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The Yellow Wallpaper Compare And Contrast Essay

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“The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allen Poe and “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman are known for their famous themes or messages. What people don’t tend to dig deep into these stories, are their characterization and literature that makes them into the stories they are today. Comparing and Contrasting these two stories will show how literature appears in stories that are alike and different, and give an idea of how literature can appear in all kinds of ways. Some easy contrasts between the stories are their audience. Edgar Allen Poe’s story is for viewers who he wants to convince he has a well managed sanity to. Meanwhile, Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s story can be viewed by Feminism Programs or Mental Illness Programs. These stories …show more content…

An example of a simile can be “His room was as black as pitch with the thick darkness” (Paragraph 4, The Tell-Tale Heart). This simile proves the surroundings were very dark and eerie, making the story a gothic literature. Another point is the Imagery Poe uses in his story. For instance, Poe says “ And now at the dead hour of the night, amid the dreadful silence of that old house, so strange a noise as this excited me to uncontrollable terror.” (Paragraph 11, The Tell-Tale Heart). Poe was using descriptive words to show the vivid imagery used in the story. Lastly, Poe uses a sense of tone to show his literature. He uses the sentence, “If still you think me mad, you will think so no longer when I describe the wise precautions I took for the concealment of the body.” (Paragraph 12, The Tell-Tale Heart). His tone of literature uses tension along with paranoia to prove that he doesn’t have sanity. In conclusion, these three forms of literature can prove this is a Gothic …show more content…

This story is fiction and can be known as Gothic as well. It uses literary devices such as imagery, simile and metaphor, along with many more, which makes the story lead to its shocking, gothic end. A phrase that uses imagery would be, “shriek with derision” (The Yellow Wallpaper). The unique phrase emphasizes how the “monsters” in the wallpaper are mocking her loudly, which gives an idea of how she feels in the moment. Another device Gilman uses is simile, which is seen in the sentence, “Creeping as fast as a cloud shadow in a high wind.” (The Yellow Wallpaper). Gilman uses this simile to address how the woman inside the wallpaper, is making her turn insane more and more quickly. With this in mind, Gilman uses metaphor frequently to prove how women are treated in the real world. One metaphor would be when the woman describes the yellow wallpaper as fungus. Even though the wallpaper is not actually fungus, it is giving the readers an idea of how she views the wallpaper. Looking back on this story, we can finalize that the woman has a mental illness and slowly has lost her sanity. We can use this evidence to compare the two

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In the 19th century, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Edgar Allan Poe were known for their use of gothic elements in their types of writing. The plot of gothic literature novels typically involves people who become involved in complex and oftentimes evil paranormal schemes, usually against an innocent and helpless heroine. Poe used gothic dimensions to explore the human mind in extreme situations. Hawthorne examined the human heart under conditions of fear, vanity, mistrust, and betrayal. Even though Hawthorne and Poe used the gothic elements, they still used different types of darkness to portray their writing to the reader.

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Poe’s stories “Cask of Amontillado” and “The Tell-Tale Heart” display the dark romantic theme of a man’s soul by the development of the setting, plot, and characterization. As both stories begin, the initial device used to advance the theme is setting, which remains grim and sinister throughout the duration of both stories. Accompanying these physical details is the plot, each of which includes the murder of an innocent man. Most notably, the characterization of each piece’s narrator allows the audience to fully understand their internal struggle and its final resolution. While “Cask of Amontillado” contains an overall intriguing and unexpected plot as well as setting, the narrator’s characterization proves this story to conclude in a less

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More specifically for Poe, the makeup of the home in the “Tell Tale Heart” creates a dark mood for the text. “His room was as black as pitch with the thick darkness, (for the shutters were close fastened, through fear of robbers,) and so I knew that he could not see the opening of the door, and I kept pushing it on steadily, steadily.” (Poe). The setting displays a type of darkness and horrific sight. Through the vocabulary such as black and thick darkness this is clearly displayed.

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The woman in “Cathedral” was so depressed she tried to commit suicide, but instead became ill, and the woman in “The Yellow Wallpaper” actually became mentally unstable. The narrator in “The Yellow Wallpaper “is trying to break away from her husband and the narrator and character in “Cathedral” is alleviating the blindness. Gilman in “The Yellow Wallpaper is trying to convey to the reader that the female narrator is trapped. Gilman is also demonstrating blindness, she is unaware of her situation and how she is confined in her marriage.

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Gothic literature authors emphasize literary elements in their stories to create tension and suspense. In “The Devil and Tom Walker” Washington Irving uses satire to make the reader think about what will happen later in the story. Another instance of literary devices creating tension and suspense in gothic literature is Edgar Allen Poe’s use of personification in “The Fall of the House of Usher.” Other than foreshadowing and personification both authors also use mood to develop suspense and tension.

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The story “The Yellow Wallpaper” is a portrayal of a woman’s descent into madness and how the society around her contributes to her illness. As a matter of fact, the story was inspired and written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s own personal experience. Gilman’s use of a first person point of view and tone allows the reader to experience and understand the narrator's actions and situation. The narrator’s tone also plays a role in establishing her character and the theme through the paragraph structure, her thoughts and expressions and finally her ironic expressions. To begin with, the narrator's tone helps establish character through her paragraph structure within the story.

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It's yellow color symbolizes the way the narrator feels about her situation. "Unclean", "dull", "sickly" is how she may have felt deep down about her relationship with her husband and the life she lived under him. The wallpaper itself becomes a symbol for her. She uses it as a coping method and projects her feelings onto it and the woman she sees in it. The windows symbolize how she is trapped in this marriage and she can only view the beautiful outside through the many windows, reminding her of what she cannot have.

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The yellow wallpaper in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story plays a significant role in illuminating the narrator’s psychological unraveling. On a literal level, the wallpaper serves as a symbol of the narrator’s confinement within her oppressive domestic life. From the beginning, the narrator is presented as a woman who is struggling to find her place in the world. She is in a state of emotional limbo and her husband’s treatment of her only serves to further her sense of entrapment and powerlessness.

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Gothic literature is a style of literature that takes place in the past, most of the time it has someone who dies and it has a creepy vibe/tone behind it . Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher,” is a good example of Gothic literature because it shows how a man goes to visit an old friend and see how his friend and his friends twin sister die. “The whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day. ”(13)

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The short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a story full of imaginative symbolism and descriptive settings. However, without the narrator’s unique point of view and how it affects her perception of her environment, the story would fail to inform the reader of the narrator’s emotional plummet. The gothic function of the short story is to allow the reader to be with the narrator as she gradually loses her sanity and the point of view of the narrator is key in ensuring the reader has an understanding of the narrator’s emotional and mental state throughout the story. It’s clear from the beginning of the story that the narrator’s point of view greatly differs from that of her husband’s and other family in her life.

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Edgar Allan Poe uses this by using figures of speech such as repetition. Poe also uses imagery to characterize the narrator to indicate his senses which also shows his unbalanced mind. In “The Tell Tale Heart , Edgar Allan Poe uses figurative language. The similes that Poe uses bring a relation between two completely different ideas that creates a vivid image in the mind.

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Gothic Elements in the “The Tell Tale Heart” The classic short story of “The Tell-Tale Heart”, written by one of the all time masters of horror, Edgar Allen Poe, has always been used as an excellent example of Gothic fiction. Edgar Allen Poe specialized in the art of gothic writing and wrote many stories that portrayed disturbing events and delved deeply into the minds of its characters. In "The Tell-Tale Heart," Poe revolves the plot around a raving individual who, insisting that he is sane, murders an old man because of his` “vulture eye”. The three main gothic elements that are evident in this story are the unique setting, the theme of death and decay, and the presence of madness.

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While Edgar Allan Poe as the narrator of the The Tell-Tale Heart has the reader believe that he was indeed sane, his thoughts and actions throughout the story would prove otherwise. As the short story unfolds, we see the narrator as a man divided between his love for the old man and his obsession with the old man’s eye. The eye repeatedly becomes the narrator’s pretext for his actions, and while his delusional state caused him much aggravation, he also revealed signs of a conscience. In the first paragraph of the short story, The Tell-Tale Heart, Edgar Allan Poe establishes an important tone that carries throughout his whole story, which is ironic.

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The house is not taken care of well and the weather is very bleak as well. In his life, Poe did not take good care of himself. He was an alcoholic and was described as the town drunk. His life was bleak and at the time of his death, he one of the last members of the Poe family. Another example of gothic allusions in the short story is the supranational characteristics that gothic stories in the 18th century contain.

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The story is considered to be a classic example of Gothic literature, which often deals with themes of madness

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