Analyzing Kevin Brockmeier's 'The Ceiling'

They just got a summer home and she wonders how they will afford it. The woman suffers from a “nervous depression” which was diagnosed by her husband. Her husband’s constantly belittles her illness, thoughts, and concerns. The woman thinks that being active, and having interesting work will help her illness. This is why she wants to work on the house and write. However, the treatment her husband gave her was to do nothing; so she sneaks up to the attic to write. She writes and fixates on the wallpaper, which she finds revolting. Throughout the story John fixates and tries to “treat” his wife’s illness, while the wife fixates and fantasizes at the wallpaper. She imagines a nursery and having a child. After a while she begin to see women creeping around the wallpaper, so she tried to get rid of them. She begins destroying the wallpaper, and not long after she thinks that she stuck in it too. She tries to escape herself, then John breaks through the locked door and

Due to their behavior, both men lead their wives to rebel. John’s controlling behavior causes the narrator to abandon him by going completely mad. First, she questions John’s pronouncements. The narrator believes that congenial work, with excitement and change would do her good (p.297). Next, she focuses on the wallpaper. She describes its negative features noting that patches are gone as if school boys wore it out (p.298). Upset by her husband’s actions, the narrator decides to begin writing in secret. . It reaches the point where the narrator has to hide her writings from him, because he gets upset if she even writes a word (p.298). -After time passes, we see her obsession grow. John seems to be oblivious to the narrator’s conditions, telling her “you know the place is doing you good” (p.299). She notices that the pattern is torturing (p.303). Finally, she begins to see a woman hiding behind the pattern (p.304). Looking for the woman in the pattern gives her something to look forward to (p.305). Ultimately she comes to believe that she is the woman in the wallpaper and wants to free herself. She begins peeling off the paper through the night, and by morning removes all the paper she could while standing (p.307). The narrator even begins to contemplate jumping out of the window, but does not

Entering the cabin was interesting at first I noticed every flaw within it. Every door, front, and back, was crazed. Every cut in the door was deep and perfectly carved. The door looked like it came

He doubts himself as to what is real and what isn't, did he just imagine a presence or is someone spiritually there? The author presents adversity through the spirit roaming the house; the woman in

In “The Ceiling,” by Kevin Brockmeier, a man’s marriage slowly collapses at the same time as the sky slowly descends. The ceiling is represented by the sky and also symbolizes the marriage of the main character. Brockmeier combines the man’s everyday marital problems with a completely foreign and New Weird concept such as an apocalyptic ceiling coming down from the sky. Melissa, the man’s wife, became progressively more detached and reserved. “It was clear to [him] at such times that she had taken herself elsewhere, that she had constructed a shelter from the wood and clay and stone of her most intimate thoughts and stepped inside, shutting the door. The only question was whether the person [he] saw tinkering at the window was opening the

The natural landscape and the winter storm in “The Painted Door” serve as a metaphor for Ann’s sense of isolation. The story uses the atmosphere and its surroundings to foreshadow the reader about the main character Ann’s emotions and mood. The farm that Ann and John live at, is very isolated from everyone. The closest neighbour they have is “five miles away” from them. Ann isolation is emotional and physical ,she especially feels isolated from the one person she’s suppose to feel the completely opposite about. In the story we learned that John is very hard working, he shows his love to Ann by working hard to get her the things she wants. The setting of the story, the environment surrounding Ann is isolated, depressing and cold. Ann feels emotionally blocked from the walls that John has put up.

John’s seemingly overwhelming need to ensure she is healthy mentally and physically, drives him to control all aspects of her life. He has his sister come to the mansion to keep an eye on his wife while he’s away in town with his patients. John chose the mansion for its isolation and privacy as he needs to have his wife healthy or it could affect his reputation,. He also picked the nursery as their bedroom as another way to have his wife secluded. The location of the room is on the uppermost level of the house with stairs are gated at the top. There are also bars on the windows as if it is a jail. There is busy ugly peeling yellow wallpaper around the room and they’ve moved in furniture from downstairs. She pleads with John to allow her to stay in the lovely room with veranda on the lower floor. He argues that the nursery with the windows, air and sunlight will be much better for her and he may need a second bed or room for himself. As a compromise, he tells her she could have the cellar whitewashed (239). Either place, the nursery or the cellar, is a prison, which the asylums of the time resembled. John is just containing his wife the only way he knows given his status as a physician. He loves and cares for her and needs her to recover and take care of the family. John is exerting himself by pushing her back into the role she has agreed to by being his

The flow of this narrative may seem jumpy or disconnected and illogical to some but to others who share a similar perspective the details seem like a flood of memories. Every detail and element is timeless and independent of the others while at the same time holding a deeper connection shared with all of the others. Each detail holds a value that isn’t noticed at first by others just like each of the items she mentions holds a value to her and her family but is lost on her husband who doesn’t share the same sense of home with her.

With good intentions, John controls his wife's life and makes all decisions for her, whether she agrees with them or not. His wife is full aware of the restrictions that her husband has imposed on her, but she is recessive to his control and often agrees with him. However, she fails to see “signs of her confinement: the bars at the window, the gate at the top of the stairs, steel rings on the walls, and the nailed-down bestead” (Korb). Because she is unable to escape from the isolation that her husband has kept her in, the woman seeks relief from the yellow wallpaper and she creates an imaginary relationship it. In fact, the worst thing her husband should not of done is give his unstable wife an object that is not appealing to focus on. In doing so, he has given her an opportunity to let her mind wonder and create objects that no one else sees. John, however, does not give any thought to this because after all, he thinks he knows what is best for his wife.

While the narrator recognizes the great care with which her husband is treating her she seems to constantly feel that she is being ungrateful. She calls herself out in her journal for being a “comparative burden” (Gilman) The room in which the narrator resides has a sturdy bed that is nailed to the floor. The narrator notes that there are bars on the windows and rings hooked into the wall. She wrongly assumes that this room was used as a nursery or gymnasium by the previous owners. As the reader, we are able to instill our own thoughts that this room was in fact built to house someone with a mental disorder. This begs the question of what the house really is, to contain such a room away from decent society.

The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Stetson has a simple beginning and a vivid, tremendous conclusion resulting in the most prestigious theme. Although, without the overall setting the document implies readers wouldn't be able to depict why things make such a drastic turn throughout. Being placed in a room known as, from the narrator's perspective, “dull enough to confuse the eye, … repelling in color, … and torn off in spots” (Stetson 650). viewers are able to begin to understand the basis of what life was like in the main character’s environment. Two important reasons as to which the setting influences the stories theme and point of view would involve its influence on the narrator and how it altered the moral of “The Yellow Wallpaper.”

Women in the early Victorian Era were very limited in their individualism as they were expected to conform to societal norms. The narrator craves freedom from the society she lives in, dreaming of having a room "downstairs that opened on the piazza and [has] roses all over the window." (Gilman 3) The narrator wants nothing more than to be able to express herself, yet she is held back as she reveals that "John would not hear of it." (Gilman 3) She knows her place is not to question her husband, so she finds other creative outlets that she keeps secret. She knows that these outlets of creativity are found, she risks her husband’s reputation as she would disrespect him. Throughout the narrative, the heroine acknowledges the importance of status in society. Even when her madness drives her to contemplate committing suicide, she says, “I wouldn't do it. Of course not. I know well enough that a step like that is improper and might be misconstrued.” (Gilman 15) Even in the most stressful times, it is the fear of ruining her husband’s reputation that keeps her from obtaining what she wants. Finally, the narrator breaks free of her confinement by tearing off the wallpaper, saying, "I've got out at

The two worlds affect each other, and finally, the imagination world conquers the real world. In the beginning of the story, the real world is dominant. Narrator likes the environment around the new house, and she says “The most beautiful place... There is a delicious garden!” And the room has not driven her mad yet, she just doesn’t like her room a bit. She wanted one downstairs that opened on the piazza and had roses all over the window. (Gilman, “The Yellow Wallpaper.”) Then, the narrator starts to suffer psychological repression. The narrator had abandoned her own social responsibility of motherhood (Johnson, "Gilman's Gothic Allegory”), and the narrator says “It is fortunate Mary is so good with the baby. Such a dear baby! And yet I cannot be with him, it makes me so nervous.” John stops narrator from fancy as well, he says with narrator’s imaginative power and habit of story-making a nervous weakness like hers is sure to lead to all manner of excited fancies, and that narrator ought to use her will and good sense to check the tendency. (Gilman, “The Yellow Wallpaper.”) John and Janie also forbid narrator’s passion, writing, Janie thinks it is the writing which made narrator sick! (Gilman) When the repression becomes stronger and stronger, the imagination world appears, and it is the first-time narrator figures out there is a woman in the wallpaper. It is a negative cycle, the more John ignores narrators feeling, and persuade her to accept the psychological

The people who knock on the kingdom's doors are sent away because of the couple’s diminishing confidence in others, and their irrational fear of things unfamiliar. As each wall rises, so does the fear of the unexplored. Desperate wife and husband revolve their life, along with their son’s life, around the protection of their home. Repercussions are beginning to rear their ugly heads. All of their protection and addictive behavior has lead up to this one fatal incident: “The bleeding mass of the little boy was hacked out of the security coil with saws, wire-cutters, and choppers” (Gordimer 5). Everything done to protect their home maimed their son, the only person innocent in the entire mess. This was the moment when all the emotional barricades they put up, fell apart. Facing beyond the walls is an analogy that represents how humans push away things we don’t understand, and how we do this to try and protect ourselves. In reality open mindedness is the reason life is filled with such beautiful

The narrator describes the entire mansion from the hedges to the gates, to the garden as “the most beautiful place ever”. All of it is beautiful except for the bedroom in which she is kept in, but again the room selection was not her choice. “I don’t like our room a bit. I wanted one downstairs that opened on the piazza and had roses all over the window, and such pretty old-fashioned chintz hangings! But John would not hear of it.” The room had previously been a child’s nursery, and had bars on the window. Though she recently had a child, her newborn did not occupy this nursery. The baby was looked after by Johns’ sister, something he had also arranged, and the narrator had very little contact with her child. As the story progresses, the narrator begins to fill more and more trapped by the room and completely obsessed with the “repellent, almost revolting” yellow wallpaper that surrounds her. In many of her secret