3-7-07
When reading this short story, it reminded me of Edgar Allan Poe’s short story, The Tell Tale Heart. Both are told by the same standpoint of a psychotic narrator. I think it is interesting when she talks about how when she was a child she used to work herself into a psychotic terror in the dark. It kind of lets the reader understand how borderline crazy. I used to do this subconsciously when I was younger. I still do this when I am sleeping in a new place from time to time. I hate doing it and it makes me tense and stressed out. I have absolutely no control over it and it is extremely difficult for me to redirect my mind to other more positive thoughts. I enjoyed reading this short story because it seems all nice and fluffy at the beginning, then goes into this neurotic narrator discussing her inner thoughts and feelings as she sees them happening before her. She is kind of having an out of body experience as she views the women figure in the wallpaper struggling to break through the bars.

The narrator in this short story seems to be confined and cut off from the outside world for her own benefit. She lives in her own environment and develops it with her imagination. At first she thinks of the wallpaper as ripped, dirty and discolored. As she starts to write in her journal about the wallpaper, she examines it more closely. She looks into the yellow wallpaper and sees a figure. As she looks deeper, she observes a woman figure behind bars of a cage. The woman is trapped. Just as these observations of the yellow wallpaper transform over time, the narrator’s perception of being in the room is transformed. She relates to the woman in the wallpaper behind the bars. She feels captive in her room. The narrator wants to release the figure by tearing off all the wall paper. When the narrator does this, she is also releasing her feelings by taking off a layer of her “cage” and gaining more freedom. She takes control of her environment. The narrator transforms in this over the course of this short story. As the narrator loses connection with the outside world, she becomes more involved with what is right around her, the yellow wallpaper. As the narrator sinks further into her inner lure to the yellow wallpaper, she becomes increasingly disconnected from day to day life. At first she looks out the window at the garden and the people walking by. She then becomes more inverted and only looks around her room at the yellow wall paper. She hates the wallpaper, but as she spends more time with it she sees that the figure looks like her and it represents her being trapped. The narrator gets crazy not wanting Jennie and John to find out about her obsession with the paper. She feels that they caught onto her. She destroys the paper by peeling it off at night. The next day, she goes in a crazed fit biting and tearing the paper in order to set the trapped woman free. As she is doing this she is spiraling further down into a psychotic state of mind. She become neurotic and feels as though everyone is watching her. This short story exemplifies the downfall of the narrator as the other characters in the story feel as though she is improving in her state of mind.