Sally's perception is the lense that we see the story through, but without it we wouldn't have a vision at all. So we have to take her reality and decide which truth we want to believe. Ed's truth of a middle-age well-off physician with a beautiful, young wife who "doesn't care much for anything" except the nice routine of his life. Or Marylynn's perception of a liberal, independent and confident woman who doesn't need a husband to enjoy her life. Or finally Sally's desperate attempt to hold on to her perfect life - married to a wealthy handsome but not-so-smart husband who provides a normal "happy" life for her.
The point in the story where Sally catches her husband and her best friend crossing that line of appropriateness, is when she realizes that her perception of what was real was actually all wrong from the begging. This sudden crack in her "perfect" life threatens the very foundations of an her seemingly stable universe. "Sally has been wrong about Ed, for years, forever." (182) This is a crucial moment in the story as it shows Sally's epiphany and provides a mysterious moment as to what she was going to do - face her husband and her best friend, or try to ignore it in order to save her marriage, her security blanket. "Sally puts down the spatula, wipes her hand on the hand-towel, puts her arms around him, holds on tighter that she should." (183, 3rd prgh) This is the image we get - of Sally trying to hold on to her illusory reality.
In a way the egg in the story is the truth that humans seek but the truth is covered by the hard protective shell and only people who go beyond the surface and look for change can get to the core - to the truth which provides liberation. The structure of the story with the old "Bluebeard" tale in the middle of this new story reminds me of the egg which was once created and now has a life inside itself and will create in its turn. "Sally thinks the egg is alive, and one day it will hatch. But what will come out of it?" (184, 1st prgh) This relates to Atwood's contemplating of the "creative process". Like in other poems by her, we see the birth of new concepts from the roots of our very own creation. This also compares to the ways in which our engagement with a text, the act of reading literature, corresponds to "reading" reality. Atwood's story suggests that in both instances, "guesswork" or "intuition" is as fundamental as close analysis. But whether our interpretation of the story is intuitive or analytical, the outcome is an unending quest after an illusory truth because nothing is what it seems.
You May Also Find These Documents Helpful
-
The theme is the second section (chapter 3 and 4) of The Secret life of the Bees by Sue Monk Kidd is that the prejudice of others can weigh heavily on an individual’s judgement. Lily has finally found her next clue which has brought her to the Boatwright sisters. They are highly successful beekeepers that happen to be black. Due to being raised by a father who “did not think colored women were smart” (78), she is surprised by August being “intelligent” (78) and “so cultured” (78). This displays the role of the others in this case her dad who has influenced her to look down on blacks because that’s what he was taught. Although Lily comes to the realization that she had “some prejudice buried inside [her]” (78), many do not. Many fail to question…
- 162 Words
- 1 Page
Satisfactory Essays -
Show how a pairing of two texts this year gave you an understanding of how authors can present similar ideas in different ways.…
- 1130 Words
- 5 Pages
Good Essays -
We develop an initial perception of Curley’s wife as being flirtatious and promiscuous. This is shown at the introduction, of Curley’s wife’s entrance. Steinbeck first introduces us to her appearance, “full, rouged lips and wide-spaced eyes…” Curley’s life has been suggested to us as someone who is trying to be displayed as a sexual object. She would be doing this to attract attention. The colour red is often considered for portraying a sign of danger or sex. Steinbeck portrays these signs frequently, “red mules…red ostrich feathers.” In doing this, it is suggesting to the reader that Curley’s wife is “jailbait”.…
- 817 Words
- 4 Pages
Better Essays -
After the initial encounter with a woman the reader is encouraged to believe that ‘The woman in Weed’ seemed to be the root cause of George and Lennie’s dilemma. This idea of women being pest-like, poison and objects of sexual desire is played on throughout the novel. This ideology is presented in the likes of Susy and Clara. Susy and Clara were both brothel owners, this job taken by both women suggests the type of jobs available for women at the time. Steinbeck presents life when the ranch workers go to the whore house. This suggests that women were seen as just a pass time during the 1930s and no-one had any respect for them.…
- 1773 Words
- 8 Pages
Better Essays -
In relation to Harry and Sally’s relationship regarding Mark Knapp’s 10 stages of relational development, they jump around from following the path with initiating and experimenting in the beginning of the film while they were driving to New York, to initiating to terminating right away after their second encounter at the airport. After both characters find themselves apart from their wife and boyfriend respectively, they crashed into each other at a bookstore and skipped right back into the experimenting stage, where they spoke to each other about friendship and having dinner. After initiating their friendship they began to grow closer, stepping up to the intensifying stage – where they spend a lot of time with each other and where Harry confides in Sally about the girls he takes out for dinner and Sally in the odd dream or two she occasionally has – where no one would know she had unless they were told. Soon enough they casually went on to the intensifying stage as they spent the most of their time together than with their respective best friends (which they unwittingly got them into a relationship with each-other), and as it happens, Sally one night calls Harry crying about her ex-boyfriend getting married to a woman he had just met, the two main characters in the film intensify their relationship and…
- 612 Words
- 3 Pages
Good Essays -
In this essay I will show how Steinbeck presents Curley’s wife in a number of ways throughout the novel ‘Of Mice and Men’, showing both how she is portrayed as a ‘nice girl’ as well as a ‘floozy’. This novel was set during the great depression and is written around two key themes of the American dream, which every ‘ranch hand’ owned their own patch of land, and loneliness, the only common feeling that each individual in the novel feared. Loneliness was the main theme that caused Curley’s wife to be interpreted in a negative way by the other ranch men.…
- 1580 Words
- 7 Pages
Good Essays -
John Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men” is set in 1930’s America during the Great Depression and gives the reader a glimpse of the hardships of life back then and the social oppression. The theme running throughout the book is of a friendship between two men amidst dreams that they have, and of dreams being crushed. Curley’s wife is an important character in the book. John Steinbeck presents her in different ways throughout the novel and uses different techniques to manipulate the reader’s opinion, for example through her appearance. For the large part she is described in a negative way as a dangerous, flirtatious character which could be construed as a reflection of the way society viewed the role of women in the novel. However later in the book Steinbeck manipulates the reader into seeing her as complex, and feeling sympathy for Curley’s wife portraying her as a victim, desperate and isolated in a man’s world. This essay will illustrate how Steinbeck cleverly attempts to alter our opinion of Curley’s wife during the book.…
- 1324 Words
- 6 Pages
Powerful Essays -
The novel presents, in a combination of first and third person narration the story of Jamie Crawford and her three successive husbands. At several points in the text, Janie Crawford is prohibited from speaking, while at other points she chooses not to speak. Silence, then, is sometimes used as a tool of oppression and at other times as a tool of power. Even from the beginning of the novel it can be easily noticed the shifting narration; the viewpoint has moved from “every men” to “men” to “women” to “a woman” all these under the form of gossip of the front porch (see quote 1). While the earliest feminist interpretations put forward the idea that Janie achieves selfhood by claiming her voice, Barbara Johnson asserts that it is by accepting the inevitability of self-division that Janie gains the power of speech. She shows how Janie’s discovery that “she had an inside and an outside now and suddenly she knew how not to mix them”(Johnson: 50) has implications for Janie’s ability to speak. There are two paragraphs that highlight this aspect of inside and outside in Their Eyes Were Watching God (see quote 2). It can be noticed the…
- 1483 Words
- 6 Pages
Powerful Essays -
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is a novel written by Ken Kesey during a time in our society when pressures of our modern world seemed at their greatest. Many people were, at this time, deemed by society’s standards to be insane and institutionalized. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is set in a ward of a mental institution. The major conflict in the novel is that of power. Power is a recurring and overwhelming theme throughout the novel. Kesey shows the power of women who are associated with the patients, the power Nurse Ratched has, and also the power McMurphy fights to win. By default, he also shows how little power the patients have.…
- 1403 Words
- 6 Pages
Better Essays -
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest was published in the early 1960s, during the Civil Rights Movement and during a controversial movement towards deinstitutionalization. There were concerns with the rights of institutionalized patients which brought up issues of free expression and conformity, the premises of the book revolved greatly around these issues. In addition, the approach to how psychology and psychology were being viewed were beginning to change.…
- 752 Words
- 4 Pages
Good Essays -
Sally is dating Joe and as they talk you can see they are content with each other. When Harry…
- 2219 Words
- 8 Pages
Better Essays -
We can assume that she is writing in a journal or diary because at the end of the first scene she says “There comes John, and I must put this away, -- he hates to have me write a word” (Gilman). She believes that she is very sick, and John continuously tries to convince her that everything is okay. The reader now feels somewhat constrained because that is how the narrator feels. This is the direct cause of 1st person point of view. We can see that John, who is treating her, also has a hold over her because she cannot write in his presence and he doesn’t believe her when she tries to tell him that she is sick. In the vacation home, they choose a bedroom that is has particular yellow wallpaper that the narrator despises. She goes on and on about how ugly the wallpaper is; “the color is repellent, almost revolting” (Gilman). As her depression carries on, so does her obsession with yellow wallpaper; however, the reader of the story can see the reasons why she is feeling the way she does. 1st person point of view allows the reader to understand one character’s outlook, and hear their voice. If the focus was on the husband’s point of view, the entire story’s meaning would change because the husband only sees the “outside” of his wife, and cannot explain or understand what she is going through. During…
- 686 Words
- 3 Pages
Good Essays -
The opening paragraph of Khaled Hosseini’s novel "The Kite Runner" immediately expresses one of the central themes, guilt. Amir, the main character, is continuously antagonized by guilt. While on the surface, Amir seems to be a lighthearted child of a rich and popular father, he harbors the guiltiness of his sins deep within his heart. These guilts come back to haunt him throughout his whole life, resurfacing as vivid recollections in which he re-experiences his sins. While he tries to suppress his past and overlook these tragic moments, he feels remorse is persuaded him to take action. His father, who he fondly calls Baba, likewise harbors the guilt of his sins. To Amir, as well as to the rest of the world, Baba is seen as a strong and authoritative man, strong willed in both actions and heart. Yet under these fallacies lies a guilt that is so strong that all of his actions are based upon it. Both Amir and Baba are driven by these feelings of guilt, and every action they take and every decision they make is an attempt to reach redemption. Baba expresses his explanation behind that all sins are a variation of theft. “If you kill someone, you steal a man’s right to life and his family’s right to a father…
- 542 Words
- 3 Pages
Good Essays -
Sally Carrol doesn't understand the concept of misplacement when first arriving in the North. She believes that she can assimilate into the northern culture with ease, exclaiming, "This was the North, the North—her land now!" (9). But as the story progresses, her misplacement in Harry's territory is slowly revealed. She explains to him, "'I sure do feel confused. I haven't got an idea whether I'll like it or not, an' I don't know what people expect, or anythin'. You'll have to tell me, honey'" (11). She has no clue how to act in this new environment. Sally Carrol came to the North so she can gain knowledge and experience the South is deprived of, but has no idea how to fit in.…
- 1226 Words
- 5 Pages
Better Essays -
While driving to New York City, they discuss about opposite-sex friendship. This scene falls into the experimenting stage. From this scene, Harry and Sally get to know better of each other’s different characteristic. Harry thinks that it is impossible to establish a true opposite-sex friendship because sex part always gets in the way. Sally argues him that she does not have sexual interest to her male friends. One of Knapp’s four purposes of experimenting stage is that it can be an audition for a future friendship or a way of increasing the scope of a current relationship. Harry and Sally’s relationship does not develop further because they do not find each other attractive in the experimenting stage…
- 714 Words
- 3 Pages
Good Essays