Newest Novel Idea: Part 5

Eventually I had to make my way back to the campus for my institute class.  I was taking Doctrine and Covenants this semester.  I was seriously thinking of skipping, when an overwhelming sense of duty overcame.

            I walked up the sidewalk towards the LDS Institute of Religion building, stepping over the obvious ice-patches.  I made it all the way up to the front doors before I found some black ice.  It is a well-known fact that I am one of the clumsier people, so naturally, I lost my balance and slid forward.  My forehead banged against door handle and I landed hard on my butt.  Rewards for doing the right thing, I suppose.

            A group of students that had been talking in the game room heard my fail and came to see if  was okay.

            “I’m fine,” I said, “Promise.” I got to my knees and looked up.  I found myself eyelevel with my own blood smeared across the door.

            “Kymber!?” I heard someone call out as if from under water as I faded from consciousness.

            I was out less than a minute and immediately tried convincing those around me that I was perfectly fine.

            “I just didn’t know blood made me queasy, I guess, now I do.  Everything’s good.  I’m just going to clean up now.”

            I walked down the hall to the ladies room where I soaked a wad of paper towels in the sink.  Then I pressed the dripping glob to my forehead with my left hand without looking in the mirror.  I was about to leave when I remembered the blood on the front door.  I grabbed another handful of paper towels with my right hand and then back to the foyer.

            Someone had beat me to cleaning up.  Standing only an arm’s length away was one of the cutest boys I had ever seen.  He had thick, dark, curly hair; he also wore glasses.  He was about 6 inches taller than me and average size, perhaps slightly chubby.  I froze.

            “Um . . . I was going to clean that up . . .”

            He turned and I saw his charming smile turn into a face of concern.  “Is this yours?” He asked referring to the blood. I nodded. “Are you okay?” Again I nodded.

            He put the rag he was holding in a bucket next to his feet.  I wondered where he had found cleaning supplies so fast, but then remember that the custodial closets were always left opened since the members were in charge of keeping the building clean.  The handsome stranger held out his hand to me.  I shook his hand, absent mindedly transferring the wad of paper towels from my hand to his.

            “Greg,” He introduced himself.

            “Kymber.”

            “Nice to meet you,” he hesitated before asking, “Can I see it?”

            “What?” Then I remembered where I was and what was going on. “Oh, this!” I said stupidly as I removed the dripping glob of paper from my face.  It had turned slightly orange.

            “We’re going to put a band-aid on that immediately, I’m afraid,” he said mock-seriously.  Then he took off the backpack he was wearing and started shuffling though it.  He pulled out what looked like a home-made draw-string bag, complete with a glitter red-cross.  He lost a few manly-points for that.  He must have seen me eyeing the glitter because he said, “I’m such a klutz, so my sister-in-law made me this portable first aid kit, my 4 year-old niece helped.  She picked out the band-aids too, so I’m not sure what you’ll get.”

            “That’s fine,” I said, giggly stupidly.

            He used the dry paper towels I had given him to dry my wound.  Then he put Neosporin on a q-tip and gently tickled my sore forehead.  Then it was time for applying the bandage.  He pulled one out at random and opened it slowly. “And the winner is . . .” he teased as he pulled the wrapper off, revealing a blue monkey band-aid, “Dora the Explorer!  You’re going to have a Boots print on your head.” I laughed at his lame pun; it didn’t matter what he said as long as he just kept talking.

Go Back

The Color Yellow in “The Yellow Wallpaper”

            The fact that Charlotte Perkins Gilman chose the color yellow for the wallpaper in her short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” is significant.   Gilman could have chosen any color for the ugly, torn wallpaper in the nursery, but chose yellow.  Perhaps it is meant to be ironic.  Or possibly the wallpaper is past its prime, yellowed with age.  Or maybe, Gilman was making use of the psychological moods set by this color.  Most likely, yellow was chosen for a variety if not for all of these reasons.  The yellow wallpaper is an outward symbol of the narrator’s inward self.

            The narrator gives us several detailed descriptions of the hideous wallpaper.  She tells us that “The color is repellent, almost revolting; a smouldering unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow-turning sunlight.  It is a dull yet lurid orange in some places, a sickly sulphur tint in others” (298).  Then she gives her first impression, her first feelings upon seeing the wallpaper: “No wonder the children hated it! I should hate it myself if I had to live in this room long” (298).  I shall point out in a bit the significance of these opinions, but first I’d like to talk a little bit about the color yellow itself.

Under the listing for the word “yellow” in the dictionary, there are several possible definitions.  Most literally: “a color like that of egg yolk”; and more abstract: “craven, timorous, fearful.”  And also “to make or become yellow” as in “The white stationery had yellowed with age.”  I will revisit these classic dictionary definitions more deeply a little later. (Dictionary.com)

            The psychological interpretations of the meanings and moods of the color yellow are also quite interesting.  In an article entitled “Color Psychology – Yellow” written by Kendra Cherry, a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, yellow is describes as being “cheery and warm”.  This short story is in no way warm or cheery; it is, in fact quite the opposite—depressing—as it is about a woman who is going insane from post-partum depression.  If this were the only psychological interpretation of this color, one would assume that Gilman was being simply ironic in her choice.  However, this same article points out many other significant and useful information on the color.  Irony certainly plays a role, but there is so much more than that.  The characteristics of the wallpaper are also those of our narrator.

            One might find it fascinating to learn that yellow is the “most fatiguing” color to human eyes “due to the high amount of light reflected” and if used as a background it can cause extreme eyestrain (Cherry).  Fatiguing.  Does the wallpaper fatigue our narrator?  I dare say that it does—to at least some degree.  She spends what seems like most of her free time now—after being kept in this room—examining the wallpaper, following the lines in the pattern and then she admits that “half the time now [she] am awfully lazy, and lie[s] down ever so much” (302).  This suggests that her eyes are strained and fatigued by following the pattern around the room, but then fatigue is only one of many other feelings: “I get unreasonably angry at John sometimes”(298).  Could the wallpaper be somehow behind this resentment the narrator feels for her husband, the physician?  These feelings can be explained by the psychology behind the color yellow, as Cherry’s article continues:

“Yellow can also create feelings of frustration and anger. While it is considered a cheerful color, people are more likely to lose their tempers in yellow rooms and babies tend to cry more in yellow rooms” (Cherry).

Anger, frustration, and hatred—which was the first emotion she felt regarding the wallpaper, as I mentioned earlier, if you’ll recall—as well as resentment consume her as she is still forced to stay in this old room and follow the pattern on the wall.  The characteristics of the color of the wallpaper show through our own narrator’s personality.

The question as to why she is so obsessively looking at and in the pattern can be answered once again with Cherry’s psychological expertise.  According to her research, this highly visible color “is also the most attention-getting color. Yellow can be used in small amount [sic] to draw notice”.  So, our narrator is physically and psychologically drawn into the worn-out, torn-up wallpaper. 

Our narrator is not only physically trapped in this nursery, but psychologically as well.  Is it that she cannot leave?  Or that she won’t?  Obviously, her husband has some serious control over her, but still she succumbs, not really fighting back.  Earlier, I defined yellow abstractly as “fearful” or the opposite of courage. Cowardice.  I’m sure everyone has watched a film where one character calls another “yellow” because of their obvious lack of courage.  What I’d like to suggest is the Gilman also knew this usage of the word, and that it is not mere coincidence.  The narrator’s cowardice plays a major role in her becoming insane.

The wallpaper itself holds the narrator captive in its yellow blotches and mushroom shapes.  Her eyes are drawn into it, her emotions are displays of it, her behavior results from her psychological reactions to the color yellow.  She realizes that she is a part of the wallpaper and that the wallpaper is a part of her.  The woman she sees among the yellow hues is herself, encaged in the wall.  It is only as her insanity sets in, as she succumbs, not to her husband but to the wallpaper itself, that she is made free.  The woman becomes her, she becomes the yellow.

When the adjective yellow becomes a verb, yellowed, most people would know immediately what that means.  Think of the old newspapers and books and important documents, sitting in glass boxes in museums and how they turn yellow over time.  They are past their prime.  Again, let’s look at the first description our narrator gives us of the wallpaper.  She describes it vividly as “a smouldering unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow-turning sunlight” (298).  The wallpaper is not only yellow, but it has yellowed and faded.  Since the wallpaper is directly linked to the narrator, this implies that she has also yellowed and faded.  She has gone from who she used to be, before she had her baby, before her post-partum depression, and has turned yellow.  She has turned into yellow.

It is ironic that the color meant to make her warm and cheerful made her angry, hateful and insane.  But just as yellow has many different effects on the mind, the narrator is able to break free from the oppressive, fatiguing yellow, and through insanity, she becomes warm and cheery.  She is yellow, all of it.  Throughout the course of this story she is, each in turn, the hate, the anger, the fatigue, the strain, the warmth, and the cheerfulness.

I suggest that Charlotte Perkins Gilman decided on the color yellow for a significant purpose.   That though there are a vast number of colors that each have emotions attached to them—blue for depression, red for passion, green for life—Gilman chose yellow knowing it’s wide variety of possible meanings. Her choice is precise, yet ironic.  Only the meanings behind the color yellow, only yellow’s moods are reflected in our narrator so perfectly. The yellow wallpaper is the narrator’s imprisonment in herself.

Works Cited

Cherry, Kendra. "Color Psychology - Yellow." About.com. The New York Times

Company. Web. 22 Mar 2011.

Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. "The Yellow Wallpaper." The Art of the Short Story. Eds. Dana

Gioia and R. S. Gwynn. New York: Pearson/Longman, 2006. Print

"Yellow." Dictionary.com. Web. 23 Mar 2011.

Cold Toes

Cold toes

are not like frozen fingers

which can linger intertwined

in the fingers of another.

Cold toes freeze alone.

Hamlet's Use of Language

Hamlet is intimidating, head-strong, and stubborn.  This is made obvious through his choice of words and uses of metaphors, irony and puns throughout Shakespeare’s Hamlet.  The tongue sparring is found throughout the play, but mostly when Hamlet is speaking to the King (Claudius, his uncle), Polonius, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.   Less frequently, he turns his words against others like his mother and Ophelia.  He enjoys turning deserving people’s own words against them and making them squirm with the very things he says.   

            The first time we hear Hamlet he uses verbal irony against the King, Claudius.  When Claudius calls him cousin—meaning relative, Claudius is Hamlet’s late father’s brother—and son—for Claudius is now married to Hamlet’s mother—Hamlet retorts, “A little more than kin, a little less than kind.”  He says he is “too much in the sun,” not really referring to the celestial body but to the homophone “son.”  Claudius is abusing the term “son” in Hamlet’s eyes, for Claudius has quickly married his widowed mother and Hamlet is not yet done mourning his birth father’s death.

            Hamlet’s abusive language does not go unnoticed.  Even the dim-witted Polonius seems to notice: “How pregnant sometimes his replies are!” he says, “A happiness that often that madness hits on, which reason and sanity could not so prosperously be delivered of.”  Once Hamlet gets sparring he doesn’t slow down.  This is what he enjoys doing, it excites him, and he’s good at it.

            Often Hamlet speaks with double meanings, irony or puns, but not always.  Hamlet doesn’t waste his good wit on the dull Polonius, he just says things to mess with him.  When Polonius says the play is too long, Hamlet says his beard is too long.  Hamlet messes with Polonius and Polonius takes it.  An example of this is when Hamlet is looking up the clouds he says he sees one that looks like a camel.  Polonius agrees it looks like a camel.  Then Hamlet changes his mind and says it looks like a weasel and then a whale.  Each time Polonius agrees.   It doesn’t take a genius to realize that camels, weasels and whales look nothing alike, but Polonius, eager to please Hamlet, who is just proving his wit, takes it all in stride, oblivious to the fact that he is Hamlet’s joke.

            Most of the time, Hamlet makes his mean remarks to those the reader would usually deem deserving: Claudius, Polonius, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.  Occasionally, however, Hamlet will turn around Ophelia’s words or those of his own mother.  One example is when Hamlet and Gertrude are in her chambers talking Gertrude says, “Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended.”  She means he has offended Claudius with his bad attitude and harsh words.  Hamlet says almost the same exact words back to her, but coming from Hamlet they have a very different meaning.  “Mother, you have my father much offended.”  They are not talking about the same man.  Hamlet is speaking of his late father, brother of Gertrude’s current husband, and he is accusing her.  Hamlet genuinely loves his mother, but not even she can escape his harsh tongue.

            Hamlet’s use of metaphor is almost as impressive as his use of irony.  He can use metaphors, too, to insult his victims.  He calls Rosencrantz a sponge because he “soaks up the king’s countenance, his rewards, his authorities. . . . When he needs what [Rosencrantz] has gleaned, it is but squeezing [him], and [the sponge] shall be dry again.”  Rosencrantz likely has no idea what Hamlet is talking about, but with a little investigation the meaning becomes clearer to the readers.  To Hamlet, Rosencrantz is sucking up the king’s attentions and when the king no longer requires his assistance, he will take those attentions back.  All this meaning can be found in Hamlet’s simple metaphoric image of a wet sponge being wrung out after use.

            Hamlet sometimes carries his metaphors and puns a little too far.  When the setting is gone dark and all other characters are distraught, Hamlet keeps a cool head and keeps the irony flowing from his mouth.  He has just killed Polonius and stashed the body, which is serious business indeed, but when asked where the body is hidden, Hamlet replies with two words only: “At supper.”  Claudius falls right into Hamlets verbal trap and asks, “At supper where?”  Hamlet then launches into one of his most vivid speeches and carries his pun through:

            “Not where he eats, but where he is eaten.  A certain convocation of politic worms are e’en at him.  Your worm is your only emperor for diet.  We fat all creatures else to fat us, and we fat ourselves for maggots.  Your fat king and your lean beggar is but variable service—two dishes but to one table. . . . A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king and eat of the fish that fed of that worm. . . . [And this is] how a king may go a progress through the guts of a beggar.”

            Basically, this is one of the biggest insults anyone could ever give a king, and Hamlet says it all so matter-of-fact like.  Hamlet has just told his father in law that worms are above him on the food chain, for when Claudius is dead the worms will eat him.  And a king and a beggar are the same meal to a maggot.  This is very insulting, as a king would never want to be thought of as being anything near a beggar.  And then Hamlet says that a beggar could be higher than a king on the chain if he eats the fish that ate the worm that ate the king.  Hamlet knows exactly what he is doing.

Hamlet is brilliant at come-backs and insults.  He always abuses and often accuses through his use of irony, metaphors, and puns.  He uses his language to drive his point hard into the ears of his victims, to make them squirm under his glance.  Hamlet’s language is what makes him who he is.  His language is what intimidates.