Our Fantasies Can Be More Powerful than the Universally Accepted Version of Reality

In her work, “This is Our World,” Dorothy Allison shares her perspective of how she views the world as we know it. She has a very vivid past with searing memories of her childhood. She lives her life – her reality – because of the past, despite how much she wishes it never happened. She finds little restitution in her writings, but she continues with them to “provoke more questions” (Allison 158) and makes the readers “think about what [they] rarely want to think about at all” (158).

During the nineteenth and twentieth century there was a number of changes made in America. Woman were looked at as less than back then and to a certain degree they still are today. There was a number of women that died or went insane because of the standards that they had to meet in order to be considered good women. In this research paper I will talk about the experience of the narrator of The Yellow Wallpaper and Blanche DuBois from the story A Streetcar Named Desire. It will be shown within these pages how the moral and societal standards for women were far different than they were for men, and how the standards changed over the years. Furthermore it will be shown how this effected the women of those two stories.

In most of Flannery O’Connor’s short stories a number of characters have a hard time seeing an ultimate reality in their life. They tend to have a distorted grasp on reality but not all in the same way. In the story “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” the Misfit and the Grandmother are prime examples. The actions and the way of life of the Misfit and Grandmother are mostly due to the fact that they are living in an false reality where they are in their own little world, where in the Misfit’s world everything goes with no worry of repercussion in the Grandmother’s case she can do no wrong because she has a false perception of what is right.

In the words of Sigmund Freud, “The interpretation of dreams is the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind.” The legendary psychologist saw dreams as an avenue to study one’s underlying motives for action. Similarly, in literature one finds striking significance from the illusions of protagonists that often predict the nature of one’s psyche. Two such examples present themselves in Blanche, from Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire, and the grandmother, from Flannery O’Connor’s A Good Man is Hard to Find. The former tale follows a lady without a home who finds herself reliant on her belligerent and bestial brother-in-law. The latter traces a family’s road trip South and their encounter with a wanted fugitive. Both Blanche and the grandmother find themselves tethered to their idealistic and often times hypocritical fantasies which signify their underlying mental instability and foreshadow their eventual ruinations. Williams and O’Connor examine their protagonists’ delusions through gender, clothing, and nostalgia.

Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” and The Matrix, both deal with defining the concept of what is really “real.” In both stories, the main characters are trapped in a false reality, which essentially is all they have ever known. In order to shake the false reality, both must experience an essential “culture shock” and take a journey outside of the reality they are living in. But sometimes, its hard to face the true reality. The greatest struggle for both characters is distinguishing between what is perceived as reality and what is reality.

I seem Imagination as a different type reflection of the reality. I believe our life is based on reality, but imagination is a tool to help people realize the reality. Life is full of imagination, human imaging things like born ability. In fact, people through imagination to realize and get close to others. Imagination also help historians to realize what happened in the past, how people‘s feeling through analysis and replace them into the situations. However, numerous people believe that imagination only means the opposite to the reality, due to imagination is a path to help people escape from the truly life when there are a lot of frustrations and confusions

The truth is sometimes a very frightening thing. In the stories "A Streetcar Named Desire" and “The Lady with the Dog” both seem to demonstrate dominant men trying to manipulate the women in their lives. However, only one changed his toxic ways. The author demonstrates through symbolism and narrating that. While Stanley from “A Streetcar Named Desire” and Dmitri Gurov from “The Birthmark" are comparable in their blatant disrespect for women, they are distinctive concerning love and willingness to develop.

Imagine a world where toys are alive, where superpowers are an average thing to have, a world in which one can do whatever their imagination allows them too. In this sense, magical realism is like a dream, in a dream anything can happen, and while one is dreaming, they feel as if it is all a reality, as if they are actually living in these alternate versions of existence. This real world setting is what separates magical realism from other fiction-related genres. Though traces of magical realism date back to the 1700’s, it was really only recognized as a genre in the twentieth century. There are many fundamental elements that separate magical realism from other fictional stories.

It is common for people to dream a wild dream only to find that when they achieve their goal, their perception of the dream was not the reality of it. This could make the reader think of the story in contrast to their own life, contemplating whether their goals for the future may or may not be warped by what they want to believe. On the other hand, Lovecraft’s take on the theme was more of a philosophical and supernatural one, similar to the rest of his writings. Philosophers have, for years, tackled a similar idea to Lovecraft’s on whether or not what we perceive as reality is real, such as in Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. This theory describes the idea that what we perceive as reality is merely shadows on a wall, like a dream, and the real reality is in what creates the shadows and what lies beyond them.

One’s inner metamorphosis begins with the general disillusionment with one’s surrounding environment. Such a disillusionment can come in quick succession, as with that of Esther Greenwood in The Bell Jar, or more gradually, as that of Antoine Roquentin in Nausea. The Bell Jar begins with the reader experiencing this subconscious disappointment along with Esther as she struggles along her dream internship at a fashion magazine in New York City. “I was supposed to be having the time of my life,” (Plath 2) she quips at one point. Her ideal cosmopolitan life began to reveal its rotten insides to her as she spends her summer in the fashion sphere of New York. Her disdain for this lifestyle begins as she witnesses her fellow interns’ gratuitous exploits, “When I woke up… I think I still expected to see Doreen’s body lying there in the pool of vomit like an ugly, concrete testimony to my own dirty nature,” (24) continues with her sexual experiences that fall far short of her expectations, “…he just stood there in front of me and I kept on staring at

In order to function effectively within a community, some degree of realism is always required. Conversely, idealism is arguably a necessity in order to attain the exceptional status of individuality within the community. In Lucy Maud Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables, the relevance of both concepts and the way in which they change and are applied are explored within numerous characters. Anne Shirley embraces her idealism near the point of it consuming herself in order to cope with the harsh realities of her bleak past and uncertain future. In many cases, her initial fixation on the extraordinary clashes with the ordinary rigidity of the Avonlea lifestyle. Eventually, a greater mutual understanding surfaces in which Avonlea

Many of us are often seen living in a fantasy, an imagination that is unrestricted by reality. Reality is the state of things which actually exist and unlike fantasy is usually less attractive to the subconscious mind. Fantasy is a world that many of us wish to live in because we either fail to see or choose to accept reality, which is a form of escapism. Escapism is defined as the tendency to seek distraction and relief from unpleasant realities, especially by seeking entertainment or engaging in fantasy. In this escapism world we can choose to see and do what our heart desires. This is also known as a place of illusion, where we are able to manipulate the way of life in which we envision. In our mind, though subconsciously, fantasy is

In the film “Bears Discover Fire” one may preserve the film as fansty. In the film, there are parts of the story line that truly cannot happen during this time on earth. For example, when the bears are standing upright. In this scene one may think to themselves that this is something that can/ will not happen. Today’s bears are not capable of standing upright and walking. Another example of a fantasy can be seen when the bears are walking around with fire. This scene shows signs of a fantasy because, a normal bear would not be capable of walking around with fire in their paws and setting up campfires. A final example of a fantasy in the film can be seen when, the grandma, Junior and Bobby are having a campfire with the bears in the woods. This is a scene that one might fantasize over. That is because it is not normal for humans to be close to a live bear and simple have a campfire with them. At this point a normal bear would have been frightened

This episode also shows a clear distinction between those with high-ratings and those who do not. This dichotomy is similar to the nature of being the Other as discussed by Simone de Beauvoir and Frantz Fanon. Each of these existentialists focused on applied existentialism- feminist existentialism and Africana existentialism respectively. Yet they share a common concept, one’s place is society is not determined by one’s essence so much as external factors like gender or race. The same can be applied to the rating system that is a core element of Lacie’s lived experience. In The Second Sex, Simone remarks on the female lived experience stating “In actuality the relation of the two sexes is not quite like that of two electrical poles, for man represents both the positive and the neutral, as indicated by the common use of man to designate human beings in general; whereas woman only represents the negative” (Beauvoir, Page xxi). While in Lacie’s world there is certainly more

Silently, my senses begin to abandon their rationale…who is to say then what is real? The world that we live in, the reality, which we are a part of, is small and thus limited. That is why, in his infinite capacity for potential improvement, man created fantasy. Fantasy is BIG! To a certain extent it is more imaginative, more exciting, and more fun. Fantasy is like a lake where man throws all his ideas and dreams, and then he dives on in from the springboard of imagination. So, jump in to the lake. Why not? Just make sure that when you jump in to the lake you know how to get back from where you came from. Because, no matter how big a fantasy is, to the point that it somehow changes our perception of what is