece of symbolism from the text is all of the doors in Hill House. For example, ““Every door in this house swings shut when you let go of it”” (Jackson 46). The doors symbolize freedom and self-awareness.

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In her society, it is the woman that is left to be alone in her own thoughts, shown through her husband’s freedom to leave the house and not come back until he wants to versus her confinement to the house. This is reflected through the various “hedges and walls and gates that lock”, making her stay isolated in the house. Ultimately, the character is overtaken by the imagination and through the

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Because Esperanza is capable of finding love as she says, the window acts as a device that she can direct her hope through. While fantasizing about a different life, “away from Mango Street”, Esperanza describes a house that she would find nice, a house with “flowers and big windows … [that] would swing open, all the sky [coming] in” (Cisneros 82). Esperanza isn’t content with her current life and wishes for a life with something more, a life with a house to call home. The windows that bring in the sky in Esperanza’s dream home act as a symbol for significance in life, the windows are big because they are part of Esperanza’s hopes that she has been dreaming of through windows and the sky coming in represents Esperanza being wild and free from the bounds of her current unsatisfactory environment. Windows symbolize the novel’s theme of struggling to attain a gratifying life by acting as an object for the characters to direct their hope

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Her husband locked Jane away in the nursery and forbid her from the rest of the house. Jane also does not believe she fits in well at the mansion just as she does not fit into the role of a wife. Her husband also hides her away from everyone else in the nursery as if he is embarrassed of her. Towards the end of the story Jane even begins to suspect that the room was actually an asylum for adults. The windows of the room are barred up and windows represent freedom in many ways.

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