Write an essay (250-300 words) based on ONE
of the following questions:
- “The Yellow Wallpaper” (1892) and “The Story of an Hour” (1891) were written during the transitional period in which issues of women’s civil rights and suffrage were hotly debated and women’s access to higher education and entrance to careers outside of domestic work demanded. These two stories provide valuable insights into the predicaments of married middle-class white women in the late 19th-century America. Compare and contrast these two stories and their similar or different ways of protesting against the limited and constraining roles allotted to women during that time. Why do both two stories take place inside a house, and almost entirely within one room of that house? Why do “patches of blue sky” or gazing out a window play a significant part in the action?
- Alienation is the theme of both “A Hunger Artist” and “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings.” Compare and contrast these two stories; examine the details that describe the two protagonists’ loneliness and frustration; their futile interactions with the people that surround them. Why is the panther more popular than the hunger artist? Similarly, why does the spider girl “defeat” the “haughty angel who scarcely deigned to look at mortals”? If these two stories are allegorical, what kind of message do these two authors want to deliver to their readers?
51 comments:
The two women have a similar destiny that they like a criminal and have been imprisoned in the marriage. I can see both of them didn’t have the brave to fight for their social status. They closed their mind similar and in their inner mind they want to live a free life. In the end, both of them have a big oppression and pressure. I think the setting in the house wants to talk their position. The house means a big prison, not only their liberty but also their inner mind have been oppressed. Especially, “The Yellow Wallpaper “described the building more than another. The house lack of the life looked like a haunted house. Their room like a sanctuary, they seem to have the freedom only in the room. They can do something they want only in the room. I can see if they thought the free life or something not allowed all in the room. The two women always like to look outside by the window, two stories used the beautiful nature scene out of the window. The scene means the freedom, and they only can see the outside but never want to touch.
The two stories really wrote the dilemma in the two women mind. They need to be a good housekeeper and a good mother but they want to live their own life. Actually, I can't accept the idea that they have been treated like a children. The two stories really write the real world in their time.
410302048 陳譽萱
Q1.
1. I think that two women stay in the room just because they feel safety in the room, also, the room is the place they can relax.The narrator in "The Yellow Wallpaper" wants to live her own life that can get rid of the depression.She also wants to break free from her husband, his sister, as well as others telling her what to do and how to live.Her desire is to keep a diary that her husband doesn't agree with.The idea of wanting to live for self- expression is so eager to the narrator, something that motivates her to see trapped people in the wallpaper and tear it to shreds.And so does Mrs.Mallard, the desire is much the same. She wants to live life away from her husband. This is something that she cannot fully conceive until she hears of her husband's death.Both of them are alone in their attempts at self-assertion.
2. In the story" The Yellow Wallpaper", the narrator is confined to room to a room with strange wallpaper. I think this odd and weird wallpaper symbolize the complexity and confusion in her life. And in "The Story of an Hour", the protagonist is Mrs. Mallard,she also has to deal with conflict of the death of her husband. At first there is grief, but then she realizes that she will be free after all.Both women view the outdoors as freedom.
3.The women find solutions to their repression, but in different ways.In contrast to Mrs. Mallard, who descends the stairs as "Victory," assuming her environment has changed only to be confronted with her confined patriarchal world, and then weakening again, dying; the narrator makes an assertive effort to find release.This psychological demand for release is found by her envisioning the woman trapped within the wallpaper.She does so as she frees the woman, although doing so costs her her sanity.
410402019王致雅
Q1
1. The two leading roles don’t want to play the ‘normal’ woman as what the society expect. They like criminals in their unsatisfied marriage, which equals a jail for them. Both husbands control and limit their wife, ignoring what the wives really want and do not even understand them. Therefore, the two women are eager for freedom and hope to be themselves. Because the pressure of patriarchal society, female awareness is still unconcerned and women have no power to speak for their civil right. Most people, like Jennie and Josepine, are proud or enjoy being a ‘classic’ woman. In the end of “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the narrator pulls off the wallpaper. It’s a symbol that she relief herself and escape her husband’s control while she creep over him. But in “The Story of an Hour”, the narrator died of the facade that she got the newfound freedom.
2. I think the house means the society’s frame of a woman to stay only in the domestic sphere and against them to have higher education or show their face in public. Moreover, the room indicates women’s repressed situation in the family and under male-dominated society which they need to obey their father or husband. Thus both stories refer the above as the limit of women.
3. The blue sky is a positive imagery which the author mention it lots of timed to show the strong desire that Mrs. Mallard wants to pursue her freedom and happiness. Because women during that time are suffered from the patriarchal society and can’t have their own authority .Also The open window means that she can get rid of her husband’s control and unpleasant marriage to do whatever she wants, able to live for herself, and her life is going to open up like the window and beautiful blue sky.
410402005 李玄晴
Q1
1. The two women are limited by their husband. They want to get rid of these limitations and male-dominated society, having their own life. Marriage likes a prison for them,they are restricted to do everything, just can stay in the house to do some trifles. The narrator in "The Yellow Wallpaper"has her own schedule prescription for each hour in a day. It means her husband doesn't permit any thoughts and motivations she has. She likes to write, but intellectual activities is forbidden and her husband doesn't agree with that. She is so eager to free, and she begin to see a woman in the wallpaper who wants to get out like herself. Eventually, she pulls off the wallpaper and creeps over her husband again and again. It represents that she escapes his control. In "The Story if an Hour", although Mrs.Mallard is so sad for the death of her husband first, in fact, she recognizes as the strongest impulse--she wants to free. Both of them have self-assertion to know what they want. From both stories, we can know the two authors wanted to judge marriage during that time.
2.I think the house symbolizes a wall;women can't cross over. They can't go outside and have higher education, even their face can't show in public. A room bespeaks women's repression and emotion to be a "good wife." Because they just can do what they want to do in the room.
3.In "The Story of an Hour" described Mrs. Mallard opened the window and saw the trees, countless sparrows, and blue sky. All of these are like spring. Spring symbolizes hope and something new. And she gazed out blue sky means that she gain freedom. She doesn't always obey her husband at last and can't be limited by marriage. She can open up a new life without any pressure.
Q1： 1. In my view,these two woman who controlled and limited by their husbands were not the well-behaved female in the traditional sense , they have the willing to break the dogma and get rid of the shackles their husband gave。 The two women prefer to have more chance to express their wishes and ideas than to be protected just like child. In the yellow wallpaper, John ——a physician who is high regard himself call his wife “little girl ” , at first, the wife just suffer from mild depression ,but John didn’t recognize the wife’s need, he not allow his wife to do what she want to do ,but just forced her to stay in a room “lie here on these great immovable bed” and separate from their newborn children,she cannot leave the house,cannot writing, only can she “rest” and face the odd yellow wallpaper day by day, gradually,she hallucinating，feeling another woman was be imprison after the wallpaper just like her. In the end of the story, in order to “save” the woman in her imagination, the heroine tore all the wallpaper in the room, liberate “that woman”and herself, “I kept on creeping ”,”I ‘ve got out at least, you can’t put me back” ignore her husband’s collapse and it indicate that she finally gone mad, I think the cause is ” gender discrimination ” and “male chauvinism”.
In the story of an hour We can infer that her husband restrain too much although the author did not describe the situation clearly, the wife repeat “freedom” many times and she can’t wait to look forward the life after her husband’s dead. In the late of the nineteenth century, women in home have no right to control themselves and their children, they status as low as minor even slave.Based on such an environment, although the heroines of these two novels seem to have warm family, a husband who loved her deeply, but they should suffer from both males’ rights and the prejudice of traditional social.
2.I think both two stories take place inside a house, and almost entirely within one room of that house is because the house symbolizes a prison that women can't cross over. They can't go outside to experience the world by themselves.A room bespeaks that they were limited to do the things in range of a house or even just a room.
3.In The Story of an Hour ,author described Mrs. Mallard opened the window and saw the trees, countless sparrows, “there were patches of blue sky showing here and there through the clouds that had met and piled one above the other in the west facing her window” ,all these description of scenery shows the ecstasy at her heart and hope for the future。 And she gazed out blue sky from the window means that she finally gain freedom and she no longer need to obey her husband..
Q2 410402021 曾雅勤
Not being understood and disability of gaining people’s respect or attention are both reasons that lead to two protagonists’ loneliness and frustration. The things that the hunger artist pursues are not worldly food but a different kind of nourishment: public recognition and artistic perfection. Also, the old man’s wings are complex combination of both good and bad—in a beautiful form of angels’ but conveying only a sense of age, dust, and parasites. People do not value them nor revere them, they treat the hunger artist and the old angel like zoo animals used to entertain.
The haughty angel’s reputation wanes when he proves capable of performing only minor “consolation miracles”. Instead, the spectators flock to the spider woman, who tells a heart-wrenching story with a clear, easy-to-digest lesson in morality that contrasts sharply with the obscurity of the old man’s existence and purpose. Although no less stranger than winged old man, the spider woman is easier to understand and even pity. Similarly, the hunger artist, who spent his life trying to achieve spiritual satisfaction, is replaced in the cage by the panther, which exhibits the uninhibited vitality of the physical world. The hunger artist lives in a state of constant want, for both food and recognition. The panther, on the other hand, wants for nothing and embodies the power, vitality, and grace that come from engaging with the material world that attracting the recognition the hunger artist failed to win.
The authors make the story an allegory for the modern world’s rejection of faith. Both protagonists’ tragedy and suffering show the pessimistic outlook on the world’s spiritual crisis, renouncing the lack of psychological enlightenment and nourishment in the material and physical worlds.
1. What kind of description is there in the The Hungry Artist? Please narrate the loneliness and frustration situation in the story. Why is the panther more popular than the hunger artist?
The hunger artist wanted approval from other people. And when people came to see his quote-unquote performance. He felt happy about it. But day after day, they gradually lost their interests and stopped coming. He became completely depressed. And still worse, he experiences the publics suspicion, cynicism, and indifference. He becomes frustrated, unable to understand that being an artist often means being alienated from others. By the time, he was fairly far gone, he told the man who found him in the pile of straw that he was hopping that people would forgive him and memorized what he had done. He was truly a hunger artist, because he couldn’t find a food that he liked.
But ironically, they forgot him quickly, the circus then restock the cage with a young panther, which was unlike the hunger artist in nearly every way. The panther brims with life, feeding hungrily and expressing freedom and vitality. In no time, it becomes a major draw for the circus, attracting people to watch. I think The panther could be read as a figure of everything the artist sacrifices in pursuit of art: bodily pleasures, joy, freedom. If the artist's emaciated form is an unwelcome reminder of our mortality, the panther seems to be life embodied.
2. What kind of description is there in the story of A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings? Please narrate the loneliness and frustration situation in the story. Why does the spider girl more attractive than the old angel?
The story began with the dropped old man who is filthy and apparently senile, and speaks an unintelligible language. Because his appearance seemed like supernatural creature or fallen angel, he then attracted the masses who believed that his exist was kind of miracle sign. While he made the family who accept him rich, he was still lived in a chicken coop, and they even feed him camphor as his meal.
Through the story I came up with a movie called Dogvile. it was also begin with a suddenly intrusive stranger. And the people in the village were all hypocritical and exploit the stranger girl just like the way they treated to the old man with enormous wings.
Till one day, there came to a spider woman, who tells a miserable story with a clear, easy-to-digest lesson in morality that contrasts sharply with the unclearness of the old man’s existence and purpose. While everyone turned to see the spider woman, he was gradually forgot. At the end of t he story, he flied away left nothing.
The Spider-Girl is a clear contrast with the Old Man, whereas he is difficult to interpret, she delights the people with the clarity of her story. Unlike the Angel, her story was amused and attractive.
3. Is there any connection between these two stories? Or what kinds of message do these two stories want to deliver to the readers?
Both these two stories are telling that it is easier to feed upon the hunger of people. While these two protagonists refused to cater low taste, they were abandoned by the whole society.
The protagonist in the story of A Hunger Artist was doomed to death, because he refused to accept the reality of the material world. He forgot the art shouldn’t be imprisoned in the cage. The behavior of the hunger artist showed the impracticable art that alienated from the publics. And the other story, A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings also implied the same meaning that people tended to choose the thing that amused them. And the one who tried to reveal the darkness of humanity wasn’t accept by people easily.
In my opinion, these two stories both delivered one thing that the alienation from life caused the loneliness but also made them art.
410402001 張家慈
I want to answer the question 1
1.
“The Yellow Wallpaper” and The Story of An Hour” were written during that time when Feminism was suppressed. Their similar were written at same time, and two women of the story both not “normal” women but two women who no freedom because their husband, they went crazy almost. Their difference were a woman were closed by her husband ant other woman were limited by herself. I think that it is a terrible period for woman, because we could not have freedom and our own thoughts at that time. How lucky I am that were born in this era, so I can receive education and do anything I want to do.
2.
I think that the house stand for the limit for women, especially a room symbolize that the men restricted women’s behavior so that they could not go outside at any time, so they were always stayed in the room. In addition, in their room, women could do anything they want to do and anything they want to think; thus “The Yellow Wallpaper” and The Story of An Hour” two stories’ scent were set in the room, because the room is a space just for them.
3.
The blue sky image the freedom which this woman desire. She lost freedom as she got married, because she had to take the husband as the day in this generation. She gazed out the window continually because her husband died, she could get the freedom finally. It’s hard to get the freedom for her, to emphasize her eager of freedom and her characteristic that were suppressed, the author used the blue sky and gazing out the window in this story.
410308026 梁存中 Chris 華文二
Q1:
These two feminist stories shared a common issue: the freedom of a woman. “The Yellow Wallpaper” uses very dramatic way to present the serious limitation of a woman in that time. Every concept to the women are conservative in early centuries. Women are restrained to learn knowledge and to do any creative things, and they need to stay at home to serve men and newborn babies. This kind of situation could hardly drive them crazy, so this is the end of “The Yellow Wallpaper”. On the contrary, “The Story of an Hour” is calmer than previous story, but it is also very depressed and pitiful. This one is like a monologue of a woman, the reader just like a listener to receive her sadness and joyous. However, the end of the story also lead the protagonist to death. The cause of death is lack of freedom.
A house or a room is the metaphor of two stories. The room is suggest that the main character is forbidden by the men and the atmosphere in that time. These two main characters are locked in their room, and they think more about their bad situations. They try to find the way out but in vain, which lead them to the tragedy ending.
Window also plays an important part in two stories. The window make them think more about their awful situations. They gaze at the window, trying to think their future and to figure out their next steps. The window give the comfortable and intimacy to the characters, because they can use their brain to draw any possibilities by looking out of the window.
JOSIE 410402011
QUESTION 2
In “A Hunger Artist”, the artist’s loneliness came from lack of understanding. He was frustrated that his talent wasn’t appreciated and people kept doubting if his fasts were legit or not. His manager also limited his fast to 40 days in order to keep the crowd’s interest. He wasn’t able to fast as long as he pleased. As the story progressed, he became the only true spectator to his own fasts. People came to see him because he was doing something out of the world, something innovational. However, as time wore on, they lost their fascination in fasting and he was cast aside like many of the trends that came and went. In the end, his art still wasn’t understood by the world. No one could relate to the art of starvation that he created from suffering and his going beyond the limits of human capacity. Although he was able to fast to his heart’s delight in the circus, there wasn’t anyone watching him anymore. They were more interested in the menagerie than in a weak skinny old man. The panther was the opposite of the hunger artist. It was well fed and full of life. It was content with its life in a cage and its vitality drew people to it. The crowd enjoyed seeing the animal that was able to flourish even in a tiny cage. It was so ironic because the artist had a strong spiritual mind and where he lacked physical strength, the panther made up for it. People weren’t fascinated by the artist's mental determination, instead they were delighted with the panther’s physical liveliness. In “Old man with enormous wings”, the angel/ old man’s loneliness was a choice. He chose not to associate himself with the people that came flocking to speculate him. The town’s people believed that he was capable of magic and he did small wonders to those that touched him. An angel is often something that is deemed superior to human beings and maybe that was why he isolated himself and refused to interact with the townspeople. He was mostly frustrated when the crowd tried to provoke a reaction out of him. On the other hand, he was very patient with the crowd and his healing wings. The crowd’s attention had taken a sharp left and veered off in the other direction as the circus came to town. The main attraction was a woman with a body of a spider which was even a more ghastly and fascinating sight than a rotting old man whose wings were manifested with pesticides. What’s more, she had a story that was straight forward with a clear understandable moral lesson. Her situation wasn’t as obscure as the old man’s. She defeated the angel who seemed to look down on humans with a story which possessed human truth that the townspeople could easily relate to. She was more willing to tell her story and thus, she won the crowd’s attention. Both of the two main characters suffered from not being understood and neglected when people turned to things that were more physically relatable. The allegorical meaning that the authors are trying to get across is that people value the physical more than the spiritual. The artist with his fasting and the angel with his wings. People are limited to their perception of things and when they can’t process the meaning of a certain someone or something, they tend to reject it and turn away to seek other things that were easier to understand.
雷從漢 410401006
Q2
The old man, an angel, was locked in a chicken coop,and the artist was sequestered by himself in a cage. These two protagonists both show the same situation: be separated from world, and this is the cause of the alienation and loneliness. The old man was be regarded as an angel due to his enormous wings, but in the end, no one care about him is an angel or not. Same ending comes to the artist. Though these two characters have the same tragedy:incomprehensiblity and misunderstanding , but there still are some differences between them.
The main difference is their status though they are equally poor, weak, and pitiful.The old man is an angel who come from the heaven and is thought to save and heel people. On the other hand, the artist is just a human. However, the artist tries his best(even paid for his life)to get the goal: let the whole world know his great art of hunger. Difference of their status causes their frustration and lonesome are different. The angel is spontaneously coming down the earth and suffering people’s indifference and ignorance, but the artist tries to let people understand him though he fail in the end. Two different mental state,one is spontaneous another is passive. They are equally misunderstood by people (spectators) but in two difference way. The reason the angel is misunderstood is because his unintelligible language and his useless ``consolation miracles’’. In comparison, misunderstanding of the artist is due to his cryptical performance art of fasting, which people only take it as an entertainment. No matter what makes people stay away from understanding them, these two characters still couldn’t change their miserable ending.
The reason panther is more popular than the hunger artist is because panther is just an animal that people can understand it easily. People just want to see this animal, and this is the way people can be entertained. The spider woman can ``defeat’’ the angel is based on the same reason: easily to understand. The villagers can hardly see divinity through the old man but it’s easily to find through spider woman’s pitiful experience which was regarded as a punishment by God.
In conclusion, the two author want to awake people through these two allegories.They hope people try to understand their faith of art(literature) though it may be an difficult challenge. They created these two protagonists to show the alienation and indifference in the world. In some case, we can say the old man is Marquez and the hunger artist is Kafka himself.
410201050 陳姵汝
Q1.
“The Yellow Wallpaper” and “The Story of an Hour” were written in the late 19th-century in America. In the 19th- century, there were lots of rules to women; they did not have equalities as same as men and have low social status. Both of the two stories talked about the two married middle-class women how to be treated by their husbands, and all the society. The settings in” The Yellow Wallpaper” and “The Story Of An Hour” were in a house, especially in a room. In my point of view, the room symbolized”safety” to the two women, and in other meaning, I think “the room” just like “a cage” because they seemed to cannot go to any place but at home. In “The Yellow Wallpaper”, we know the narrator finally got crazy because her husband thought she was illness and forbade her doing what she liked, even writing. So, the narrator started to think of there were something wrong in the wallpaper. And in “The Story Of An Hour”, although we do not know how Mr. Mallard treated Mrs. Mallard, we still can realize Mrs. Mallard felt free as she knew her husband was dead. The two stories all shows how the women were oppressed in the traditional and male-dominated society.
In”The Story Of An Hour”, there was a sentence:”There were patches of blue sky…..facing her window.” I believe this sentence plays a significant part in the story because when Mrs. Mallard heard about the dead news of her husband’s, she cried at first; however, she felt free and relax in a sudden. Everything seemed to have new life, included her. It symbolized that she REALLY awoke from oppression before, starting to plan her OWN everything.
陳雋哲410402039
Q1
1. The two stories talked about the same topic: the status of women. The image of women in that generation used to be modest. Women didn’t have rights to accept education, had to stay at their homes, and listened to their husbands advice before doing anything. In the story ”The Yellow Wallpaper”, John insisted that he knew what to do and how to do are best for the narrator, just from a subjective point of view. Whenever the narrator tried to communicate with him, he always persisted in his own opinion and didn’t listen to the narrator’s thoughts. In the end, the narrator went crazy. In the story “The Story of an Hour”, Mrs. Mallard was in her room alone after hearing the news of her husband’s death. When she looked outside the windows and the sky, “Free, free, free!”, she whispered. It represented that she couldn’t be herself before her husband. In the end, she died. I think it may be another way of getting freedom.
2. In that time, the status of women are lower than that of men. They had no rights to vote, to say what they thought, to accept education and so on. They had to follow what men said and couldn’t have their own opinion. So, I think that the houses or the rooms represent kinds of restrictions that women couldn’t get rid of during that time.
3. From my point of view, the world inside the window and outside the window are completely different. The world inside the window used to be monotonous and stressed. However, the world outside the window was colorful and unrestrained. I think that the window stood for the restriction which meant that women couldn’t be free. I think “patches of blue sky” in the story is eagerness for getting free.
林立 410402023
Q2
In A Hunger Artist, the artist couldn’t be understood. He wanted to perform his “art” to his visitors, but nobody appreciated it. And his overseer, who gave him only forty days to fasting, which can’t satisfy him, couldn’t understand him either. So he felt frustration as well as loneliness because of nobody could understand his “art”. Furthermore, when he felt depressed, nobody took his trouble seriously. And few of people might comfort him but just pointing out his frustration is caused by fasting. “He was working honestly, but the world was cheating him of his reward”. The panther, in the contrary, was full of energy and well-fed in the cage, and the crowd was enjoying seeing this.
In A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings, the old man was choose not to contact everyone in the town, he spent his time trying to get comfortable in his nest, and eating eggplant mush. Although the people in the town want to see this “angle” and came to look at him, he still sit there and did nothing, his loneliness was chosen by himself. And the moment he felt frustration was when town people wanted to see what he look like when he stand up, they threw stones to him. Spider girl was the opposite of the old man, she has stories about herself, and she answered everything that people asked. And people in the town were fonder of the one who has a story than an angel who didn’t tell anything.
I think these two authors tried to inform readers that the people should care more about mental thought than out looks, nobody willing to understand their thought but judged them from their appearance. And when they lost their interest in those two, they chose to find others that more interest in their outlooks.
410402037 陳瑀訢
Q1
These two stories are described the women in marriage are imprisoned. Even through the two characters we can read the women have no rights or power completely to fight for their own lives in that era. They have tried hard to be grateful for their husbands' care, but they actually end up, exaggeratedly to say, in hatred. Men limit the women to staying in the shape they expect in the name of love. I find similarities, in character settings, between the stories. Women can be divided into two portions: One is longing for freedom and wanting to flee, and the other is unaware of the unfairness and willing to obey the rules. And the men who seem like thoughtful control women and they are of high standing. Of course, the two authors give them sorrowful and dramatic ending----one is dead, and the other is going crazy---- which displays noticeably women's dilemma and powerlessness. The main characters both sink into the fantasy. One takes action to change something so she assists the invisible woman with crawling out the wallpaper. The other character waits for the freedom coming passively. They are both doomed to becoming a tragedy so they fail to welcome their good lives with open arms.
Both two stories take place inside a house, because the wives live their almost lives within a room. The house is their entire world and also is a "jail." Imaging the look of liberty in a prison shows they finally have to descend the stairs to face the fact.
Gazing out the windows and the patches of blue sky represent their pent personalities and desires and their pursuing for freedom. The "patches" of blue sky, personally, makes me feel like the partial, incomplete and restrictive liberty, but it also looks better than seeing nothing or a cloud hovering the house.
410301022俞亭安
Q2:
In Kafka’s “A hunger artist”, the hunger artist tries to convince people that fasting is easy to do, but no one believes him. Fasting means suffering, and ordinary people don’t like and can’t endure it. I think it is the reason why the hunger artist feels lonely and frustrated. Facing lowbrow audience who doesn’t know his artistic action, he feels solitary. And in Gabriel’s “A very old man with enormous wings”, the old angel was chined in a chicken coop, no one wants to come near and talk to him except the kid in the story, in my opinion, “misunderstanding” causes the old angel’s lioness. He, as an angel, should be respect and worship by the people, but he was locked by the townspeople and be treated cruelly.
The reason why the panther is more popular and why the spider girl defeat the old angel are basically the same. The panther is just an animal in the cage, there isn’t any story or concept that difficult to understand behind its performances, audience doesn’t need to “think”. But the philosophy which the hunger artist wants to deliver is too abstruse for people to understand, and ordinary people like things that easy to comprehend. The old angel refuse to tell the mortals about his story, in contrast, the spider girl is more easy to approach, and the townspeople don’t want to spend more time to get close to the old angel.
Both of these stories are allegorical, and I think the two authors all want to express that people often use their finite knowledge and stereotype to judge something or someone you don’t know. And they also have a mind of artist, which is full of sympathy and passion, but both frustrated and repressed by the indifferent world where they live.
410402003李糧羽
Q2
The two stories are talking about the two miserable characters. One is a old man with enormous wings , and the other is a hunger artist. They all are so special that people come to watch them with a curious mind and regard them as the circus animals in the beginning. People who are in a very old man with wings even tossing him the food to eat, however, people in a hunger artist are just watch the artist how long he can keep eating nothing.There is describing a old man ‘s loneliness- he could scarcely eat and his antiquarian eyes had also become so foggy, and all he had left were the bare cannulae of his last feathers. Many more days went by, everybody all forgets the artist, finding when people poked into the straw with sticks. The panther is more popular than the artist because the panther is more naive and stiff so that the food people give the panther all eat. And the spider woman can treat the disease, and easy to understand ,so people regard as the miracles. Above the two stories, two authors want to talk us about people’s mind like cold-hearted and people usually like new ones than old ones.
410402009 劉仁宇
Q2.
In both stories, there were a crowd surrounding the hero. In "The Hunger Artist", The crowds came for him just because they think it was new and interesting; but in "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings", they came looking for "an angle". Something they had a image ready in their head.
In both stories , the crowd lose interest in the hero after some time. But in "The Hunger Artist", they loses interest only because the can't understand the "art" he was performing and in "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings", they lose interest because the "angle" didn't fit their expectation and something more strait up(the spider woman) showed up.
The hunger artist's last words makes "The Hunger Artist" the better of the two, I think. “because I couldn’t find a food that tasted good to me. If had found that, believe me, I would not have made a spectacle of myself and would have eaten to my heart’s content, like you and everyone else.”
Most great art came from some weird insist of the artist. Sometimes even the artist himself would doubt their own cause; but it's that faith they held in their own work that makes the work magnificent. If the hunger artist gave up his principal and ate foods that he doesn't like, we wouldn't see his great art of fasting.
To create a great artwork, an artist has to suffer the alienation that no one understands your cause. People will laugh at you, think you're weird and stupid, but if you can make it through, you can create the most beautiful artwork.This part of an artist's alienation is mentioned in "The Hunger Artist" but not in "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings".
The stereotypes we held towards everything discussed in "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings" is interesting too, but personally I prefer "The Hunger Artist".
410402025 蘇薇雅
Q1
1 First, they are similar for the background of leading role and Theme-They were the marriage woman under the stress from surrounding, and the importance of women’s self-expression. the leading role limited from their identity. For example, the leading role in “the story of one hour”, she can’t lead a live which she wants until her husband died. And the leading role in “the yellow wallpaper”, her husband treated her as a girl who need to be care of carefully and control everything for her.
Second, they are different from the leading role reaction. In“the story of one hour”, she hired her long in-depth mind, and only imaged in her mind. However, the leading role in “the yellow wallpaper” express her idea to her husband-although he never takes it seriously.
2.Because the public though the ideal women in nineteenth century should play a role who elegantly stayed in home with a title lady, wife or mother. Women were trapped in their homes and would only perform domestic chaos and duties.
Usually, they can’t go outside without male’s company. If they casually appeared in public, they would seem as crazy. They should keep a figure that is weak and depended. That was the reason why both two stories took place in home, even room
3.As what I mentioned before, the society put enormous rule to women. That also limed women’s life. For example, the girl can’t accept education. Even the ladies who born in properties family, they neither enter the collage. Most ladies accept education from tutor or library in their house. People also don’t like girl who is smart-they thought if girl is too smart, they couldn’t get married. Not to mention the sport. Finally, the option to the women is stay in room. And the“patches of blue sky” became their only yearn for liberality.
410402035陳泰鈞
Q1
1 Despite the fact that the two women feel imprisoned and uncomfortable, they have no choice but to obey their husbands due to they live in a male-dominated society. In “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the woman’s husband ignores her thought and illness, not only putting her into an old room but also forbids her writing or doing anything. In the end, the women cannot endure any more, and she becomes crazy and thinks no one can control her any more. In “The Story of an Hour”, after hearing her husband’s death, the woman feels relief and free. She even expects the hopeful future that she never dreams it before.
2 I think the reason why both two stories take place insight a house is that it is like a prison. And it also represents the women’s limited thought and mind. And the one room let us strongly feel the two women’s loneliness.
3 “Patches of blue sky” let me think of an open mind, a free soul, and a good mood, just like the woman’s feeling after she learns her husband’s death. The woman gazes out a window as if she wants to go to the free land and gets rid of the stressful life. Besides, the scenery outside the window is so beautiful and lively as though the future is full of hope and happiness.
張瑋城 410402013
Q2
The two stories all presented a look to the alienation and misunderstanding. The two protagonists are isolated from the world. The hunger artist is lost in the trend of times. People at that time don’t appreciate the performance he gave. They looked at him as a joke; they don’t really have that interest to understand the artist’s idea. Maybe also the story reflects on Kafka himself being misunderstood by people then. In the end of the story, the panther replaced the artist. On the opposite, the panther shows a noble body rather than the weak, emaciated hunger artist. The onlookers are quickly fascinated by its lively appearance. The audiences prefer to watch life, rather than live it themselves. They thought the suffering what huger artist is having is not worth seeing. The spectators can’t see the spiritual mind inside the skinny lifeless hunger artist; they like the physical strength panther, even though the panther have no sense in its “noble body”. The panther had already forgotten its own freedom.
Also in another story, the old man with enormous wings presents a misunderstanding from the crowds. They tended to see him as an angel, and wondered why he was that filthy－even have parasites in his wings. They were expecting to see an angel who might have that sense of grandeur. They search ways to understand the absurd creature that comes from nowhere. They found out that the angel is so haughty that didn’t want to pay attention to them (or he just couldn’t communicated with them?). After some examination by the “wise people” in town, they even wanted to kill the angel. But is he really an angel all along? The title said that he is just an old man with enormous wings. Here comes the misunderstanding again. The people are so confusing by the situation, and all want to have an answer. They all don’t really know the old man. He never talks, he doesn’t really do anything. The answer only comes out from the third person speaker. And then, again, the people lose their attention to the angel, like how they lose their passion to the huger artist in another story. The spider girl appears to give the audience more, even has a reasonable story behind her. People like something obvious not something blurry with nonsense. So people forgot about the angel, the one couldn’t be explained. In the end, the angel flew away. The one who saw this scene couldn’t help but let out a sigh of relief. Ever since the old man came to this town, the question of the old man’s identity remained still. Now that the weird something finally left this ordinary town, all the people can be as usual as they lived before.
The two stories all give a thought about how people really care about the outside physically look, rather than to look inside the spiritual mind. We sometimes have our pre-thoughts before we actually know the person’s mind. When there’s something wrong with the situation, we tend to escape from it and search another way out. People prefer to something obvious and bright cover the whole thing. It usually makes the isolated person even worse if you aren’t trying to understand him/her.
410402017 陳怡君
Q1
1. "The Story of an Hour" and "The Yellow Wallpaper" were accomplished in patriarchal society in America. At that time, women didn't have sufficient right and power and were limited by a lot of constraints. In this unfair circumstance, the status of women were lower than that of man. They had to endure this kind of nonsense treatment, and adopt or listen to their husbands' or men's advices. In "The Story of an Hour", Mrs. Mallard felt depressed when hearing the news about the death of her husband. At first, she was disappointed with the storm of grief. But later, we could realize that there was no mention connected to pessimistic emotion or crying because Mrs. Mallard started to experience the freedom of life gradually. Although the relationship between them was blissful, Mrs. Mallard viewed Mr. Mallard's death as a release from oppression. It indicates that the marriage is like a incorporeal jail to her. In "The Yellow Wallpaper", it reveals the inferior position of women in marriage. John's treatment to the narrator was totally awful. In his opinion, he knows what is the best for his beloved wife, and discard her thought. The selfish behavior forces the narrator to conceal her inner emotion of longing for freedom. In the end, the narrator pulls off most of the paper, it means that she gets rid of stress and his husband's control.
2. In my viewpoint, the house represents a restrictions which is difficult for women to break. It contains a lot of limits and factors, including gender division, and unfair status of marriage. In patriarchal society, women seldom have opportunity to demonstrate what they desire for. Most of them are under men's control. Their life, education and so on are confined. What's more, they need to be obedient to their men without gaining enough respect,
3. Because the scenery from the window is comfortable to her, including blue sky, fluffy clouds and treetops. It stands for a golden opportunity to restart her new life. She can strive for what she has desired for a long time. Being indulged in excitement and ecstacy, she considers that sha has another chance to continue a new spring life and obtain freedom again.
Q2 410102073 Jessie 游佳洵
In “A Hunger Artist”, the main character (the hunger artist) remains hunger for spiritual satisfaction. He wants public recognition and artistic perfection. Unfortunately, although the artist does his performance by life, the audience cannot realize his art, and the hunger brings him nothing but the end of his life. On the other hand, in “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings”, the old man with the wing is surrounded by many people because he is weird to them, and he gets weaker when people pay attention on him.
The panther and the spider girl in each story have the similarity. Because of the panther’s power and liveliness, the hunger artist is replaced by it. Similarly, the spider girl, who is more interesting than the old man with the big wing, takes the crowd’s attention away.
The themes of “A hunger Artist” are Individuality and Alienation and fulfillment. The hunger artist represents anyone who is different from others in the way he or she lives, works, dresses, or thinks. This person may feel misunderstood and isolated, like the hunger artist in the cage. They want to be understood. “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” shows the attitude people treat those who are weak, dependent, and different.
In my opinion, the reason of why both two stories take place inside a house is that author wanted to express the restriction of women in the late 19th-century America. Women in that generation had no right and freedom. People had stereotype that white women should stay at home and behave “virtuously”. They had to do “kitchen things” and obey their husband. Because of this mainstream thought, women in that generation didn’t ever think about their rights, and they hadn’t notice that they deserved a better life, they can still live happily without a man. And“patches of blue sky” and gazing out a window can probably mean that women in that time still desired freedom in their subconscious even they hadn’t notice it. In the story” The Story of an Hour”, Mrs. Mallard she herself didn’t know why there’s a feeling of joy come to her when she got the news of her husband’s death. I think this part perfectly expresses Mrs. Mallard’s desire of being set free, maybe it was really sad to lose her lover, but it was more happier to lead a life of her own in future. The narrator of the story “The Yellow Wallpaper” also presented this kind of feeling when she was describing the view outside the window and the house, words she used were full of passion and longing of getting out, and when she was talking about her husband, she kept mentioned that he wouldn’t let her do this, do that……, this represent that the narrator thought her husband was an authority, couldn’t be violate.
410308009 白昕平
Q1
1. The room represents that most of the women in that time didn’t have freedom. They couldn’t go out for work, and the only thing they can did is stay at home and doing housework. Because of the exercise that woman’s civil right takes, more and more women want to go out and started to realize that family wasn’t their every thing. This two story shows that the daily life of housewife (we seldom use this word now a days, because not only woman can stay at home and keep the house, we use housekeeper the most). And the way that the story describes the man shows that they treated their wife as pet, not a normal human as they were. Woman got limit, by the room, and the society.
2. In the past, husband was wife’s sky, was their every thing, with out husband, they shouldn’t have blue sky. But in the stories, after they leave their husband, they got their own life, though in the end, one woman got crazy, another one died, but they were telling us that they got the real freedom that they never had before. They didn’t have freedom before, so they gaze out the window and hope that they were a part of it. The world out of the window is pretty, birds are tittering, with freedom, women can own all of these. Through the desire, they imagine that they final got it. It was really sad they could only use this way to touch their own sky. The sad feeling compare with the real winner, shows more irony.
410001005 黃美嘉 Mika
There are some similarities between “The Yellow Wallpaper” and” The Story of an Hour”: the portrait of the husband’s love to the protagonists, they both have illness, both unhappy in their marriage, and the Josephine in “The Story of an Hour” and John’s sister in “The Yellow Wallpaper”. Their husbands love them in the way which themselves believe is right. They are treated like a child or baby who needs to be protected. Their rejection or opinions both are useless to their situation. They are thought childish just because they are female. Josephine and John’s sister in the two stories both present a perfect and domestic woman in the definition of the society. The differences in the two stories are the narrators, what they do for their situation, their hobbies, their names, and the ending. The narration is in third-person in “The Story of an Hour” and first-person in “The Yellow Wallpaper”. Mrs. Mallard just get chance to get her want someday, but in another story, the protagonist gradually know what her want and tried to get it. In “The Story of an Hour”, it does not mention what Mrs. Mallard likes to do, but in “The Yellow Wallpaper”, we know the protagonist like to write things down. In “The Story of an Hour”, we know the protagonist is Mrs. Mallard and her first name is Louise, but in “The Yellow Wallpaper”, we cannot get the protagonist’s name. Why do both two stories take place inside a house, and almost entirely within one room of that house? The settings of these two stories both inside a house, even a room, present the pressure of characters, the heavy ambience of the stories, and give the image of prison. The blue sky and gazing out a window is the symbol of freedom. That presents how the protagonists in stories eager to get out of their marriage and get the freedom.
410402051 卓韋馨
Q1
These two stories are all talk about the situation of woman in 19th-century. They have no freedom, no right, no power to fight for higher education. In "The Story of an Hour", Mrs. Mallard just had short-term sadness when she learned that her husband was dead ,and then she could see the joy of life. We can realize how longing the woman wants to be freed. In the stories, one woman got crazy, another is dead. Although this is miserable ending, but I think it shows these two women finally use their own way to flee away from their husband, the society, the unfair world.
In my view, that both two stories take place inside a house or almost entirely within one room of that house because the author wants to build a metaphor. To voice the woman in the late 19th-century had no freedom. House and room represent a obstacle that the woman is hard to break .And they were forced to reach the moral standard, have to meet the social expectation and under the men's control. They could not go out as their pleases and do whatever they want to do. Sometimes they even be treated like an angel who need to be protected.
And I think the reason why "patches of blue sky " and gazing out a window play a significant part is the action shows that the woman at that time still long for freedom and right even if they got no chance to improve their restricted situation.
They gaze out, and they want to go out, be a part of the creature outside and lead a happy live like them.
610302615 張珮郁
Q1
There is similarity between “The Yellow Wall Paper” and “The Story of an Hour” when it comes to discuss the ways to protesting against the constraining roles allotted to women. The main female protagonists in the story are described as “intelligent”, “well-educated” women, maybe that is the reason they do not take aggressive way to fight back. However there is still difference between the two women’s choices. The female protagonists in “The Yellow Wall Paper” faces the choice of “fight or flee”. Instead of fighting against the world that oppresses her, she chooses to escape from it. Sometimes she writes in order to express herself. But in the end she drives herself crazy, which is the way she escapes from the reality: creates her own world. On the other hand, the female protagonist in “The Story of an Hour” is more negative. She doesn’t do anything actively to fight against the oppression of her marriage until her husband died. It is an accident that pulls her out from her prison, which is her marriage. It seems that if such event did not happen, her life never changes. But one can say that, in the end of her story, she saves herself by the most extreme way: death, she would rather die than go back to her prison-like life. These two stories all take place in a house, even entirely within a room. It suggests that those women’s lives are like prison that confines them both physically and psychically. Therefore they long for freedom and independence. “Patches of blue sky” and “gazing out a window” thus are significant in the stories for revealing the female protagonists’ eagerness to entirely controlled their life by themselves.
Susanna 胡心瀞 410402027
In “The Yellow Wallpaper”, we can see her husband treated her like a child. He asked Jennie to take care of her, planned a schedule prescription for her and forbade her to do any intellectual activities. In “The Story of an Hour”, we didn’t know how her husband treated her, but we knew that she felt relieved when she knew that her husband was dead. The woman in “The Yellow Wallpaper” would write and observe the yellow wallpaper sly. As for Mrs. Mallard, we can guess that she endured for a long time and didn’t do anything to protest the unfair situation.
The women didn’t have their own right to do what they wanted to do. Their husbands would control their daily lives. They couldn’t go outside as their own will. Therefore, the two stories took place inside a house because the author wanted to present the real situation of the women during that time. The two women were confined in their own house. They felt a lot of pressure and unbreathable. When they stayed in their room alone, they were able to do what they want to do and express their real emotions. As a result, the settings of two stories are almost entirely within one room of that house.
The blue sky symbolizes freedom. The two women were confined in their houses and they could merely imagine freedom through gazing the blue sky. They couldn’t have freedom, but they could only see it through looking out a window. The scene seeing the blue sky represented the situation of the two women. In the end, they all found their way out.
410302013 kris
Q2
In the angel’s story, people gave no respect to the old angle and due to the angel’s looking was not what they thought it supposed to be, they treated him cruelly. The old man refused to speak to people came and took him as a fresh thing to entertain themselves and rather to be haughty and kept his silence, .
In the Hunger Artist, the artist fasted. He had a faith in his mind, but no one understood. He was disappointed again and again, for no one cared about it and people kept putting suspicions on his fasting. But the hunger artist just kept his faith firmly, he did not eat anything till the end.
The most obvious same situation in the two stories is that both of the protagonists could not get others’ respect and people see them as if they were animals. Everyone went to see them for entertainment but no one tried to find out the meaning deep in the hunger artist’s fasting and the old angel’s loneliness. Compared to the messages the two protagonists wanted to inform, the meaning of the spider girl’s story was easier for the masses, and the panther was much easier than the hunger artist for people to see.
The allegory of the two stories is that we should not judge or treat a person, a thing, or an event only based on its outside look but not look into deeper and clearer. In such a snobbish world, people tend to ignore or care less the real meaning and message behind one thing and prefer to be informed in the simplest way.
410402007 林旻萱
Q2:
Both of the stories are about alienation and misunderstanding. First of all, the images of the very old man with enormous wings and the hunger artist are so strange and alienated that they become people's displays. Second, the very old man with enormous wings is misunderstood by the neighbor woman and the priest, the former declares that the old man is an angle foundered in the rainstorm and advises that the couple club him to death, the latter said he's an angle just because he has wings. And it's obvious that no one can understand the artist's fasting in "A Hunger Artist".
The difference between two protagonists is that the old man almost ignores the spectator the whole time. However the artist is metamorphosely obsessed with people having a hearty breakfast at his expense, and he wants audience to see him and understand his art of fasting.
Eventually, the panther and the spider girl grab the attention from the old man and the artist because they are more livelily and interesting for the audiece.
The irony of "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings" is that the author titled it with "A Tale for Children" to satirize that adults are often narrow minded and cruel. On the contrary, children are more open minded. And in "A Hunger Artist" the author want to deliver the alienation, loneliness and uncomprehended that an artist has to confront to the readers. Just like there's nothing that can fullfil the artist's need, he can't find his spiritual food.
410402015 巫芷玲
The old man with enormous wings and the hunger artist have three similar stages of their life. They both caused a great sensation when they first showed up, and then people would start to go off the two protagonists because they couldn’t understand the meaning of these two special existences. As time goes by, they were neglected and something new appeared, the spider woman and the panther. They represented mediocre things which were easier to understand. People always tend to be interested in the things they can comprehend without effort, ant that’s why they are more popular.
The angel had amazing patience when the hens pecked at him, the cripples pulled out his feathers, and even people threw stones at him. That’s his supernatural virtue. He stayed silent at most of time, and people just kept benefiting from him. As for the hunger artist, he could bear the hunger and be proud of it because he was insisting what he wanted to do, but he couldn’t accept people’s mistrust. When he started to feel depressed, people told him that’s because he didn’t eat, but in fact, the reason why was people didn’t want to let him stay hungry.
These two stories delivered the same emotion—lonliness, which is of being different from other people. Take the huger artist for example. “Forgive me, everybody,” whispered the hunger artist. He told the overseer that if he had found the food he liked, he should have made no fuss and stuffed like anyone else. For him, his hunger was a bitter charge for this unspiritual world. Artists might be hard to understand, but sometimes people just even don’t try to understand.
410275040 陳湘妮
Q2
The old man and the hunger artist are in the same situation. They suffer from loneliness and frustration when they face other people. The old man is misunderstood as a falling angle. He is locked in a chicken coop. Besides, people tease and experiment the old man to see whether he is a real angel or not. This kind of misunderstanding also happens on the hunger artist. People don't believe in his fasting. He even thinks that he is the sole satisfied spectator of his own fasting. One line in this article says that anyone who has no feeling for it cannot be made to understand, which is the reason why the old man and the hunger artist are alien and lonely.
When the spider woman and the panther show up in the story, the old man and the hunger artist become out of fashion. Because the spider woman has a more realistic story which is easy to understand for people. But the old man speaks the unknown language and shut his heart down on the people. The panther is similar with the spider woman. It's easy to understand because it is an animal.
The two authors indicate that people don't understand high arts such as the old man and the hunger artist. Therefore, people turn to approach easier things such as the spider woman and the panther. The message of the authors is the situation of themselves. They insist on their own notions but they usually push spectator away. They are as lonely as the old man and the hunger artist.
I would like to answer question 1
1.Both of two stories talked about two married women were be limited by their husband or whole society. In the time, it is a male-dominated society, and women can not be educated, should obey their husband. In both two stories, the women desired freedom but failed. In“The Yellow Wallpaper”, John never consider about what his wife need, and he not allowed she to do what she want to do. Only thing she can do is stay in the room and rest. In "The Story of an Hour", Mrs.Mallard was young and her husband really love, but her married just like a jail for her. So even she was sad about her husband’s dead, the more feeling she have s happy because of she is final free and can do what she want to do, she looked forward the life after her husband’s dead. In the end of story, it is an irony to said that she had died of heart disease-- of joy that kills, in fact, she died of despair.
Although both two women in stories are loved deeply by their husband, the limitation final made them go crazy.
2.In my opinion, the house symbolizes a society framework that limits the woman and asks them to be a good wife, a submissive wife. And the room likes their own little world, in the room they can do what they want but not allowed to do.
3.I think that the blue sky and gazing out a window mean the freedom they desired. It is also symbolizes the life they wanted. They hoped that can live for themselves and not to be depressed. The blue sky is like a beautiful life they looked forward.
410402049 蕭芊曼
I would like to answer question 1
1.Both of two stories talked about two married women were be limited by their husband or whole society. In the time, it is a male-dominated society, and women can not be educated, should obey their husband. In both two stories, the women desired freedom but failed. In“The Yellow Wallpaper”, John never consider about what his wife need, and he not allowed she to do what she want to do. Only thing she can do is stay in the room and rest. In "The Story of an Hour", Mrs.Mallard was young and her husband really love, but her married just like a jail for her. So even she was sad about her husband’s dead, the more feeling she have s happy because of she is final free and can do what she want to do, she looked forward the life after her husband’s dead. In the end of story, it is an irony to said that she had died of heart disease-- of joy that kills, in fact, she died of despair.
Although both two women in stories are loved deeply by their husband, the limitation final made them go crazy.
2.In my opinion, the house symbolizes a society framework that limits the woman and asks them to be a good wife, a submissive wife. And the room likes their own little world, in the room they can do what they want but not allowed to do.
3.I think that the blue sky and gazing out a window mean the freedom they desired. It is also symbolizes the life they wanted. They hoped that can live for themselves and not to be depressed. The blue sky is like a beautiful life they looked forward.
410302053 宋韋翔
Q2
1.
In the “A Hunger Artist” this story, the protagonist thought his art was special and wanted to show his art to the people who watched his performance. However, after he left his cage and ate his first meal, his art was no longer popular. Therefore, he went to circus to show his art but no one wanted to watch his performance. In the end, the hunger artist was forgotten. In the “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” this story, the people thought the old man with wings was weird. They didn’t see this creature before. So they locked him in the chicken coop. people didn’t respect the old man and treated just like an animal. Therefore, the old man got weaker.
2.
The reason why the panther and the spider girl were popular is because people thought that they are the new things. People thought the hunger artist and the old man with wings were not new and no longer interesting. Therefore, people easily paid attention on the new things panther and the spider girl.
3.
In “The Hunger Artist” this story, the hunger artist was ignored in the end and in another story “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings”, the old man with the wings was treated like an animal in the cage. So I think both author wants to show us that people who are different in the world should be regarded and treated like normal people. No matter whom they are or what their works are they all have their rights!
610302607 蕭峻閎
Q2:
Both of the two stories, “The Yellow Wallpaper” (1892) and “The Story of an Hour” want to present women hoping freedom. Two women writer concealed their thought in their story. However, we still can read their thinking in the stories. I could pick up some interesting part to analyze. First, we need to find the similar sections to compare. The two women were holed the captive by their husband. I use the captive to describe the room. In the two stories, the women moved from living room to their bedroom. Staying in the house means that woman need to manage the house and serve their husband. Stay in room also have the comparable meaning. The house or the room was like a bird cage. This limited capacity represent the patriarchy. In the patriarchy, the women’s job is to serve the men. Meanwhile, women belonged to men. This situation reflected that women or girls can’t go to accept the education and work for family. The end of the stories, women had terrible result. Mrs. Mallard died of heart disease and the woman in “The Yellow paper” loss her mind. Second, I need to find some different evidences to contrast them. I could mention one difference which is the woman in “The story of the Hour” could feel the free and the happy future coming soon. Moreover, her husband didn’t die. Her dream was destroyed. The woman in “The Yellow paper” had not felt free and was depressed. This is one difference. “Patches of blue sky” or gazing out a window play a meaningful and symbolic part in the stories. Blue sky and the act of gazing the windows symbolize to persuade the freedom. We can see many states like seeing the sky and opening the window and so on. These element often appear in the slave story. Two stories want to show us that women in authors’ generation were painted. Sad and satirical ending could give us more reflection about women's civil rights.
Q2 410202079
I think these two main characters are in the similar situation.“A Hunger Artist” is the story of one man’s feelings of intense alienation and isolation. This state, however, is partly self-imposed, a necessary condition of his “art.” The hunger artist spends his fasting performances, and therefore most of his life, in a cage, on display before nameless crowds. And in “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings”, the Old Man is "Dreaming" in the story. He first appears in the backyard in the mud. The family is first hesitant about what he is, so they make him live in the chicken coop. He is very dirty and he speaks an incomprehensible language that no one understands. When the crowds first start to come around, he is absentminded and patient about what's going on; as the crowds continue to come from all over the world to see him, he becomes a celebrity. Later, the crowds burn him with a branding iron and he flaps his wings in pain. In the end, he grows back all of his feathers and flies away. The author used the allegory to represent the real world. People don’t understand the hunger artist and the old man. They are isolated because they are different from others, and they are not the mainstream of the society.
410202072 吳婉君 Jill
Answer to Q1:
Both stories are written to protest for women at that time and the victims are the female characters. At the end of The Story of an Hour, Mrs. Mallard died; and at the end of The Yellow Wallpaper, the narrator got crazy literally. In both stories, we can see that the society considers women as unintelligent creatures, which are always weak, tender, and need to be taken care. For example, in The Story of an Hour, people around Mrs. Mallard always worry about her heart trouble and mental weakness; in The Yellow Wallpaper, John called the narrator “little girl” and “goose”. However, both of the main female characters in the two stories are actually intelligent and creative.
In The Story of an Hour, the writer protests civil rights of women by showing the changes of Mallard’s life when she hears of her husband’s death, which are sudden happiness, freedom, and independence. And her mourning and disappointment which are strong enough to lead to her death when she sees her husband is still alive. It is ironical. In The Yellow Wallpaper, the protest for women civil rights shows in the mental illness of the female narrator, who suffers a lot under the restriction and cruelty of her husband.
The reason of that both stories take place inside a house is because women were supposed to be a housekeeper and not go out often. And being within only one room of the house suggests strongly that the lives of women at that time were very dull and boring, very restricted and without freedom. Thus women lived like inside a prison.
“Patches of blue sky” and gazing out a window are symbols that suggest a desire of Mrs. Mallard to pursue her freedom and happiness. Women at that time, who were always restricted at home and were not allowed to get a profession or study, were like birds in cages. Thus blue sky is a symbol of freedom and independence, which reflects the theme of the story.
Q1
1.In the late 19th century, the awareness of women’s rights showed up. More and more females started to fight for their own rights, just like suffrage, working out, and accepting education. But during that time, in the inherent stereotype, the image of women should be modest. They had to stay in house to take care of their children, do the whole households, and follow what their husbands said. They had no power to decide anything, even when they were unmarried, they had to listen to their fathers about the instruction of their lives. In brief, females were inferior to males. In “The Yellow Wallpaper”, John always said that he knew the condition of the narrator and how to do was best for her. No matter when the narrator wanted to talk to John about her condition, he never listened to her and comforted her just like a baby. I think the wallpaper is a kind of restriction. When the narrator peeled off the wallpaper, this was a way of protesting and it was a symbol of getting freedom. But in the end, she was going crazy. In “The Story of an Hour”, at the beginning when Mrs. Mallard heard the news of Brently’s death, she was sad. So she said that she needed a space to calm down. When she watched outside from the window of her room, she gradually felt that she was free. Finally, she died but her husband came home alive. I think that Brently Mallard, her husband, might be her heaviest restriction in her lifetime.
2.In traditional image, a good woman in that time should stay in house and have all the households done well so that men don’t have worry about the things in the house and they can pay attention to their work. I think houses and rooms are a kind of restriction, an invisible wall. Women can’t cross and get rid of the wall and they were trapped in the houses or rooms just like in prison. They can’t act, talk, do anything they want, even they want to do that. This is a kind of tragedy in patriarchal society.
3.For women, the world outside and the blue sky is a unimaginable freedom. People out of the windows are so free, the birds are so unconstrained, and the blue of the sky is so pure. “Why were we here? In such a boring place,” thought to themselves. So I think that patches of blue sky and gazing out a window are symbols of freedom, an unattainable freedom.
41020A039 李季穎
Q1
(1) At that time, the society in the late 19th –century America, the feminism start to be progress a lot. Before this, the right of women is not still equal. The society think women should stay home. Doing the housework, taking of the baby, weaving the clothes and not having good education. Therefore, the house or rooms are like the jail and the bird in the cage. They don’t have any freedom. Like these two story. The first one, the story of an hour. The woman yearn for the world out of the window. Like the paragraph. “There were patches of blue sky showing here and there through the clouds that had met and piled one above the other in the west facing her window. The outside world means freedom for women at that time. In the story “The Yellow Wallpaper. I think because the house means the jail on the story, so it is why the woman see the illusion on the yellow wallpaper in the house. Because the yellow wallpaper is the symbol of the jail. The illusion is the creation because women is restrained to their husband.
(2) “Patches of blue sky” in the paragraph, it shows the woman is restricted by the society, especially by their husband. They desire to go out to take a free breath. It symbolize woman think of her life in the future. It reveals that she pursue the freedom. She really want to be a free birds in the blue sky because it is so free, there are not anyone can restrict you.
410302063英美二 許華
I would like to answer the second question.
Both of the two stories are concerned about freaks ,which people were ever interested in.And finally people lost their interests in the two freaks in the end of the stories.
In the story''A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings'', the old man with wings ,which was considered as an angel, was disrespected and mistreated by people. People tossed leftover toward him,fed mothballs, threw stones at him...etc.In the paragraph 5,''Alien to the impertinences of the world, he only lifted his antiquarian eyes and murmured something in his dialect...''I considered this few sentences are the real depictions of his loneliness and frustration.
In ''A Hunger Artist'' the artist afterward became''only an impediment on the way to the menagerie'' though he interacted with people more than the old man with wings, according to the first paragraph of ''A Hunger Artist''. I think this sentence''Forgive me,everybody'' is the expression of the artist's inner frustration.
The panther is more popular than the hunger artist because of its noble body. People felt refreshing to see this wild creature.And in ''A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings'',The spider girl defeat the haughty angel because the admission to see her is less and people can ask her about her absurd state as well as examine her up and down.
The authors want to convey the message about the values of two kinds of literature through these two allegorical stories.Among the tastes of mass readers, the extraordinary works seem to be mysterious and incomprehensible, while the ordinary works are preferred more than the great works because they can be understood easily.
410402031 楊子玉
Q1
Both of the stories are about women try to get rid of their unhappy marriage and fight for their freedom. Also, the main characters in both stories were suffered from “heart problem”, which is not only physical but also emotional. However, in “The Story of an Hour”, Mrs. Mallard plays a role as a news receiver, who just sat in the chair and hear the miserable news negatively. In contrast, in” The Yellow Wallpaper”, the main character seems more active to take actions, such as observing the wallpaper and write down her thoughts than Mrs. Mallard. It is the way they protest against the patriarchy that makes differences in their ends. As a result, the main character has the strength to take actions and stay alive while Mrs. Mallard is killed by her heart disease of despair.
Both of the stories take place in a house and even within a room of that house because women are often constrained to their house in nineteenth century. In “The Story of an Hour”, the story takes place in Mrs. Mallard’s room, where she often stays. In “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the main character lives in a nursery, which implies her husband treats her as an innocent toddler.
While windows represent the house, also the jail of housewives, the view and the blue sky signify hope, freedom, and unlimited future opportunities. It is not until they began to gaze out a window and see the blue sky do the women notice that they can have a different way of living and a beautiful life based on their will.
410402055 李羅蓮
I forgot to post this earlier and I've just finished dance practice hopefully this is still acceptable.
Q2
In "A Hunger Artist" by Franz Kafka and "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings by Gabriel García Marquez, the stories both involve miserable protagonists which people have deep fascination but still alienate in because they are deemed different. They are then replaced by more "exciting" figures later on the these stories, one by a panther, the other by a spider girl.
Both of the protagonists are very lonely due to the lack of understanding from the people who interact with them. The hunger artist loves the attention from the spectators however, he also is annoyed with them them because they don't understand him and hinder his dream of becoming the greatest faster. The hunger artist is placed in a cage next to animals in a circus after the interest has worn off. The old man similarly is put into a chicken coup for other people to look at. He speaks in a foreign language and additionally he has enormous wings, that alienate him even more. The only person who treats him with kindness is the small child. The other people will pull on his feathers and poke him with sticks. This causes the old man to flap his wings very rapidly causing a small wind storm this frightens the village people.
The two protagonists are later on replaced by newer and more flashy exhibitions. The hunger artist is replaced by the panther who is full of life and was, "to the bursting point with everything that it needed." The panther excites the people because he is a symbol of vitality while the hunger artist was a symbol of death and suffering. Similarly, the Old Man is replaced by a spider girl who has a story behind her, she is punished for disobeying her mother by being turned into a huge spider with the head of a sad young woman. The clear moral of the her story is more appealing to the villagers than the Old Man who can't offer them much.
Both of the stories are allegorical. In "A Hunger Artist"the meaning under the surface is most likely the rejection of faith or the lack of support for religious faith. The hunger artist is a representation of Jesus, who also fasts for 40 days however the hunger artist is abandoned in the end. In "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings" the dirty and disease ridden look of the angel could also be the symbol of the failure of faith.
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