contrast some of the ways in which Sylvia Plath and Emma Donoghue present the manipulation of individuals.
Exploring the experiences of individuals in extreme and in the case of ‘Room’, unconceivable aspects of life, the theme of manipulation is central to the progression of both Sylvia Plath’s ‘Ariel’ and Emma Donoghue’s ‘Room’. Contrary to Donoghue, Plath stands as an autobiographical writer, drawing upon her own life surrounded with ambiguous identities and manipulation as the main motivation for her writing, such as the uncovering of her father’s hidden identity as a Nazi sympathiser. By contrast, while it has been bluntly concluded Donoghue’s work was spurred solely by the notorious Fritzl case, following one of the world’s most heinous
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This is also reflected in Plath’s poem ‘The Arrival of the Bee Box’, where the speaker discusses her dominance over a group of bees. Plath references herself as the ‘owner’ of the bees evoking a sense of authority. This is reinforced when she states ‘They can die, I need feed them nothing’14, highlighting her lack of empathy and ability to treat them as she wishes without retaliation. This is a clear link to ‘Room’ where Ma is aware if she does not obey Old Nick’s requests he will punish her and Jack. For instance, as a form of discipline he switches off their electricity supply, leaving them ‘freezing… and eating slimy vegetables’. This highlights his attempts to deprive them of basic human necessities, such as warm surroundings and a cooked meal. Shelby Koehne has suggested ‘the innocence of Jack’s perspective [makes] the story all the more horrible’. This interpretation is supported in his obliviousness to the fact he and Ma are even being punished, where he responds to Ma’s explanation of the situation with ‘Yeah, but I thought he was going to punish us too’15. This emphasises the extent of their suffering, with Jack identifying the most harrowing of circumstances completely normal and tolerable. Like Old Nick, at the end of the poem Plath attempts to play God stating, ‘Tomorrow... I will set them free. The box is only temporary’14, emphasising her ultimate power and …show more content…
Both instances highlight Old Nick attempting to create an ironically positive impression of himself. This creates an element of confusion for Jack over Old Nick’s identity, for he knows Ma deeply dislikes him, but being a child he cannot help but buy into his materialistic methods of persuasion. For Ma this treatment of Jack causes further tension with Old Nick, where she reproaches him for attempting to interact with Jack, screaming ‘Get away, get away from him!’. Emphasising just how much she wants to shelter Jack from direct contact with their captor. Old Nick’s ambiguous identity can be linked to his name which collocates with both Father Christmas and Satan. This is mirrored in Plath’s discussion of her father in ‘Daddy’, where her use of Holocaust imagery indicates she thinks of her father as a Nazi and herself a Jew. She states ‘I began to talk like a Jew. I think I may well be a Jew’5, to convey the extent of her suffering caused by her father. He is the oppressive Nazi and she is the vulnerable Jew. Plath creates the impression of a detached relationship with her father through the repeated use of the impersonal nouns ‘man’ and ‘brute’5, which highlights her attempts to identify herself as victim of torture, like those in the Holocaust and Jack, who have suffered at the hands of strangers. Nevertheless, while Plath does create
In The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd, a young girl named Lily struggles with growing up with only a harsh father and a housemaid while trying to find her own place in the world. At the age of four, Lily accidentally shoots her mother while trying to help her in a fight against Lily’s dad. Ever since that day, Lily has a difficult time trying to be a lady and trying to cope with her somewhat abusive father. One day, when Lily is fourteen, the housemaid Rosaleen is sent to jail for pouring dip spit on white men’s shoes but later gets assaulted by the men and is taken to the hospital where Lily goes to sneak her out. In order to help incorporate the story’s title into the story, the author has written epigraphs, that are about bees, for every chapter in the book. Chapter two’s epigraph says “ On leaving the old nest, the swarm normally flies only a few metres and settles. Scout bees look for a suitable place to start the new colony. Eventually, one location wins favor and the whole swarm takes to the air”(34). This epigraph parallels the story because of the similarities in how bees move on and look for somewhere to start their new lives and how Lily and Rosaleen try to start their new
“To know that a hive without a queen bee was a death sentence for the bees. They would stop work and go around completely demoralized”(kidd 286). In the quote stated above Sue Monk Kidd states that bees are solemnly attached to their queen. If she dies they feel a lack of guidance. Similarly in her book The Secret Life of Bee, Lily Owens has to live her life without a mother figure that can guide her through life. Because of an abusive father lily had no other option than leave the house and find a place where someone cared about her.in the novel secret life of bees author sue monk kidd uses the bee hive without a queen bee to portray how an individual's life is without the presence of a mother figure to provide guidance, love, and acceptance.
Life is a precious thing, and it is so precious that some people will undergo severe anguish to hold on to it. During the 1930’s and 1940’s in Germany, people of the Jewish religion were diabolically oppressed and slaughtered, just for their beliefs. Some Jews went to extreme measures to evade capture by the German law enforcement, hoping to hold on to life. Krystyna Chiger was only a small child when her family, along with a group of other desperate Jews, descended into the malignant sewers to avoid the Germans. After living in the abysmal sewers for fourteen months, her group emerged, and when she became an adult, she authored a novel about her time in the sewer. When analyzing the literary elements utilized in her novel, The Girl in the Green Sweater, one can determine how tone and mood, point of view, and conflict convey the message of struggle and survival that was experienced during the Holocaust, and how they help the reader to understand and relate.
We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be. This saying fits perfectly with a certain character that goes by the name of Howard W. Campbell, Jr. The narrator and protagonist Howard Campbell is an American playwright living in Germany with a German wife as World War II breaks out. Campbell is persuaded to remain in Germany, cultivate the Nazis, and become an American Agent. Throughout the novel “Mother Night” you get to see different sides of Howard. As the novel gets deeper so do you with this character, getting to learn more and more about Howard and his personality. This essay will show you who and what type character Howard W. Campbell, Jr was. Howard at heart a somewhat a simple man, who loved his wife Helga and his work as a writer. he hides his true self deep inside and puts on a façade for everyone. Howard is so effective at hiding himself, that people only know him as the Nazi he pretends to be.
Sylvia Plath’s novel, “The Bell Jar”, tells a story of a young woman’s descent into mental illness. Esther Greenwood, a 19 year old girl, struggles to find meaning within her life as she sees a distorted version of the world. In Plath’s novel, different elements and themes of symbolism are used to explain the mental downfall of the book’s main character and narrator such as cutting her off from others, forcing her to delve further into her own mind, and casting an air of negativity around her. Plath uses images of rotting fig trees and veils of mist to convey the desperation she feels when confronted with issues of her future. Esther Greenwood feels that she is trapped under a bell jar, which distorts her view of the world around her.
In Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour”, Louise Mallard is caught in a cold marriage and a constrictive house. The same goes for Sarah Penn in Mary Wilkins Freeman “The Revolt of “Mother.’” Despite the fact that both stories share the topics of imprisonment and control, physically and inwardly, the ladies in the stories have diverse responses to their circumstances. Sarah battles the confinements without holding back, taking her opportunity, while Mrs. Mallard adopts a motionless strategy and is just liberated through the death of Mr. Mallard.
Jacobs’ narrative is open and honest in its depiction of sexual harassment, describing the nature of the abuse and the tortured emotional state it leaves its victims in. Though the narrative tells of a girl’s life over one hundred and fifty years ago, it remains timely in its reminder that many suffering women do not have the ability to safely end the harassment they face every day, and yet, they continue to endure the consequential
As is inherent within the tradition of confessional poetry, a subgenre of lyric poetry which was most prominent from the fifties to the seventies (Moore), Sylvia Plath uses the events of her own tragic life as the basis of creating a persona in order to examine unusual relationships. An excellent example of this technique is Plath’s poem “Daddy” from 1962, in which she skilfully manipulates both diction, trope and, of course, rhetoric to create a character which, although separate from Plath herself, draws on aspects of her life to illustrate and make points about destructive, interhuman relations. Firstly that of a father and daughter, but later also that of a wife and her unfaithful husband.
Within one’s lifetime, the mark to finding oneself is being able to overcome hardships and difficulties in order to unravel the full potential concealed within them. From being manipulated and deceived, this manages to bring about an ability hidden within oneself that can only be triggered by experiencing what it is like to be a victim of deception. In A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen and As You Like It by William Shakespeare, each author entraps their protagonists with the role of being manipulative or the victim of being manipulated to further enhance the author’s purpose of revealing or unlocking the hidden potential that arose within the characters.
“It was only yesterday she had thought with a shudder, that life might be long.” (Chopin 17). “"Poof!"… gave a revealing look at the victims of domestic abuse and how they wrestle with overcoming their fear and their doubts after suffering years of abusive treatment.” (Toomer 5) Loureen unlike Mrs. Mallard, witnesses her husband’s death first hand during a marital argument. Loureen goes through denial questioning whether her husband’s death. She is happy her husband is dead but also feels guilty, because she knows how a mourning wife should react, but the joy of his demise is greater,” I should be praying, I should be thinking of the burial, but all that keeps popping into my mind is what will I wear on television when I share my horrible and wonderful story with a studio audience…”, Loureen’s husband, Samuel, was physically abusive, as revealed by Florence, Loureen’s best friend and neighbor. “Did that mother***** hit you again?” (Nottage 1563) This abuse, physical by Samuel and mental by Brently, is what allows Loureen in the drama “Poof!” and Mrs. Mallard in the short story “The Story of an Hour” to have the shared freedom they feel in the release from their respective abusive relationships.
The recuperative power of language is revealed when Liesel begins an intrepid career in book thievery, finding solace in books and words amidst the cataclysmic historical period of Nazi Germany. Liesel’s unconscious desire to overcome her traumatic experiences is discovered within the confines of the basement. This is symbolic as, in Freudian psychoanalysis, the basement represents unconscious drives, repressed fears, traumas and fantasies. In Liesel’s journey to process her trauma and acknowledge new traumas, she psychoanalytically seeks out the comfort of the womb due to the absence of a motherly figure in the form of the basement. Zusak alters the archetypal image of the basement, picturing it as a metaphorical ‘womb’ for Liesel, a place of salvation and safety. “Liesel revisited those dark rooms of her past.” (p. 117) When Liesel discovers it is unlikely she will ever see her biological mother, she retreads underneath the table in an attempt to alleviate her pain. However, when Liesel feels psychologically strong enough to face the trauma of her abandonment, she is able to leave her place of safety and security and share her story with Max. This demonstrates the complexities of trauma and how an individual utilises differing coping mechanisms to confront their psychological suffering. Liesel, whilst opening herself to the pain of others, learns to express and
“It takes a village to raise a child” (Goldberg). This old African proverb justifies that the upbringing of a child is a communal effort. The exposure to society and growing accustomed to the realities of life are beneficial to the growth of a child. These words hold a symbolic meaning to the importance of society and morality. Turning a blind eye to these words of wisdom deprive children of their understanding of humanity. This signifies the innocence of a child growing up in isolation as in Donoghue’s Room. Emma Donoghue uses her novel Room to illustrate that morality is a construct of society and growing up in isolation significantly narrows a child’s perception of life. Living in a
Sylvia Plath’s poetry is well known for its deeply personal and emotional subject matter. Much of Plath’s poetry is confessional and divulges the most intimate parts of her psyche whether through metaphor or openly, without creating a persona through which to project her feelings, and through the use of intense imagery. Plath’s attempt to purge herself of the oppressive male figures in her life is one such deeply personal and fundamental theme in her poetry. In her poem, “Daddy”, which declares her hatred for her father and husband, this attempt is expressed through language, structure, and tone. (Perkins, 591)
Identity can be defined as the fact of being whom or what a person is. Internal and external factors shape a child’s concept of their own identity. These factors include the environmental setting, family, community, and the media. In the novel Room by Emma Donoghue, the 5-year-old narrator/protagonist Jack learns his identity through exploring the familiar space he occupies, the close relationship between he and his mother, and watching television. It is clear that Jack faces many challenges, which lead him to discover how his identity is shaped; this is evident through the exploration of him forming personal attachments to his mother, the room he lived in, and the problems he encounters to the new outside
Sylvia Plath?s poem "Daddy" describes her feelings of oppression from her childhood and conjures the struggle many women face in a male-dominated society. The conflict of this poem is male authority versus the right of a female to control her own life and be free of male domination. Plath?s conflicts begin with her father and continue into the relationship between her and her husband. This conflict is examined in lines 71-80 of "Daddy" in which Plath compares the damage her father caused to that of her husband.