Barbara Lazear Ascher's Essay The Box Man

According to Elizabeth Lowell, “Some of us aren't meant to belong. Some of us have to turn the world upside down and shake the hell out of it until we make our own place in it.” Sometimes what every situation needs is an outsider to flip the script and create a new outlook on everything. In Shirley Jackson’s novel, “We Have Always Lived in the Castle,” the speaker, Merricat, is an outsider of society on many levels, such as mental health, gender, and that she is an upper class citizen in a poor area. Although Merricat is mentally unstable, her outsider’s perspective criticizes the social standard for women in the 1960s, indicating that social roles, marriage, and the patriarchy are not necessary aspects in life such as it is not necessary to have the same outlook on life as others.

The author’s main idea and purposes are revealed by a series of anecdotes and allusions. The author gets very personal about the subject, as if she was going through the realization herself. You can see her opinion by the way she refers to certain things. For example, the author brings up an old memory from her childhood in paragraph nine. When she is describing the boxcar children, the words she uses are almost as if they were too

The theme of isolation is a heavy premise throughout all three books that help to shape not only certain characters but also provide insight on fundamental qualities of their identities. The object of this essay is to prove who seems to be the most solitary character between the books Light in August by William Faulkner, A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery O’Connor and The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. In these stories, the idea of isolation is the loneliness that has been experienced in a characters life. Some characters have experienced their loneliness since early childhood while others have been kept isolated involuntarily. Although these three characters have taken different approaches in their lives, they all ended up isolated from society. As Alfred Kazin believes that Joe Christmas is the most solitary character in American fiction, I would like to discuss how both the villain in A Good Man is Hard to Find and the heroine of The Yellow Wallpaper would not rival Kazin’s opinion. Joe Christmas in Light in August proves to be the most solitary character I have read about, as he is never able to become a full member of society.

Ascher implied she likes the Boxman’s way of living by saying what she did about the Boxcar Children. He is alone but he doesn't care, he's accepted it and lives the way he wants to. Ascher states “He is not to be confused with the lonely ones, you’ll find them everywhere”(Ascher 9). Ascher explains how the Box man feels by giving some Figurative Language to explain his emotions. Ascher states “Who is to say the Boxman does not feel as Thoreau did in his doorway”(Ascher 9). In this sentence she also used an Allusion by referring to Thoreau, a famous person in literature.

When the narrator finds herself in the wallpaper she begins to realize that her freedom has been taken because of society’s views towards women, which shows the narrator suffers because of strong inputs of society. When comparing the narrator to her husband, John, she is inferior to him because of society’s views. Since the narrator is of “mere ordinary people”, one can conclude that the narrator and her husband are of middle-class people. This causes the narrator to already be looked down on by the upper-class society because she does not have the same freedoms as

To start off, Ascher uses the rhetorical strategy of compare and contrast to reflect on the nature of solitude. She compares the

These stereotyped perceptions of what women are like is hardly true, yet even comedy movies depicting women, especially Rebecca (1940) further solidify the view that women are single-minded and unable to think or act outside narrowly defined and culturally coded behavior. An ‘unordinary’ woman, who is focused on living alone and have different priorities than a married one, would likely to deem herself as something out of the ‘ordinary’ because that’s not what real women are like. Thus, this forms a concept in young females that one has to married as per the social norm to be considered feminine.

There are many aspects for my mind to conceive while reading the articles why I write by George Orwell and Joan Didion. There are many different factors in triggering an author’s imagination to come up with what they want to write, and why they want to write it. In most writings a purpose is not found before the writer writes, but often found after they decide to start writing.

Whether a story is written short or long, in a novel, or in a movie, it always has a main theme that attracts the reader. The theme helps connect all the plots together to come to a final resolution. Being lonely, isolated and unwanted are the feelings that most affect people. Loneliness is about feeling disconnected from the rest of the world. Being isolated have a negative impact on society, but it will also have a negative impact on the person being isolated. The two short stories, “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and “Ms. Brill” by Katherine Mansfield focuses on the way two women experience loneliness, isolation, and social expectation in their society. Social expectations may hold back women from achieving their fullest potential because they are obligated to stand by a series of rules that may be counter-productive to them. Throughout these two stories, the readers are able to see a lot of similarities between the stories just that they are presented in different ways.

But also in the book it discusses how people do not agree with creating one’s own purpose. They think that if they create their own purpose, then that means that their life meaning is not as meaningful. I do agree with this to some extent but I also think that we know ourselves the best and if we create our own life meaning it can be the most fulfilling. A quote from this chapter is, “What matters is not necessarily what the inventor had in mind, but the uses or purposes the innovation actually has” (p.12). This quote is saying that for example the predetermined meaning of humans is not really important at all. It is what purposes a human can bring about in this world.

Therefore, it is better to fulfill one 's own purpose than that of the creator. But also in the book it discusses how people do not agree with creating one’s own purpose. They think that if they create their own purpose then that means that their life meaning is not as meaningful. I do agree with this to some extent but I also think that we know ourselves the best and if we create our own life meaning it can be the most fulfilling. A quote from this chapter is, “What matters is not necessarily what the inventor had in mind, but the uses or purposes the innovation actually has” (p.12). So this quote is saying that for example the predetermined meaning of humans is not really important at all. It is what purposes a human can bring about in this world.

The authors of the Books “The Yellow Wallpaper” and “The Bath” attempt at a great literary extent to thoroughly show describe and explain the vulnerabilities of the protagonists in their respective worlds. It is evident in both texts that there are a range of similarities between both protagonists, which include: their weaknesses, emotions, families and their genders. But on the other hand they also have a range of differences which include: their certain weakness, the extent of their irrationality, support and marriage relation with their certain spouses. They both live in radically different utopias, which could

When telling the reader about the Box Man’s choice to be homeless, Ascher refers to an anecdote where the Box Man encounters the mayor of New York City, “Last winter, Mayor Koch tried, coaxing him with promises and the persuasive tones reserved for rabid dogs. The Box Man backed away, keeping a car and paranoia between them.” When describing this scene, Ascher makes the mayor sound condescending by using words like “coaxing” and comparing the way he speaks to the way one would speak to “rabid dogs”. The way that the mayor treats the Box Man makes the reader feel sympathy for the Box Man and the way homeless people are treated, and the readers feel guilt due to the way they might have treated homeless people like the Box Man. This advances Ascher’s argument and further persuades the reader to reflect on their own actions and thoughts towards the idea of homelessness. Another tool that Ascher uses to help argue that homeless deserve respect is precise diction.

Why do we need a purpose for writing a book? For example the book The Maze Runner by James Dashner? An Author Purpose is the reason an author decides to write about a specific topic. James Dashner who wrote the novel The Maze Runner was trying to inform us, Sense of hope and to entertain his readers by studying their brain patterns. They were trying to figure out how the brain patterns of a non-immune.

The author has used all of these examples to accurately portray alienation and loneliness. The poor woman is so alone and isolated, and she doesn’t try to hide it in the least. Everything she writes about is how she is alone, crying, or trying to make someone else happy by doing something, or by not doing something, or she’s hiding what she’s doing to avoid getting in trouble. She can’t do anything that makes her happy. She’s trapped in this huge, ugly room with tattered wallpaper and bars on the windows. In fact, she focuses so much on the horrible paper that her condition continues to worsen. She’s told what to do and when