Assignment 2: Discuss the theme of entrapment and desire for freedom
in the Bird in the House by Margaret Lawrence
Margaret Laurence’s A Bird in the House, is a collection of short
stories that chronicles a young girl’s journey from the innocence of
childhood to the experience of adulthood. The daunting world of
knowledge, pain, turmoil, injustice and cruelty is revealed by slow
degrees to finally unveil existence as we know it. Existences that we
willingly embrace yet are simultaneously repelled by. A number of
themes and sub themes are established in the novel, but perhaps the
most prominent is the theme of entrapment and the desire for freedom.
Physically, socially, emotionally and spiritually we are all bound by
certain laws – but the desire for freedom can only arise when we allow
either a certain laxity or an additional rigidness to the boundaries
that define our very being. We can be free only if we have been
trapped – in order to appreciate the liberating nature of freedom we
must be pushed to the most extreme of our entrapment, and this is what
Laurence aims to do in A bird in the House.
The Brick house is a central metaphor for physical and emotional
entrapment. It is a monument to Grandfather Connor, the lad who walked
300 miles “without a cent in his pocket” to Manawaka. His house is
described as “A crusader’s embattled fortress in a heathen wilderness”
where even the flowers have adopted a nature congruent to the house:
“the helmeted snapdragons stood in precision.” The military language
employed reflects Grandfather Connor’s attitude towards others,
towards himself, towards life. Harsh and temperamental he tells his
brother Dan: “Ill be anyway I please in my own house”. The “Brick
Hous...
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...iew of God she has since her father’s death:
Distant, indestructible, totally indifferent. The bird trapped between
the two layers of her window is not simply an omen of death but an
image of trapped humanity, apparently capable only of meaningless
movements. The empurpled religious visions of Noreen are as
unacceptable to Vanessa as the rigid Puritan code of Grandmother
Macleod. Vanessa reacting to her father’s death by striking Noreen is
also the bird, blindly battling to get out.He is not in heaven because
there is no heaven.And it doesn’t matter, see? It doesn’t matter?
However she says later’ itmattered bu there was no help for it.” As I
watched the smile of the girl turn into scorched paper,I grieved for
my father as though he had just died. She grieves for her Grandmother
and wonders whether her ‘ransomed soul’ ever did find rest beyond the
river.
Joseph P. Reilly filed a complaint against Gwynne G. Zisko, Esq., on or about April 8, 2016. Reilly asserts that Zisko violated the Rules of Professional Conduct by serving a subpoena on his employer, the Plymouth County Sheriff’s Department. The details of the case relating to the subpoena will be discussed further on in this report. Within the complaint, Reilly alleges that Zisko has violated Mass.R.Prof.C. 3.4, as well as 4.4.
Filban said the home had a yard that was overgrown. “The trees and bushes were overgrown, and the house was dark,” Filban said. “And the windows were covered.” She and her sister slept in the front bedroom of the house. She remembers the bedroom having a large, floor-to-ceiling window. She said you could look out and see the wra...
Thaddeus Stevens was a congressman from Pennsylvania who was a member of the House of Representatives during of the time of the Civil War and Reconstruction. He was the leader of a radical wing of the Republican Party called the Radical Republicans. Stevens was one of the most powerful members of the House of Representatives who focused much of his political life on civil rights. He believed in equality for all men whether they were rich or poor, no matter what color their skin. Stevens was instrumental in drafting the 14th Amendment to the Constitution which was meant to protect the civil right of all Americans regardless of their race or gender. He was nicknamed the “Great Commoner” because he championed the plight of the everyday man. Stevens also advocated very harsh policies toward the southern states during the time of Reconstruction. Even though many of his ideas were controversial, he was regarded as a very important national figure during and immediately following the Civil War.
Under the orders of her husband, the narrator is moved to a house far from society in the country, where she is locked into an upstairs room. This environment serves not as an inspiration for mental health, but as an element of repression. The locked door and barred windows serve to physically restrain her: “the windows are barred for little children, and there are rings and things in the walls.” The narrator is affected not only by the physical restraints but also by being exposed to the room’s yellow wallpaper which is dreadful and fosters only negative creativity. “It is dull enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounced enough to constantly irritate and provoke study, and when you follow the lame uncertain curves for a little distance they suddenly commit suicide – plunge off at outrageous angles, destroy themselves in unheard of contradictions.”
Poe continues to develop his point that no one escapes death through the setting. Not only does he use the exterior and how it was constructed to tell what precautions P...
She stares at the wallpaper all day and all night because of her insomnia, and she ultimately determines that “Behind that outside pattern the dim shapes get clearer every day. It is always the same shape, only very numerous. And it is like a woman stooping down and creeping about behind that pattern.” (Gilman 11) In time, the image appears clearer to the narrator. Th...
An Excerpt from American physician, Charles Caldwell’s: Thoughts on the Original Unity of the Human Race Caldwell, Charles. Rev.ed., Cincinnati: J.A. and U.P. James, 1852
The descriptions used now are as far away from death as possible. "The delicios breath of rain...the notes of a distant song...countless sparrows were twittering...patches of blue sky...." All these are beautiful images of life , the reader is quite confused by this most unusual foreshadowing until Louise's reaction is explained.
Lastly, she finally goes completely mad and starts to peel off the wallpaper and wanting to jump out of the window but, it is barred. “Then I peeled off all the paper I could reach standing on the floor. It sticks horribly and the pattern enjoys it!” “I am getting angry enough to do something desperate. To jump out the window would be admirable exercise, but the bars are too strong to even try.” (320). The last quote suggests that she’s thinking about committing suicide because she’s gone crazy with just being in that one room. Sometimes people would commit suicide by jumping from tall
My report will be on James Bryant, I am not related to him but by reading about him I can tell he was awesome. He was born in Wales in 1857 and when he was only five years old he left England in a emigrate ship. His mother’s name was Hannah Reese, his father was James Bryant, and he had one sister named Margaret they first arrived in New York several weeks after they left and they were in the United States of America.
One of the most crucial conflicts that happens often in society is the lack of respect to people. Most often the role of intelligence plays a major part in the perceiving of one’s character. No one has better expressed this message than Daniel Keyes as he displays these qualities in the book Flowers for Algernon. From his personal encounters in life, Keyes has created a moving story that has inspired many readers and has brought light into many obscure topics.
An allegory is a popular type of writing style in which the characters and events symbolize occurrences that may happen in human life and can have hidden meanings. Allegories typically have moral or political meanings. Throughout The Masque of the Red Death, several symbols and objects prove to have a hidden meaning behind them relating to the theme. The author includes an ebony clock and several rooms to show that death is inevitable. There is an ebony clock in the last room of Prince Prospero’s castle. The color of the last room is black, black represents death. The meaning behind the clock in the last room is to show that time is ticking down towards your death and it is unavoidable. Poe states, “And then, for a moment, all is still, and
In her bedroom, Granny is literally confined to her deathbed, revealing to the reader that death is approaching. Granny speaks of a longer life from the place her life will end, emphasizing that death could come at any moment. As her mind starts deteriorating, she begins confusing the past with the present. At one time, she remembers having to dig hundreds of postholes after her husband’s death, and enlightens the reader with the fact that “digging post holes changes a woman;” (Porter 85). The change from a genteel lift to one of harsh labor representing another type of death. She worked hard for years, foreshadowing the time she will no longer need to work. Consequently, since she familiarized herself with hard work, accepting that her death is effortless is very difficult for Mrs. Weatherall. In the end, nighttime draws near, and Porter uses the time of day to symbolize mortality; the end of day is not only passing so is Granny’s life. Similar to the candle beside her bed, Granny draws her last breath to blow out light of her own life. Just as day has its end, so does every
Her environment feels to her very much like a prison with her husband merely pushing aside her feelings of distaste, believing that giving in and listening to her desires will only worsen her condition. When the narrator wishes for the walls to be fixed, her husband refuses, stating “nothing was worse for a nervous patient than to give way to such fancies. After the wall-paper was changed it would be the heavy bedstead, and then the barred windows, and then that gate at the head of the stairs, and so on” (Gilman 3). The narrator feels entrapped by the house’s bars and gates, but her husband in no way gives her feelings consideration and he refuses to change her environment, therefore keeping her imprisoned within the house, the gilded cage, and her mind. Although the house illustrates feminist views a great deal, the greatest setting to emphasize those views is the wallpaper in the bedroom; “At night in any kind of light, in twilight, candlelight, lamplight, and worst of all by moonlight, it becomes bars!” (Gilman 7). The pattern and the paper itself restrains her, although not physically like the bars on the windows or the gates on the doors, the wallpaper represents a psychological restraint, a mental prison. All of her thoughts are devoted entirely to the paper; she is obsessed with it, unable
When the narrator and her husband settle into a temporary house, she is uneasy about the home and feels it is haunted. As her husband laughs at her thoughts, she does not mind as she comments, “but one expects that in marriage” (Gillman 647). In the home, she is bothered by the bars on the windows, but more troubling to the narrator is the yellow wallpaper in the bedroom. The narrator believes the yellow wallpaper is affecting