From Sleep Unbound Symbolism

“Her sleep like an untamed good object, like a soul in a body.” The eloquent and careful description of the daughter sleeping makes each and every person who reads this story feel connected to the scene. The comparison to a soul in a body shows the love behind the mother’s words. That even her daughter sleeping can be such a beautiful, angelic thing in her eyes. Through the description, the author makes the picture perfectly clear, and not just the scene, but what she thinks of her daughter. Since the author describes her daughter in such an angelic way, the love and affection that the mother has for her daughter is unquestionable.

Our dreams are objects of endless enchantment and mystery for mankind as far back as the beginning of time. The nocturnal

She has been confined to the former nursery in her family's colonial mansion to cure her of hysterical tendencies, a medical condition she was diagnosed with after the birth of her son (Gilman 1997: 1f.). The woman confides in her secret journal how her contact with the outside world has become strictly limited on account of her Doctor's recommendations, and how the treatment forces her to spend her days in a barely furnished room with only her own mind and the objects around her as companions (Gilman 1997: 1f.). One of the main objects she actively engages with during this period of isolation, other than the nailed down bed and her secret journal, is the old yellow wallpaper covering the walls around her (Gilman 1997: 1f.). While the woman's condition worsens gradually over the course of the entries she makes in her secret journal, her growing isolation and inactivity make her start to see movement in the patterns and holes of the old wallpaper (Teichler 1984: 61, Gilman 1997: 1f.). The character becomes absorbed by what she thinks she sees, and begins to directly interact with the things she sees in the paper, until she rips the paper to shreds, and violently frees what she sees, and subsequently, also herself from captivity (Teichler 1984: 61, Gilman 1997:

During the progression of the text Kelley actively mentions the reference to nighttime and sleep; the direct use of this reference is to make the audience aware that these distraught children are toiling away all night while adults lay in bed. Kelley makes this travesty obvious by stating “while we sleep little white gins will be working tonight in the mills,” which places the issue right in their lap. The underlying assertion that Kelley symbolically emphasizes through the references to sleep is that the American people are oblivious. The oblivious state of the American people in regards to the child labor crisis strongly resembles a church member sleeping during a sermon. The message of God is directly in front of the sleeping church member, yet their incognizant state is preventing them from being aware of the issues at hand, thus never purging themselves of sin. The sleep like state that the American people are in is Kelley’s method of preaching that they need to wake up and gain awareness of the child labor

When Jane describes the wallpaper, she is first repulsed by its color and the mere sight of it. Later, she describes that the sunlight reveals a “pointless pattern”

However, due to the narrator’s “imaginative power and habit of story-making”, her husband tells her, “a nervous weakness like mine is sure to lead to all manner of excited fancies, and that I ought to use my will and good sense to check the tendency, so I try.” (439). Being forbidden to have an imagination leaves the narrator emotionally distressed and irritated with feelings of oppression, but she ignores her husband’s ideas and occupies her imagination with the yellow wallpaper that surrounds the room, developing some sort of relationship with it that allows her to confess her suppressed feelings.

As we progress through the hypnagogic state, it is believed that our dreamlets become more complex and organised (Leaning, 1926; Kubie, 1944; McKellar & Simpson, 1954; Critchley, 1955, Sartre, 1972; Sherwood, 2002) until they appear as fully-fledged dreams (Ellis, 1897, 1911). For the purposes of this project I wanted to avoid the deeper stages of sleep — exposing myself only to the abstruse and richly varied images of the hypnagogic state as a passive observer. This dichotomy is expressed by Schwenger (2008): In the hypnagogic state observation is from a distance; the images appear as if projected up on a screen, and one is oddly detached, observing the phenomenon with interest and curiosity… [while] [d]reams wholly enfold us within their world; only at intervals do we manage to remind ourselves that this, this has to be, a dream. (p.

While the narrator describes what she calls a nursery type bedroom with barred windows and rings on the wall her ancestral home, the audience soon realizes that this is her bedroom in an old insane asylum. She stares for long periods at this patchy yellow wallpaper around her room. She thinks that the boys who previously lived in this home ripped the paper down the sides

Covered in wallpaper, the room is plagued by yellow, but not just any yellow, “a smouldering unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow-turning sunlight” (Mays 528). The picture painted by the narrator is a dull, mustard yellow that not only looks bad, but also is described as foul-smelling (Mays 534). Knowing the shade of yellow is crucial to analysis because every color and every shade of color has an impact in our emotions. Yellow is a color known for making the brain active in a number of different ways, depending on the shade, for example bright yellow makes promotes happiness and productivity. In contrast, dull yellow can promote depression and, “… can induce states of anxiety because it is considered to be such a rapid moving color,” which is interesting since it amplifies the narrator’s anxiety and depression, but opposes her lack of energy (Dena 2016). Also to point out is the relation of the narrator’s inner conflict with the cracks on the wallpaper: “It is obvious that the wallpaper’s ‘outrageous angles’ and ‘unheard of contradictions’ reflect [the narrator’s] own inner turbulence” (Mcdona 2016). The same cracks in the wall that end up driving the narrator mad also resembles the struggle going on in her mind, which was also aided by the color of the wall the cracks found themselves on.

The narrator’s descriptions of the room itself change with each entry. At first, it is merely irritating. She describes the color as “repellent, almost revolting; a smouldering unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow-turning light” (356). Any reliable, sane person would be irritated by an ugly yellow on their walls. By the second entry, she admits she has a growing fondness for the room, aside from the wallpaper. She starts to pick out

She claims that she hates, and wants to change the color to her husband; but he remains to keep it the same. In the short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” the narrators husband John says “don’t let it get the best of you.” She tried to deal with it but later in the

the room with yellow wallpaper. She imagines women like her being trapped behind the peeling

Macbeth   Sleep is a time when our minds are at rest and the subconscious comes out to play.  Sleep is oftentimes considered the place where we are able to see into our future and perhaps figure out how to solve our problems.  Sleep is also what heals and cures our minds and bodies.  Without sleep we slowly begin to disintegrate.  Mind and body no longer cooperate without the healing force sleep brings with it.  Shakespeare uses sleep both as a reward and as a consequence in his plays.  If a character is innocent and pure, he is allowed restful, fulfilling sleep.  If the character lacks these traits of goodness, he is condemned to a lifetime

Sleep is undoubtedly one of the most essential requirements for the human body to function properly. It plays a very important role in ensuring the wellness of the human body both physically as well as mentally. In fact, the importance of sleep is clear from the fact that it helps you in maintaining a good lifestyle throughout our entire lifetime. Not only does it help maintain our physical and mental health; rather it also helps in maintaining a decent and healthy lifestyle along with ensuring safety from a number of fatal diseases. It is usually said that the mood in which you wake up is largely dependent on the type of sleep you have been in. This in itself is a big proof of the importance of sleep in our lives. While sleeping, our body finally gets its share of rest and it also gets ample time in rejuvenating from all the wear and tear that it went through during the entire day. Not only this, the body is in its own working condition when we are sleeping as this is the time when it supports the healthy functioning of the brain as well as physical attributes of our body.

In Module 9 on the topic of Sleep and Dreams, was an interesting topic that was discussed in class as many people normally question why and how we dream. There isn’t a specific reason in how dreams are functioned but there are different interpretations and stereotypes that people think have meanings and others that don’t.