Yellow Wallpaper

Overall, I thought that The Yellow Wallpaper was a very interesting story, and enjoyed reading it. Last year my experimental novel was Vanishing Point, a very odd book where the narrator also goes crazy in the end. I feel like this short story had a similar effect, allowing the reader to see how someone can become insane. In my opinion, Jane started out a little bit crazy. However, her problem at the beginning of the short story was at a state where it could have been controlled and fixed with the correct methods. What caused her to reach her tipping point were all of the restraints that were put on her by her husband, John. Jane was trapped in the room for an extremely long period of time. When someone has nothing to do for a while, their minds tend to trail off and may start to make up extremely odd stories. Even normal people do this to an extent. For example, little children might be sitting in their beds at night and hear a small noise. Because they are alone and have nothing else to think about, they may take that noise and form an idea in their head that it is coming from a monster or another unrealistic source. When their parents deny that anything happened, it may anger the child. This is kind of like what happened when John ignored Jane’s plees to change rooms. The rest cure was clearly not effective, and was what drove her to her tipping point.

Heart of Darkness

In my opinion, Heart of Darkness can fit into the genre of Gothic Literature. The book has a dark tone and setting which is common to Gothic novels. Even if there is not a castle or older home, the mysteries of the forest and the Congo give the same effect. Another common theme of Gothic literature is madness. Marlow has an abnormal obsession with finding Kurtz, enough to go against his manager to be on Kurtz’s side. Kurtz himself is even crazy, rambling on though his battle with disease and sickness. There are also some tragic deaths in the novel. For example, the cannibal helmsman gets stabbed and falls in a pool of blood right in front of Marlow. Many descriptions throughout the book depict death, and sound almost supernatural. The ivory trade is described by Marlow as almost a god, saying “The word ‘ivory’ rang in the air, was whispered, was sighed. You would think they were praying to it. A taint of imbecile rapacity blew through it all, like a whiff from some corpse” (Conrad). The dark and creepy descriptions add to the gothic mood of Heart of Darkness.