Consistently and Appropriately Unreliable

I really liked "The Yellow Wallpaper." It reminds me of Poe, an author whom I particularly enjoy so that bodes well for my reception.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman creates the complicated and inconsistent narrator beautifully, a difficult feat to say the least. Gilman does more than just create this narrator she utilizes it wisely. Throughout the story the reader is kept on his or her toes trying to figure out what perspective the story is being written from and, later on, who it is that is doing the writing.

The concept of an inconsistent narrator seems to be a bit of a contradiction. The narrator is the tour guide, the conductor; he or she will direct you from point A to point B. Now some narrators get a bit confused, may make a wrong turn here and there, or maybe there is construction and a detour needs to be taken; however the inconsistent, ever changing narrator seems to not understand the concepts of a path, maybe they are on it sometimes but it isn’t really a path to be followed, it is just a destination to go from and get to (and when the rare occasion that there are no destinations, well than it is just anarchy and pandemonium—still awesome). Regardless the contradiction in the concept, it breeds some insane yet perfectly logical journey. There is some unexplainable beauty in the progressive manner of inconsistent narration, a mix of biased and unbiased, rehearsed and free form, clean and messy. This mix allows for some of the most enlightened story telling free to many more interpretations than a simple straightforward narrator would allow.

My personal favorite book is in the form of an inconsistent narrator so it may be that I personally am just partial to this form but something about the freedom of the narrator and the interpretation speak to me and I feel can speak to anyone.

The best part of this story is when the narration breaks. Gilman has the narrator jump from first person narrative in the form of journal entries to a sort of deranged (or possibly not) omniscient multi-person direct narrator and you can’t tell where it happens. And even if you just read it and flip through the pages and you can’t tell where it happens, the progression is so slow and subtle.
The narrator states “I am getting a little afraid of John” halfway through the story, one may begin to see the possibility of her personality being more than just one person, far earlier than realized on a first read through (431).

The narrator in “The Yellow Wallpaper” is well played out and interesting. It may not be the most complicated of unreliable narrators, but it gives the story some sort of intangible edge and that twisted flare.

I think it is most important when considering an unreliable narrator to consider that the narration itself is completely reliable—if it were not how could the story convey anything, the narration has to say what needs to be said—it is just the narrator himself or herself or itself or ourself or noself that lacks the structure needed to be considered reliable. (525)

A Good Story Is Hard to Find

The title “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” is enticing, intriguing and interesting. With a title like this, expectations are set high; yet unfortunately, within a matter of paragraphs, it becomes apparent that the story will not live up to its title. Read a few more paragraphs, and it becomes clear that the title is a trap, a red herring of sorts. With a lack of purpose and an overall deficit of any overarching ideas, “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” is bereft of any meaning at all.

 The first and most egregious of all the problems is the overwhelming use of foreshadowing. Generally the use of literary devices in aid a story's development , but in “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” O’Connor takes foreshadowing to a new dimension. Within the first two paragraphs the imminent encounter with The Misfit is literally spelled out to the readers. The narrator tells the reader that the grandmother “was seizing every chance” to change her son’s mind on their trip’s destination. Yet, the reader is only previewed to two examples, both happen to be about the same factor, and the first takes up half of the opening paragraph (358-1). If these examples were not enough to clue the reader in, O’Connor makes sure there will not be one ounce of surprise when, unprovoked, too late to change any minds about the destination of their trip—and after a long stretch of time without even a thought about it—the grandmother asks a restaurant owner, “Did you read about that criminal, The Misfit, that’s escaped?” (361-41). It could be argued that the grandmother was just adding to the conversation; however, the dialogue was forced in that direction by Red Sam, the restaurant owner, for no presently appropriate reason other than to foreshadow The Misfit again.

Another massive issue with the story is the utter lack of character continuity. Bailey, a very premeditated type, unaffected by the obnoxiousness of his children as presented in previous scenes, is suddenly rattled by their absolute lack of decorum and decides to do something on a whim the “one and only time” (362-53). Aside from this statement’s inappropriately sadistic irony, it is absolutely out of character. Secondly, and the absolute most outrageous, The Misfit sends Bailey and his son into the forest with his henchmen, a shot is heard, the henchmen return to the site of the wreck alone, The Misfit asks if “ [the mother] and that little girl would like to step off yonder… and join [her] husband” and the mother simply, faintly replies “yes” (366-125). Who would do that; just reply yes? It is overwhelmingly apparent to everyone reading and in the story that death is upon this family and yet the mother simply, faintly says yes and walks her daughter and baby child to death without any other remark from the narrator. Under the extreme pressure and circumstances such a calm answer seems out of character for any conceivable “real-life” character one can come up with. There is nothing that can excuse such a disregard for keeping the characters consistent in such a gratuitously violent story if there is any intent beyond excessive violence.

Even in what appears to be an insightful statement, the most profound assertion in the story looses much of its strength and effect in the manner it is introduced. “She would have been a good woman, … if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life,” is not enough to fix the meaningless carnage that is the rest of “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” (368-140). When the statement is read into, it could imply that in the face of death the grandmother was a better person; however, even if that is the message, that some people are only decent when forced to face their own gruesome death, it brings up a line of questions—are they good at that moment to get into heaven, to save themselves, to guilt their killer (mostly selfish reasons)—that egg on the morally lacking nature of the story as opposed to concluding a profound train of thought. There are no rules that say a dark story has to be insightful, impart knowledge on its audience, or have some redeemable value, but if a dark story is going to be so poorly constructed it should have some sort of redeemable value that is more than just a passing thought at the very end to justify a overwhelmingly violent story.

 In a story that has little to no contextual merit, and one disenchanted, fleeting, questionable nugget of insight at the end, “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” wholly lacks consequence. And many, many paragraphs later the title still remains to be the only redeemable quality of this story. (800)

Self-worth?

Self-worth seems to be a hot topic in “Teenage Wasteland” by Anne Tyler. Daisy lays awake pondering it, the psychologist says that Donny needs a “better sense” of it and Cal lectures Daisy about her parenting destroying Donny’s self-esteem (37). Yet something is not quite right in all of this. Every character in this story is damaged or broken in some way or another, not a single one of these characters seems to have really mastered the concept of self-worth, none of them; the question is why?

The first step to answering that is to figure out what exactly is self-worth anyway? A laundry list might include good feelings towards oneself, being confident in oneself, and respecting oneself, which is all fine and good except have you ever noticed it is always someone else who talks about a person’s self-worth so how does the idea of self worth really apply. We all define it differently and it is often not about what we would initially list to define it. Unlike the list above it is less about one’s actually “worth” and is really about proficiency in socially acceptable and admirably field. To some it involves religion, or maybe an adherence to the idea of morals, or being physically attractive, or being sexually competent, or being intellectual, but it is really our own, personal opinions of how a person sizes up in these fields that define someone else’s self worth. We may ponder what self-worth is like Daisy does, but she doesn’t try to define it, and she definitely doesn’t apply the measurements to herself. In fact, in what the narrator lets us as readers know, Daisy doesn’t even really deal the self-worth directly, she focuses on if she in praised her son enough to instill in him a sense of self-worth but not self-worth itself. Would self-worth have fixed everything?

If Donny did have better self-worth, would that have been enough to stop the disastrous toll he took on his family, after really dissecting self-worth, would that have made him better? I personally think that self-worth was not the problem or the solution for Donny so why did Cal and the therapist site this as his problem. The easiest assumption would be that they saw him as having low self-worth by their standards, but most likely the reason they said and saw Donny as having low self-worth is because they themselves had the idea of low self-worth projected on them. With Cal you can assume that his divorce labeled him as having low self-worth, so when he then tutors dejected, troubled teenagers who have been told that they too have low self-worth they all drown each other in their apparent lack of self-worth.

It seems to become pretty apparent that, at least in this story, everyone is broken because of another someone else. Until these character can begin to define and create their own self-worth they will be stuck at the mercy of others and remain broken. (501)