"The Yellow Wallpaper" and "A Jury of Her Peers"

The Yellow Wallpaper

After reading the paper I couldn’t but keep on thinking about the poor schizophrenia patients. They are never insane, but scared. Imagine all of a sudden hearing voices that were never there, smelling scents you never smelled before, and seeing faces you have never seen before, messing with your mind. There is nothing you can do about those imaginations but being scared of them.  I liked this short story because it seemed like a diary of a schizophrenia patient, trying to understand and help her visions without realizing she is the one everyone is being concerned. Then again, we learned the author wrote this story about the treatments that were dealing with the mental disorders in a way to isolate them to from everything and everyone in order to help them, and how much the author despises that technique. 

 

A Jury of Her Peers

 This was the last short story I read and I thought it was very interesting one. Poor Ms.Minnie Wright killed her husband, but the important detail was that she was concerned about her fruit rather then the fact she might be going in the prison. Even the male characters were the ones who were to solve the case, women concluded what actually happened, and women held the key to Ms.Minnie Wright's conviction. I liked how the author Susan Glaspell places the evidences all half done or used, creating an illusion that the reader is the investigator himself. What I was left wondering, could it really be that the murder happened for the lonely wife lost her only friend, a yellow canary bird, or was the real crime done to her, why otherwise would she be insane and lonely.

"A Goodman is Hard to Find" and "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been"

A Good Man Is Hard To Find

This short story is full with characters with their own personality, and most of the time their unique personality annoyed me. That was done on purpose to mix the feelings and the sense of right and wrong inside the reader. I say that because as a reader I couldn’t decide whose side I want to be on, the grandma selfish and ignorant, and her family annoying and self concerned, or the Misfit and his gang, the murderers and run aways for who you know did and will be doing bad things to people.  The author on purpose have the situations and comments of the grandma and her family where you cant but to giggle how cute the situation turns out to be. For instance, when she realized her memory was cheating on her, she turned red in face. At that moment there is something making you feel sorry about the poor grandma. But then the author continues how a little mistake made everything go bad and the reader gets mad with the outcome of the accident.

In the other corner there is Misfit, with “a big black battered hearselike automobile” indicating death. You want to hate him, but he reasons the reader with statements so confusing that you might approve his actions. And at the end, at least me, I was glad the old lady got shot, for all she wanted was to get out of the situation alive.

Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?

Joyce Carol Oates clearly belongs to a different time period. The whole story is more modern like and could easily be visualized and interpreted as something happening nowadays. What makes this story so unique is the antagonist that appears to be more than just a regular person.  What is specific for the more modern Gothic novels, or short stories, is that modern environment now has to play the role of Gothic elements from the beginning of the beginning of the Gothic movement. what I mean by that is that cars and normal houses have to take the role of castles or other secret meanings.

The protagonist in the “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” is a mixture between femme fatale and typical Gothic heroine. I state that because she is easily flirting with everyone, is very pretty and unique but very independent with her style and despised by those jealous of her because of it. On the other hand, she is a typical Gothic heroine because she had to surrender to the will of the man, submissively adjust her wishes and actions and do what the Arnold Friend demands of her.

"A Rose for Emily" and "Old Gardiston"

A Rose for Emily

This was probably one of my favorite readings so far. It is very fast, the action is going very rapid. However, at the same time the backflashes pauses the action for a moment and puzzle you a bit feeding you with the information to solve the riddle and to understand what it was all about.

Another supremely exciting element was that the author never explains what he meant exactly, but let the reader conclude by himself what was going on. For example, that she was buying the poison for someone else, hinting the murder. The best detail however was at the end, when the “long strand of iron-gray hair” was found on the pillow next to the decaying corpse. The motive of necrophilia is creepy but the author never mentions is directly and that is what makes this short story so good.

Old Gardiston

This one was one of my least favorite stories. The introduction was so long and too full with details that weren’t necessary to realize how rich the Southern house looked at the beginning and to show the decaying and charm loosing with the sort of poverty with time.

The time has stopped in that house, the manners stayed the same, but the house was leaking towards the slow self destruction cause by the consequences of the war. “Bitterly, bitterly poor was the whole Southern country in those dreary days after the war.”  Basically what this story is about the merge of the military and well standing but ill-thought off North, and poor, bitter and sad South and how one changes the opinion of the other and by doing that the house, symbolizing the old times before the war, burned to the ground. “It kept its word: in the morning there was nothing left. Old Gardiston was gone!”

"The Sherrif’s Children" ,"The Goopherded Grapevine”and "Jean-ah Poquelin”

The Sheriff’s Children

This short story is completely different than the ones written in the Europe, that we had read. The problems dealt in it are closer to the society problems of today, and then were issues of previous stories. Everything evolves the Civil War and the difference between the North and the South norms.

The plot is set in a county that seemed to be stuck in time, making it being different then everything else around it. The time is set to be about ten years after the war and the mixture of cultures is clearly represented even by the vernacular style of the “slaves” and the more educated people. The difference in the talking also presented the way those characters differed in thinking and possibly even intelligence.

What I especially like about this short story is that throughout it you are made to believe how the sheriff, the only educated and the voice of reason in the story will be the flawless and perfect protagonist. You are made to believe how he never done anything wrong, and that other characters in the story would have been doing so many wrong things, not only with their lives, but also with the lives of other innocent people, and that everything could go wrong if sheriff  wasn’t there. But then, by the end you realize even he isn’t perfect, and with not making the right decision of regretting the mistake from the past, he was being punished with the ultimate guilt stamp mark on his soul.

 

The Goophered Grapevine

This is another story with the plot set around the consequences of the Civil war and how the South looked like after it. “But the house had fallen a victim to the fortunes of war, and nothing remained of it except the brick pillars upon which the sills had rested.”

What is so special about this story is that it is written from a standpoint of a slave after the Civil war and what the life through his eyes looked like. This story was extremely difficult for me to read and get in to the “what is it all about.” I figured because the author wanted to portrait the speech of the “venerable-looking colored man”, she he had to use the vernacular style.

Jean-ah Poquelin

This is yet another Southern Gothic story, for it was written with the shadow of the Civil war and South and North differences.

From the beginning we are encountered with the Gothic element symbolizing the old ways, before the war – ruined, old plantation. That is where the plot is set on. The plantation is set away from the civilization indicating that everything around it will submerge to change, but the character in the plantation will stay unaffected by the change, stubborn, stuck with the old ways.

In my opinion this was a sad story of how cruel the ignorance can be. Jean-ah Poquelin was being judged for not living the life everyone else was, for being different. Since no one was brave enough, stories that engage the imagination of characters started to circle around, but that is where the Gothic elements got their opportunity to spice up the short story.

The story of two brothers, one stubbornly sticking to his opinions and ways, contradicting the norms and ways of the modern society, and the other brother considered to be dead. At the end the author discovers how wrong everyone was with their judgments and comments, and their false accusations that made life of poor Jean-ah Poquelin miserable. Everyone was sure Cain killed Abel, even me as a reader, was so sure Jean-ah killed his brother, were at the end we discover his brother was sick with leper, hiding from the society.