The Yellow Wall Paper & The Lottery

The Yellow Wallpaper By Charlotte Perkins Gilman

In this literary fiction, the protagonist is an unnamed narrator who tells the story through first person point of view, she a subdued woman who is fighting to be well, to be free from behind the walls she is kept in. She is a round character that is complex in thought and how she acts as she pushes to be heard by her husband. The antagonist is the narrator’s husband, John. He believes there is nothing wrong with the narrator’s condition of depression, anxiety, and slight hysteria. He is a physician and thinks he knows what is best, and although John wishes narrator well, he is really not helping her to get better. John is a static character who never changes his ways of taking care of his wife. The story is set in early America at an old family estate, or a “haunted house” as the narrator called it at the beginning of the story. The change between night and day changes the setting within the room that the narrator must stay in, in the day things are calm and relaxed, at night she stays awake and concentrates on the wallpaper, on the woman held barred behind it. The social condition is in which women were thought of as child bearers and to take care of home life, the protagonist had decided or couldn’t take on those roles, she feels she has lost everything because of misunderstanding. The mood is depressed, dark, and curious. Conflict is first internal when the narrator is battling her illness, trying to convince John she needs to be around more people. Conflict turns to external when she tries to help the woman in the wallpaper escape, “woman” turns into “women”, the conflict issue becomes a slight anger towards society. The external context was that of society’s view of women as a whole. The theme is that women have talents, and knowledge that have a need to be respected.

When I read this story the first time, I was entirely confused about what was going on. Parts of it made sense, but putting it together as a whole I was lost. After rereading and taking breaks away from it to think, it started to slowly click together. Grasping the concept of this story was not easily done, its very complex, which I liked and disliked at the same time it was a brainteaser on a huge level. To what the protagonist’s condition was it really didn’t make sense, but that wasn’t the main part of the situation. In the “Essay on the story” section it was relayed to post partum depression, which would tie in the “nursery” and why she was not let near the baby. For the most part it was about facing down the personal issue with John ignoring her, and the larger view society has for women at the time. It was a very interesting story to pick apart and read.

The Lottery By Shirley Jackson

With third person limited omniscient point of view covering the text, I didn’t feel a grab towards either protagonist or antagonist upon any one of the characters. I felt that maybe the lottery and the village were in those categories but I was not sure. Even though the “lottery” is inanimate it seemed similar to a dynamic character in the fact that the idea of it changes from the beginning to end of the story, occurring ironically in a sense from lottery being generally thought of as a chance at winning something good, to changing to winning a stoning, and possibly death. The setting was very precise in it being June the 27th, on a clear sunny day in a village square. The mood was happy - almost excited, and anxious for the lottery to begin. Conflict is classical Man versus Circumstance, in this case the chance of winning the lottery. The context of the story was very social, with importance on tradition. I felt the theme was that tradition is of high importance, and that however high some traditions are held it doesn’t necessarily mean they are morally/ethically right.

It was hard to get over how extremely ironic this story was and how surprising the abrupt change in what I believed the lottery game was. Even though the young boys foreshadowed the stoning, with collecting rocks and pebbles, etc in the beginning, I still did not expect the denouement. I thought it was odd that the people of the village felt that tradition was of utmost importance but rituals were not, and how critical of other villages that were not keeping traditions when their lottery was so brutal.