Symbolism In John Clemson's That Room

The Great Gatsby is full of symbolism.The green light, the Valley of Ashes, and the eyes of Doctor T.J. Eckleburg are just a few examples. In Thomas C. Foster’s book, How to Read Literature Like a Professor, he writes about symbols and what they mean. The Rockpile in the literature book is another story that uses symbolism.

The bedroom can be substituted for the female body, and thereby represents "the enigma and threat generated by the concept of female sexuality in patriarchal culture" ("Pandora" 63). Concealing sexuality but also reifying the female body as and in the forbidden space of the bedroom, John invokes spatial and bodily associations of enclosure and mystery.

Solitude has made the speaker so uneasy that he is even "uncertain" about the "rustling of each purple curtain" (line 13).  Anyone who has spent time alone in a house at night knows this feeling.  His heart pounds as the curtains move, and now that some unknown force is knocking on the door he is even more terrified.  He tries to calm himself down by repeating that it is only "some late visiter" at his door and "nothing more" (lines 17-18).  The speaker has to gather all his courage just to investigate and greet his guest.  When he greets nothing but a dark space beyond the door, his mind races to conjure frightening "dreams no mortal dared to dream before" (line 26).  In his fright, he might have imagined it to have been a ghost, or someone with ill intent lurking in the shadows and waiting to catch him in surprise.  According to Edgar Poe in "The Philosophy of Composition," the character even possessed "the half-fancy that it was the spirit of his dead mistress that knocked" (1677).  This is seen as the speaker calls out the name of his beloved Lenore (lines 28-29).  That is the only positive possibility considered, and others, such as a caring and concerned friend, are not considered at all.  His isolation and depression have left him with nothing but negative feelings in every aspect.  These feelings include paranoia - the feeling that something or someone is out to bring one harm, as seen in the thoughts swirling in the

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.

While, the narrator refers to the room as a nursery, the circumstances suggest that the room was really used to “treat” women like the narrator from similar illnesses. The room has a bolted down bed that “is fairly gnawed” (Gilman 517), which the narrator bites a piece off of in frustration, suggesting it was under similar circumstances that the bed came to be gnawed. Therefore, the narrator’s creeping inside the room is the only way for her to be part of society, as in the room she can “creep smoothly on the floor, and [her] shoulder fits... so [she] cannot lose [her] way” (Gilman 518). She has to suppress and hide her true self in front of others, even her husband, as many women had to during those times.

In the short story, the writer tells a woman’s depression which guides her to break the limits and restrictions over woman. The woman who has no name or identity symbolises all women’s suppressed position in patriarchal society. In the story, the woman describes the house and her rooms with the words; ancestral hall, old-fashioned chintz, barred windows, heavy-immovable bed. The descriptions depict the house as patriarchy’s realm. Also, the yellow wallpaper’s surrounding of her shows the woman in a trapped, confined and repressed position. Not only the yellow symbolise the weakness, but the paper also

If this is so then Mr. Poe has based the seven different rooms as an allegation to William Shakespeare’s “Seven Ages of Men”. In this poem Mr. Shakespeare states, the seven ages of man are “the infant, the whining school-boy, the lover, the soldier, the justice, the lean and slipper’d pantaloons, and lastly second childishness and mere oblivion.” (Harcourt) This

These specific facts make the story more authentic and leave no space for doubts or ambiguities on the reader’s part. All the events taking place within the chamber, though terrifying, are coherent and in correspondence to the place in which the narrator is placed.

Within the Christian faith, there lies the belief that all mankind are born sinners and through their faith can seek redemption. This belief can be found in more detail within the Christian text known as the Bible. An example of this can be found in the Genesis chapter of the Bible which portrays that even the very first Humans ever to be created in God’s image, named Adam and Eve, defied God despite his pre-emptive warnings not too because of their natural tendency as humans to sin. Not only can one chose with their own will to disobey God but one’s faith can be easily swayed by the evils of the world therefore sin can forever bind them in chains for eternity. “Young Goodman Brown,” by Nathaniel Hawthorne, reveals a similar

The seven rooms in the house also conveyed stages in life ending with death. These rooms were set up from east to west. This meaning that the sun comes up in the east and goes down in the west, and death comes in the darkness. "In this chamber only, the color of the windows failed to correspond with the decorations. The panes here were scarlet--a deep blood color." The guest's avoided this room because it was a sign of death.

This paragraph is in the indicative mood, in which the writer makes a statement about their favorite room in a home. The first sentence introduces the topic of the paragraph by boldly stating what they do not have, and from this statement, the writer goes on to describe what his personal haven would look like. The writer does a good job of describing his ideal library and the audience can easily imagine it. Throughout the paragraph, the tone is casual, and the writer creates the feel of a personal conversation happening. An example of this is the interjection of “oh, the books” in the middle of a sentence. However, there is also the sense of sophistication, as indicated by the vocabulary of the writer. This gives the effect of implying the

Moving on to the interior of the house this is the most grotesque room in the house. the ceiling looks so rotted that it could cave in at a moments notice or the slightest bit of aggravation. The curtains will blow even in the stillest of wind, casting shadows in the night that will leave you begging for satan himself to take you to the underworld rather than to be in this room. Looking at the picture of Jesus, every time you look over at the picture it won’t allow you to forget your sins. Going back to the ceiling a chandelier hangs from the ceiling ready with sharpened glass to fall and impale its next victim. The footboard of the bed is so shiny that it lets you see the person you once were, but is now gone because of the souls that know

Trapped in the upstairs of an old mansion with barred windows and disturbing yellow colored wallpaper, the main character is ordered by her husband, a physician, to stay in bed and isolate her mind from any outside wandering thoughts. “The Yellow Wallpaper”, written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, describes the digression of the narrator’s mental state as she suffers from a form of depression. As the story progresses, the hatred she gains for the wallpaper amplifies and her thoughts begin to alter her perception of the room around her. The wallpaper serves as a symbol that mimics the narrator’s trapped and suffering mental state while she slips away from sanity reinforcing the argument that something as simple as wallpaper can completely

The doors are symbolic of imagination, and he is saying to unlock one's imagination. This

Over the first five years of Jack’s life, the room is where he finds safety and comfort. Jack was born in that room and lived with his mother there for the first five years of his life. He got accustomed to it and knew everything about it. Furthermore, you can see Jack showing his childish love to his basic belongings in the following quote. “‘Jack, it’s all frayed and stained from seven years…I can smell it from here. I had to watch you learn to crawl on that rug, to walk on it. You pooed on it once, the soup spilled, I could never get it clean.’ ‘Yeah I was born on her and I was dead in her too.’ ‘Yeah, so what I’d really like to do is throw it in the incinerator.’ ‘No!’” (Donoghue, 305). Some of the very few belongings from the room mean a lot to him and are memorable. For example, a rug is utilized in many different ways in his life. He was born on it and escaped from the room in it. It signifies the beginning and the end of his life in the room. Altogether, Jack finds out who he is by forming personal attachments to the room.