Miller And Miriam

B. Psychoanalytic critics were particularly interested in the horror genre for its uncanny characteristics. The story deals in the realm of the id, ego and superego, all fighting for control of the body. Past horrors are dealt with through the ego defence mechanism, with a lot dealing with repressed sexual tendencies. They also deal with mental health, a term not used during this era, with people who could have schizophrenia, bipolar, or a number of other name illnesses today.

Laurie S. Miller was an assistant professor at Clarion University. She was also the advisor The Clarion Call and the Society of Collegiate Journalists. Also was the former adjunct professor at Point Park University, former instructor at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, and West Virginia University, Morgantown, W.Va. As if that was impressive enough the late Miller was a former reporter for the Tribune-Review in Greenburg and worked at The Daily Courier in Connellsville. Miller of 320 Evergreen Drive, Mt. Pleasant, Pa. was born July 10, 1958. She leaves behind her loving son Dylan S. Ramsier of Greensburg, Pa., her mother Margaret E. Miller of Dawson, her sister Janice L. Covert of Jacksonville, Fla., and her two bothers Robert M. Miller and Scott E. Miller of Connellsville, Pa., and

In Miriam, by Truman Capote, amidst loneliness, Mrs. Miller becomes face to face with a young girl whose personality is the complete opposite to her own, a girl who is not afraid to ask for what she wants, while Mrs. Miller is recluse and avoids asking too much from other people. Gradually, as Miriam pushes Mrs. Miller over the edge, she begins to lose the polite, withdrawn part of herself who gives in to passivity. Realizing her faults, Mrs. Miller avoids any of her past characteristics and any qualities that remind her of Miriam. Through characterization, conflict, and tone, Truman Capote uses Miriam to reveal to the reader that self-preservation and detachment can tear a person apart, just as Mrs. Miller herself became a hollow shell of a person.

Throughout life we are asked to analyze multiple different things. For example, take kids in sports that are analyzing how they played in their previous game. Even some parents are known to overanalyze their kids events which often leads to them getting ejected. Often times we are asked to review stories or poems that we have read in English class and although at times that can be hard we are all slowly getting better at it. Robert Burns To a Mouse and To a Louse has multiple romantic philosophies.

This work opens with an older lady, Mrs. H.T. Miller, and her home being described. Capote soon creates a new character in a little girl whose name is yet to be known. The girl is first introduced as a minor character begging Mrs. H.T. Miller to purchase a movie ticket. Mrs. H.T. Miller soon asks the girl her name, the girl replies “Miriam”(Miriam 12), Mrs. Miller then replies, “Why isn’t that funny-my name ’s Miriam,

Miller is not feeling good that night and she is having strange dreams as a symbol

Psychological criticism has roots as far back as the fourth century BC, when Aristotle “commented on the effects of tragedy on an audience, saying hat by evoking pity and fear, tragedy creates a cathartic of those emotions” (Dobie 54). More recently, however, psychological criticism has been shaped and influenced by the work of Sigmund Freud. He developed theories concerning “the workings of the human psyche, its formations, its organization, and its maladies” that, while further refined by other theorists, are still the basis of the modern approach to literary criticism (Dobie 54). Freud’s theory of the tripartite psyche is used to classify and define the conscious and unconscious mind into the id, ego, and superego. When examined using this theory, Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, a dystopian novel about a patriarchal totalitarian government that has replaced the United States of America, is particularly interesting.

“…one could not be certain witness to anything: Miriam, so vividly there – and yet, where was she? Where, where?” In the fictional short story Miriam by Truman Capote, Miriam is a queer, mysterious little girl who haunts Mrs. H. T. Miller, a widow who lives alone and isolated in an apartment. Throughout the short story, Miriam remains strange and mysterious, and the story ends inconclusively, with the question “who is Miriam?” unanswered. But through evidence found throughout the text, readers are able to speculate who, or what, Miriam is. From my perspective and the evidence gathered, I believe Miriam is a supernatural being; a mischievous Angel of Death who likes to ‘play’ with her victims for a while before she takes them away to

In the story, the reader can note the use of indirect and direct characterization to visualize character Mrs.Miller before and after she met Miriam. Before she met Miriam “her interests were little and she had no friends to speak of” (page 1 Capote) To me, this examplifies that as said before, Mrs.Miller is quite lonely and blane although she has very little interests which means she’s probably home a lot and rarely goes anywhere which may cause her to become insane in the long run. Since Mrs.Miller is so isolated and rarely goes out there may be a possibility she could develop a sickness, such as schizophrenia which would cause her to imagine things and think of situations with Miriam that are just a fragment of her imagination. When the readers read the book they see that as Mrs.Miller went to the movie theatre and met Miriam, she changed to a more alive person than what she was before she met her, which in my opinion proves that maybe Miriam had changed Mrs.Miller by just talking to her for that short amount of time. Although, we see Miriam go to Mrs.Millers house later that day, she tries to get Mrs.Miller to give stuff to her and she also tries to get Mrs.Miller to kiss her as shes leaving. Later on that night Mrs.Miller is sick and goes to rest. The following morning Mrs.Miller stayed in bed “only rising once to feed the canary and drink a cup of tea” (page 8 Capote) This means that Mrs.Miller had gotten a little shooken-up on how Miriam showed up last night, so maybe that’s just the beginning of her insanity.

One thing that is particularly crucial to the development of an understanding of the wider story line is the fact that Miriam is also Mrs. Miller’s first name. The fact that the two main characters in the story share the same name is indicative of their relationship. Another key moment in the story is when, shortly after meeting Miriam, Mrs. Miller

Miller doesn’t know who or what Miriam is, she begins to question her own identity. Miriam was a small disruption to Mrs. Miller’s “routine” and spun her whole world into a tailspin: “The sofa loomed before her with a new strangeness: its vacancy had a meaning that would have been less penetrating and terrible had Miriam been curled on it” (Capote 14). She is beginning to think that maybe it would be better if she had company after all. However, “her head was unbearably heavy; a pressure weighted the rhythm of her heartbeat” It maybe too late for Mrs. Miller to regret her years of solitude (Capote 7). As the story progresses, it seems like her health is dropping rapidly until “she knew she had found again the person who lived in this room, who cooked her own meals, who owned a canary…” (Capote 15). When Mrs. miller thinks she has regained the identity she wants her world stops spinning, even though it may not be the identity she truly

Freud’s theories have launched what is now known as the psychoanalytic approach to literature. Freud was interested in writers, especially those who depended largely on symbols. Such writers tend to tinge their ideas and figures with mystery or ambiguity that only make sense once interpreted, just as the analyst tries to figure out the dreams and bizarre actions that the unconscious mind of a neurotic releases out of repression. A work of literature is thus treated as a fantasy or a dream that Freudian analysis comes to explain the nature of the mind that produced it. The purpose of a work of art is what psychoanalysis has found to be the purpose of the dream: the secret gratification of an infantile and forbidden wish that has been repressed into the unconscious (Wright 765).

Reading a narrative from a psychoanalytic perspective can prove to be a sometimes frustrating experience. Psychoanalysis often disregards the actual texts and verbal context of a piece of literature in favor of the Freudian and Lacanian ideas, which seek to find encrypted motifs in the depths of every creation in order to reveal the author’s unconscious mind. Nevertheless, the critiques of psychoanalytic interpretation of literature claim that such interpretations focus on the content of the text at the expense of the literary form and temporal dimension, which can reduce the literary plots to lifeless machinations. Furthermore, psychoanalytic interpretation of a text may tell us less about the author’s unconscious mind and more about the

Character development within novels with complex plot structures proves to be a difficult task necessitating the author to add their own inner thoughts and experiences to weave a more realistic story. The historical background of a writer helps glean on information about that person’s unconscious and subconscious processes that become apparent within an author’s literature. As the author develops their thoughts throughout a novel attempting to paint a clearer picture of their purpose, their own persona becomes a part of the literature. Psychoanalytic theory attempts to further this claim by taking information from one’s childhood, inner taboo thoughts and hidden motivations, and synthesizing them for a better picture of the author’s

Psychoanalytic criticism is a type of literary criticism that analyzes and classifies many of the forms of psychoanalysis in the interpretation of literature. As the Concise Oxford Dictionary defines psychoanalysis, as a form of therapy that is concluced ‘by investigating the interaction of conscious and unconscious elements in the mind' (Barry 96). One of the most popularized