Yellow Wallpaper the Two Stories

¶ … Yellow Wallpaper

The two stories that are reviewed and analyzed in this paper have common themes with very diverse characters, conflicts and settings. A shared theme being illustrated through the characters, within the settings, and within the conflict, is a sense of human confusion, emotional chaos and certainly, a degree of madness. The theme of imprisonment is evident, too, in very different ways within very dramatically different settings. Characters are being in custody in a sense, locked into a situation from which one can't get out, is part of the conflict that haunts protagonists in these stories.

The differences and contrasts couldn't be more stark: one story places men trudging through slime and shit searching for a dead colleague while battling in a crazy war; the second story places a misdiagnosed woman (battling a phantom illness) in a room that contributes to her mental confusion. And yet, both stories' themes revolve around madness and imprisonment. This paper will present those themes and assert that the fictionalized themes of madness and imprisonment are poignant and yet revealing in the sense of real life situations that happen to real people.

The basis of the review: Meanwhile, a review of each story is presented in terms of why the characters and their settings are metaphors and symbols for madness and incarceration, and the brief review will shed light on what the conflict adds to the reader's consciousness. A narrative will follow involving comparisons between stories in terms of the themes juxtapositions and similarities.

In the Field -- Review of Conflicts and Ironies

In the Field by Tim O'Brien builds tension through descriptions of war and the madness of killing and the inutility of wallowing around in a "shit field" (2392). The mind's image of eighteen men wading side by side, ready to be attacked yet heads bowed as they slosh through a hideously unsavory field is numbing and repulsive for a reader who had never been subjected to such repugnant circumstances. O'Brien writes, "…the rains had fallen without stop…and the muck had now risen thigh-deep in the field along the river." There is a great deal of dialogue between the characters in this story that helps pick up the tempo of the dark themes and humanize the characters at the same time.

Here they were, in a living hell, wallowing around not just in muck and rain and death, but metaphorically they were wallowing around in an unwinnable war against the looming madness of it all. They are lost yet locked into a sea of human excrement while searching for one of their own brethren, who is a victim of the unspeakably awful quagmire's stink and ooze.

"In the Field" offers the muck and rain and misery as a metaphor for war. Time and time again the dialogue and the narrative are cloaked in imagery of darkness, uncertainty, and insanity. "The rain was the war and you had to fight it," O'Brien writes (2392). In searching for their dead colleague Kiowa the soldiers were actually lost as far as their identities goes. They were victims in so many ways, being thrust into a jungle war they clearly were not prepared for.

"In his hooded poncho, everything caked with mud, the boy's face was impossible to make out," O'Brien explains (2392). As they searched for Kiowa somewhere beneath that awful field of slop and ooze, "…The filth seemed to erase identities, transforming the men into identical copies of a single soldier…" (2392). Men without faces, men without identities, mud erasing their otherwise solid humanity. O'Brien has created the ubiquitous universal soldier looking for a lost colleague; readers know that lost colleague was brave and that his father taught Sunday school. Led by a Lieutenant Cross, the search goes on though its inevitable ending is already known. Still bodies must be retrieved so the body bag can carry the cadaver home. "Cross" is perhaps being used by O'Brien as a symbol of Christianity, of salvation, of a spiritual power that is now lost in the impossible mud and shit of war -- a strong juxtaposition to the evil of mindless killing in a dark confusing war.

O'Brien's use of dialogue allows the story to be told by the characters who are the bread and butter of the story. The narrator is important and sets the table for the movement of plot and theme, but then the dialogue comes in and brings the main meal for the reader to feast on. This is important in O'Brien's story, because so much has been written about war, from so many authors (Hemingway comes to mind immediately), and even the Vietnam war has been fictionalized numerous times. And so allowing the soldiers to speak for the author, and actually speak for humanity, is an effective tool in this story. The voices represented through the dialogue in this story are the voices of a million soldiers in five thousand wars, and they spend time wondering how they got there and are trying to stay alive in a scene scarred with death and dying.

But while Lieutenant Jimmy Cross is feeling guilty about his lost platoon mate, and wondering what he should say to Kiowa's father, the dialogue allows the reader to get a double dose of irony; all the irony in the world is there for the taking because of the dead colleague and the stinking rising river of human excrement -- and on top of that irony the dialogue makes light of the irony of the situation -- a story within a story, an irony within an irony.

"Wasted in the waste," Azar quips, "A shit field. You got to admit, it's pure world-class irony" (2393). The reason they had to endure this misery -- besides the raw and basic facts of war, you go where you are told to go, even though Vietnamese women ("mamma-sans") had warned the GIs that it was "Evil ground" -- is that the enemy had launched a mortar attack. "The field just exploded. Rain and slop and shrapnel, it all mixed together, and the field seemed to boil" (2395). It was raining water from the sky, and fire from the enemy.

When they actually locate the body of Kiowa, the soldiers continue to complain about the place: "Camps us in a toilet. Man don't know shit," says Sanders (2394). Indeed Kiowa had been killed because of the overflowing river and all the mud and shit. Just like war itself, where there is a river of violence washing in on foot soldiers, never ending and sometimes smelling of death (which is worse than "shit" but still ugly and awful).

Indeed, here they were in the most miserable place in the world led by a First Lieutenant (Cross) who had "never wanted" the responsibility of leading me through a field of shit. "Military matters meant nothing to him…he was unprepared…twenty-four years old and his heart wasn't in it" (2394). The irony of being young and too young to be sent out to die and yet here was Cross, stuck in a killing field where at any moment he could be another statistic.

The Yellow Wallpaper -- Review of Conflicts and Ironies

In "The Yellow Wallpaper" there is sense of madness and conflict surrounding the narrator's mental health. Not unlike the war that Lieutenant Cross is fighting, the protagonist in The Yellow Wallpaper is also in a battle, but of a different kind. She is battling to be believed, battling for her sanity. The narrator's husband and brother are both doctors. Doctors in the 19th Century were like Gods, and their words were considered the bible of medical knowledge. Like the generals and politicians who sent young men off to war, and who had the final word on morality and justice, doctors in the 19th Century were the authority figures and if they happened to be wrong and a patient suffered, few dared question their right to make mistakes.

This is by way of offering some important psychological and historical background into the condition of the narrator. Indeed, the medical condition known as "hysteria" in the 19th Century was a female issue that related to her emotional condition. It was actually a case of doctors not understanding what women were really going through. Carroll Smith-Rosenberg writes in the introduction to The Yellow Wallpaper (p. 90) that "Hysteria as a chronic, dramatic and socially accepted sick role" could lead to some "alleviation of conflict and tension."

Smith-Rosenberg insists that "hysteria" was largely a misdiagnosed situation in which doctors didn't really know what was happening to the female.

The narrator is having a near-constant stream of consciousness interaction with the reader, building up believability and support for her desire to be set free. Within the unquoted monologue the narrator weaves themes that connect the reader to her seemingly balance approach to an unbalanced situation. When dialogue does appear, it is almost shocking to the senses of the reader, and jolts the reader into alertness, looking for clues as to how fast the narrator is sinking into deeper madness.

Similarities in Theme in the Two Stories

Prisoners: Both of these stories place the characters in a kind of prison. On the first page of Yellow Wallpaper the narrator has already explained that the reason she doesn't get well is because of her husband. An irony of huge magnitude, to say that one's husband is a physician and that "perhaps" that is the reason "I do not get well faster" (3). But then, she adds, this is "a dead paper and a great relief to my mind." How can a doctor (whether one's husband or not) possible cure a patient if the doctor doesn't believe the patient is ill? She is imprisoned by the wrongful prognosis of her husband. And she cannot be bailed out from this veritable jail cell she is in because she has "schedule prescription for each hour in the day." This imprisonment does not suit her, and yet she is so beholden to John, her husband, the authority figure (and the judge and jailer) she feels "…basely ungrateful not to value it more" (5).

She writes (4) that she is "absolutely forbidden to 'work' until" she is healthy again. This is placing her in confinement, keeping her from enjoying her life as she envisions it. She is even prohibited from thinking about writing, which is her skill. But "…John says the very worst think I can do is think about my condition, and I confess it always makes me feel bad" (4). She has been placed in a no-win situation, removed from the things she enjoys (writing), but she meekly accepts the sentence that has been delivered by the "judge" -- her doctor husband, and her doctor brother, who is by the way "…also of high standing" and agrees with her husband that she should be confined to her bed (4).

The narrator is stuck in a room with that hideous yellow wallpaper, yes, but moreover it is a room with actual bars on the windows. Probably those bars were intended to prevent children from falling out of the window, she surmises; and the wallpaper is so bad, its "sprawling, flamboyant patterns committing every artistic sin" (5). She wanted to be placed where she could see the piazza and the roses by looking out the window, but no, John has her in an upstairs room with bars on the windows. The symbolism is powerful in this respect; readers clearly realize the author is creating a theme of incarceration, captivity, and melancholy.

John the doctor husband had said at first that he would install new wallpaper, but later changed his mind saying "nothing was worse for a nervous patient than to give way to such fancies" ("fancies" here is ironic as well since ugliness in a room is a terrible fate for any woman, and to minimize her desire for beauty, one of the hallmarks of being a woman, is cruel). And John advances his prison warden mentality by rationalizing the reasons that he would not go along with new wallpaper in this prison cell; namely, once she was able to talk him into fresh inviting wallpaper, the next thing she would want would be a "heavy bedstead, and then the [removal of the] barred windows…" and more (6).