Blog #3

Examine the narrator from either "The Yellow Wallpaper" or "A & P." What does the narrator reveal about him or herself indirectly? What sort of transformation, if any, does the narrator experience during the course of the story?

Part 1)
I liked the story “The Yellow Wallpaper”, but it didn't have much of a plot. It was just the narrator getting crazier and crazier. I thought the diary format was interesting because it made it seem like the entries were really from a crazy woman. I like the ending because it leads the reader to believe that the woman continues to circle the room forever.

Part 2)
The narrator in "The Yellow Wallpaper" gradually reveals her increasing craziness to the reader. In the beginning, she says that her husband does not believe that she is sick. Her husband, who is a physician, has diagnosed her with "temporary nervous depression". At this point, the reader knows that the narrator is not well, and is trying to get better. However, the reader does not fully know the extent of her illness. The narrator than begins to drop hints that she is in a worse mental state than at first thought. She starts with seemingly innocent comments about her dislike of the wallpaper: "I'm really getting quite fond of the big room, all but that horrid paper." Over a couple of entries, the narrator starts to obsess over the wallpaper and how much she hates it. The wallpaper consumes her thoughts, and she starts to write entire entries solely about the wallpaper. The reader begins to witness how her craziness is progressing. The narrator than begins to give life to the wallpaper in her imagination. She imagines that the wallpaper is moving, she begins to smell the wallpaper, and she imagines that a woman living behind the wallpaper. The narrator's hysteria grows when she assures herself that the woman in the wallpaper escapes and walks around outside during the day. Just when the reader is sure that the narrator is crazy, she surpasses this state. She locks herself in the room and tears down all of the wallpaper. Then she convinces herself that she is the woman behind the wallpaper. What began as a minor case of depression turned into an extremely serious state of hysteria.