A Cover Story

In the end of “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” the old waiter is making sense of the way he feels. He blankets his problem with the idea that it’s just insomnia, something plenty of people have, and there is no major problem. I don’t believe the old waiter is having an epiphany, On page 345, “Now, without thinking further, he would go home to his room. He would lie in the bed and finally, with daylight, he would go to sleep.” I believe that this is his everyday routine, and that his thought process isn’t anything new. Everyday he goes through this struggle of not being able to sleep. This insomnia is a superficial problem that covers a deeper, more serious problem. The old waiter has trouble dealing with his life where he feels doesn’t have much meaning. Insomnia is a cover story for the old waiters much more real issue, depression.

Society, a Box We Live In

            Our lives are defined by society. We change our schedules for it, what we wear, and how we do things. As a human we are shaped by it, and as humans we shape it. It is nearly impossible to escape this box that is society, and it was no different for Elisa, Paul and Sarty.

            Paul knew he would never live up to his father’s expectations or societies. This fact ultimately led to his depression and suicide. He knew there was no escaping society, so he felt his only out was death. In Paul’s Case on page 274 we see his alienation,” Until now he could not remember the time when he had not been dreading something. Even when he was a little boy it was always there—behind him, or before, or on either side. There had always been the shadowed corner, the dark place into which he dared not look, but from which something seemed always to be watching him—and Paul had done things that were not pretty to watch, he knew.” Paul’s “shadow” is his homosexuality, and knowing that society wouldn’t except it he couldn’t either.

            Elisa was a strong worker who had a knack for growing plants. Yet, she felt she was never useful for anything other than planting Chrysanthemums. On page 359 in “Chrysanthemums” we see her last attempt to break out of her role in society as housewife, “Do any women ever go to the fights?” she asked. Oh, sure, some. What’s the matter, elisa? Do you want to go? I don’t think you’d like it, but I’ll take you if you really want to go.” She relaxed limply in the seat. “Oh, no. No. I don’t want to go. I’m sure I don’t.” From that point on, Elisa knew she would escape from her predetermined role in society. She believed that no one truly cared for her.

            Sarty was very afraid of his father, who beat him. His family was all he ever knew, and a life of crime was habit. It is obvious on page 337 in “Barn Burning” “Then he was moving, running, outside the house, toward the stable: this the old habit, the old blood which he had not been permitted to choose for himself, which had been bequeathed him willy nilly and which had run for so long…” This is something Sarty did many times before, so much in fact that it became as mundane as getting dressed in the morning. Since it was all he ever knew, it didn’t seem wrong. In the end, Sarty saw what his family was doing was wrong, and escaped from that lifestyle.

Fitting The Mold

            In both Cather’s and Steinbeck’s stories, the main characters are trying to run from their lives. They are tired of their monotonous lives and they feel they don’t fit into their designated “roles” and expectations society puts on them. In Paul’s case, he knew he couldn’t live up to his father’s expectations and couldn’t fit the idea of a teenage boy by societies eyes. In Elisa’s case, she doesn’t like her life of a housewife, someone who plants flowers every day. She feels she is a very strong woman and that she shouldn’t be confined to the role “society” gives her. At the end of the story, Elisa asks her husband whether or not women participate in the “fights”. This is her attempt to change her lifestyle.

            Ultimately, both attempts to change their lives fail. Elisa rationalizes her thought of fighting as crazy, and has happiness in the fact that she will drink wine at dinner that night. In Paul’s case, he still feels excluded even though he tried his dream lifestyle of an affluent New York life.

            Cather and Steinbeck are trying to tell us that there will be outsiders in society, and not all will “fit the mold”.

Paul's Case

             In Willa Cather’s “Paul’s Case”, a big concept is running away. In the context of the story, Paul is running away from the society in which he doesn’t believe his made for or fits in to. In school, he doesn’t pay attention and does not care about his work. His teachers think so little of his character that they feel ashamed by their dislike of Paul. Paul doesn’t have the interests of other kids in his school, so he doesn’t feel apart of society. Paul loves the Carnegie Hall and the ambience of higher class living, a love that most other teens don’t share. Paul is also different than most in regards to sexuality, as homosexuality was frowned upon in that time. He doesn’t feel he can express his feelings freely in his monotonous middle class life.

            This attempt to run away by Paul eventually fails to succeed. Paul runs away to New York to experience affluence and upper class living, but finds it doesn’t satisfy him. In the end, Paul feels the only way to escape society is to end his life entirely, and he kills himself.

The Yellow Wall-Paper

The Narrator does not rebel in a traditional manner. She doesn’t have a clear objective that she wants to achieve and she likes her husband. The narrator rebels from her husband’s point of view and close mindedness to do as she pleases and believe what she pleases.

The narrator has anxiety and depression, something John(her husband) explains as “a slight hysterical tendency.” The husband John is a physician and is described on page 186 as, “John is practical in the extreme. He has no patience with faith, an intense horror of superstition, and he scoffs openly at any talk of things not to be felt and seen and put down in figures.” The wife believes that since John says that there is nothing wrong with her there is nothing she can do but be quiet and suffer in silence. The narrator believes that the wallpaper has something to do with her suffering, so she tears it without her husband knowing. The narrator’s rebellion is a separation from the views of her husband.