A Place To Speak

Her father was a drunk, her mother was mentally ill, all she had was her three siblings to struggle with her by her side. Throughout her life she wasn’t given all that she needed, and her parents put her in many dangerous

Sobbing is the only noise coming from Brianna Ayube’s Boston University dorm room. The cries are the only thing breaking the silence of her sleeping suite mates on this Saturday afternoon. As time goes on it grows more faint, until being interrupted by a muffled whisper. Eventually, the door opens, Brianna leads out a a girl younger than herself, who appears to be the source of the tears.

As she grows she discovers more of what she is capable of. Now she realizes that even though she is going crazy, she is still alive. Above all, she does not want to hide anymore and is not afraid to come out of her shell of guilt. “I don’t want to hang out in my hidey-hole anymore…. I don’t feel like hiding anymore” (p.191-192). She comments about not wanting to go back to her closet because she is not afraid of what might happen to her. In the same way she says that she, in no matter what condition, is still alive and breathing. “I have survived… Confused, screwed up but still here” (p.188). She is happy that she survived and that it does not matter if she is frustrated, she still has to stay for the ones who love her. In order which she has to take care of the old Melinda she was and let go of the Melinda she was after the party. After this realization she understood that she is not perfect but she can grow to love those

In this section, Jeannette Walls starts off, in the present time by telling the readers about her seeing her mom on the street, that she hasn’t seen in a long time. Jeannette uses emotional words like blustering and fretted to show that seeing her mom was an emotional time. Later in the section, she goes way back into her life to when she was three years old and when her family and her was living in the desert. She started off telling a story of when she was on fire. This story was intense, it was really dramatic on her parents part, her dad was screaming at her and the doctor a lot. Then she talked about when they moved to Las Vegas, her family lived in a motel room, which didn’t last long, they had to leave Vegas in a rush, because her dad was cheating in blackjack and the dealer found out. The last story in the section is where her family drove to San Francisco and stayed in another motel. One night her dad was at the bar, across the street. He left Jeannette and her three other siblings in the room. Jeannette got bored so she decided to play with fire and that let to a big disaster resulting in the whole hotel burning down.

One of MElinda’s ex-friends starts dating the guy who raped her. She sent anonymous letters trying to make her stay away from him. That proves she has grown, and she doesn’t want others to suffer because of him like she did. “I dig my fingers into the dirt and squeeze. A small clean part of me waits to warm and burst through the surface. Some quiet Melinda girl I haven’t seen in months. That is the seed I will care for,” (chapter 86, page 188-189). Melinda is facing her fears. She went to the place where it all happened. She wanted to have peace. She was ready to move on from the situation. The bottle was now open, and her feelings were flying

Instructed to abandon her intellectual life and avoid stimulating company, she sinks into a still-deeper depression invisible to her husband, which is also her doctor, who believes he knows what is best for her. Alone in the yellow-wallpapered nursery of a rented house, she descends into madness. Everyday she keeps looking at the torn yellow wallpaper. While there, she is forbidden to write in her journal, as it indulges her imagination, which is not in accordance with her husband's wishes. Despite this, the narrator makes entries in the journal whenever she has the opportunity. Through these entries we learn of her obsession with the wallpaper in her bedroom. She is enthralled with it and studies the paper for hours. She thinks she sees a woman trapped behind the pattern in the paper. The story reaches its climax when her husband must force his way into the bedroom, only to find that his wife has pulled the paper off the wall and is crawling around the perimeter of the room.

The Room itself represents the author’s unconscious protective cell that has encased her mind, represented by the woman, for a very long time. This cell is slowly deteriorating and losing control of her thoughts. I believe that this room is set up as a self-defense mechanism when the author herself is put into the asylum. She sets this false wall up to protect her from actually becoming insane and the longer she is in there the more the wall paper begins to deteriorate. This finally leads to her defense weakening until she is left with just madness and insanity. All of the characters throughout the story represent real life people with altered roles in her mind.

He also talks about the pink bear Bobby won for he at the fair in order to creates a sense of sadness. The way he room is sets up the reader to feel bad for the young girl taken before her

The mood of the story shifted from nervous, anxious, hesitant even, to tense and secretive, and shifts again to paranoid and determination. Her anxiousness is evident whenever she talks to John. She always seems to think for lengthy time when attempting to express her concerns about her condition to him. The mood shift from anxious to secretive is clear when she writes “I had no intention of telling him it was BECAUSE of the wall-paper.” (9). She wants no one to figure out the affect the wallpaper has on her and she wants to be the only one to figure out its pattern. The final mood shift to determination is obvious when she writes “But I am here, and no person must touch this paper but me – not ALIVE!” (11). She is steadfast in attempting to free the woman from the wallpaper. She even goes as far as to lock herself in the room to make sure that she is not interrupted. The major conflicts of this story are the narrator versus John over the nature of her illness and its treatment and the narrator’s internal struggle to express herself and claim independence. During the entire story her and John’s views about her treatment conflict with each other, especially when it comes to her writing. He even makes her stay in the room upstairs instead of in a prettier room downstairs that she would prefer. She often keeps her views to herself or writes them down in

Three and a half year ago, the car crash inflicted by the influence of alcohol left the driver, Elle White mentally disturbed. The author explains, Elle White suffers nightmares about the incident. She starts to remember memories of her and Karen, when she confesses, “I still have nightmares about the accident. I wake up in the middle of the night screaming about ambulance sirens and screams” (Hollander 1). She is unable to sleep as the accident haunts her. This clearly shows she is mentally stressed as she is unable to forget the traumatic accident. Similarly, she encounters flashbacks of the night of the accident. For instance, “I tilt back in my chair and sob into my hands as it all comes flooding back” (Hollander 2). Her flashbacks do not allow her to move on from the incident taking a toll on her brain. In regards to all these facts, she is dealing with depression as the vivid images enter her mind once again troubling her. Furthermore, she hallucinates about Karen, who is not present. Elle White tries to forget about Karen, however she describes, “Then, suddenly I can hear her soft, caring voice in my ear. “You can remember” she whispers, and there is so much ferocity in her tone I back away” (Hollander 2). This visual representation can be viewed as a reminder of her regret, to listen to Karen’s plead to drive drunk that resulted in losing Karen. This leaves Elle White to be guilty for that accident, deteriorating her mental stability. Therefore, the author adopts the sensitivity of Elle White’s mental condition after living through the

She has created herself this safe space, but she has done so at the cost of her grades, relationships and human connections. She doesn't consider being in this world is a great thing or life being beautiful. Even if years past, she accepts that the fact that she won't forget about that day. No matter what or where so goes, that sense of memory will come catching her in her own nightmares. The only place she can run away and camouflage is her closet.

The setting takes place in a living room characterized by darkness, a form of symbolism which constitutes the harsh reality of child abuse. A lamb in the corner represents hope for the abused girl juxtaposed by the darkness in the room. In the living room lies a pair of dark photographs hanging on the wall, a coffee table with black objects on top, checkered curtains surrounding the window

A trait that stands out in the book is the symptom of bodily memories. In Melinda’s case, during a frog dissection in her science class, she remembers the opening up and even says, “She doesn’t say a word. She is already dead. A scream starts in my gut – I can feel the cut, smell the dirt, feel the leaves in my hair.” (81). One of the other symptoms that Melinda has is self-harm. The first time that this is shown in the book, Melinda says this, “I open up a paper clip and scratch it across the inside of my left wrist. Pitiful. If a suicide attempt is a cry for help, then what is this? A whimper, a peep?” (87). Melinda also has a hard time talking to her parents about the rape to which she says, “How can I talk to them about that night? How can I start?” (72). Some victims recover from such a traumatic experience, while others don’t and live a lifetime of depression and must undergo intense therapy. In Melinda’s case, she finds redemption by talking to her parents and the guidance counselor, and putting her faith into her teachers, friends, and her art project at school. Because rape can affect anybody anywhere, everyone should be aware of the circumstances, and how to deal with it.

Forced to lie in bed all day and take it easy, the narrator becomes obsessed by the wallpaper and is drawn into trying to interpret it. She imagines a woman trapped within the paper. The narrator decides to strip off all of the wallpaper in her room, this is the moment of ultimate rebellion for the protagonist, and she is taking action towards independence. When John comes home to find the door locked, he begins freaking out. When he finally gets into the bedroom the narrator’s actions are so extraordinary and shocking that her husband faints. Through everything that is going on the narrator keeps creeping around the room in circles stripping all of the wallpaper off to free the woman that is trapped within.

My bedroom is a very special and different room. Thriugh the day it's a relaxing sanctuary but through the night where all my wildest dream and fantasy's can be let loose into the tender world.