The Yellow Wallpaper By Herman Melville - 1589 Words

Although cultural stereotypes are not often the main theme in literature, the undertones of these stereotypes shape stories and help us better understand underlying meaning. Identifying stereotypes is not always clear unless one is familiar with the culture that the stereotype implies, however when they are identified it gives the reader an advanced understanding of the text. Two literary works, Benito Cereno and The Yellow Wallpaper use American stereotypes to deepen the plot, but are used in each story in a particularly different way. Literature is a good mechanism to help explore cultural stereotypes and exploit the positive and negative consequences associated with it. In Benito Cereno, the author Herman Melville encaptures a typical American sailor who is blindly trusting of others which leads him to be ignorant to situations around him. Similarly, The Yellow Wallpaper written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman uses an ignorant husband to show the harm it caused his wife, however unint entional. Melville enforces the stereotype throughout the passage to keep readers in the dark with what is actually happening in the story, in comparison to Gilman’s style of displaying the stereotype at the beginning of the story; which could be easily missed. Benito Cereno is a story about an American sailor Captain Delano, running into a troubled Spanish cargo ship with incessant uncertainties. In the very beginning of the story, Delano is described as â€Å"a person of a singularly undistrustfulShow MoreRelatedAnalysis Of Benito Cereno And The Yellow Wallpaper By Charlotte Perkins Gilman1675 Words   |  7 Pagesadvanced understanding of the text. Two literary works, Benito Cereno by Herman Melville and The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman use stereotypes as a literary technique to deepen the plot, but are used in each story in a particularly different way. Literature is a good mechanism to help explore cultural stereotypes and exploit the positive and neg ative consequences associated with them. In Benito Cereno, Melville encaptures a typical American sailor who is blindly trusting of others whichRead More Defiance of Gender-Based Work Ethics in Bartleby and The Yellow Wallpaper2367 Words   |  10 PagesDefiance of Gender-Based Work Ethics in Bartleby and The Yellow Wallpaper  Ã‚     Ã‚   The issue of gender was an influential factor for writers in the 19th century, as Herman Melville and Charlotte Perkins Gilman explore in their pieces. In Bartleby, for instance, Herman Melville presents Bartleby as an employed scrivener-his service to the narrator is in the form of copying documents. This form of labor is appropriate for Bartleby according to 19th century society, which supported and approvedRead MoreGothic Literature : Gothic Writing1974 Words   |  8 PagesPoe with stories and poetry that still resonates with high schoolers to this day. Works that are still read or at the very least spoken of in high school are stories by Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville. Noteworthy works by Hawthorne are The Scarlet Letter and The House of Seven Gables. While Melville wrote a perilous tale of a seaward bound journey that ended with only one whaler’s crew making it and the ship falls victim to the deep unforgiving depths of the ocean floor. As the Industri alRead MoreANALIZ TEXT INTERPRETATION AND ANALYSIS28843 Words   |  116 Pagesavoid the danger of becoming so preoccupied with the larger significance of meaning that we forget the literal importance of the concrete thing being symbolized. Moby Dick, for all he may be said to represent to Ahab, Ishmael, Starbuck, Flask, Stubb, Herman Melvill, and finally to the reader, is still a whale, a living, breathing mammal of the deep that is capable of inflicting crushing damage on those who pursue him too closely. Types of Symbols Symbols are often classified as being traditional, original