Why is The Baby Killed at the End of Sleepy?

The short story Sleepy is about a young girl forced to work to support her mother and herself after the death of her father. She is employed by a family and is forced to do common household work such as cleaning, setting up for a dinner party, and looking after the couple's baby. The girl is never allowed to take any breaks or get any sleep. At the end of the story she is so sleep deprived that she strangles the crying baby she is supposed to look after. At first I thought she killed the baby because she was so tired she started to go crazy and lashed out on the child. But after I thought about it I thought that maybe killing the baby was a kind of rebellious act because she had so many strict rules and restrictions placed on her by the family she works for. Or maybe she is envious of the baby because it gets to sleep and she doesn't. Also, since she is so young she might feel that she has had her childhood taken away from her by the family she is working for, so she might have killed the child out of spite or revenge to get back at the family.

(The above painting is titled Le berceau meaning the cradle and is by a french impressionist painter Berthe Morisot. Morisot painted Le berceau in 1873, around the same time the short story was written.)

Types of Love

The story "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love" is about two couples sitting around a table drinking and talking about the true meaning of love. While searching for what real love is, the four friends discuss many different types of love; obsessive, platonic, and spiritual.

The couples in the story represent different stages of love. Nick and Laura represent young love, Mel and Terri represent an older cynical or skeptical love and the old couple that Mel talks about from the hospital represent true, unconditional love.

The story ends with darkness and hearts beating. I think the story ends this way because after having a long conversation about love the couples are questioning whether or not they love their partner. A heart is something you associate with love, so since their hearts are beating it shows that they are thinking about love.

Literary and Comparative Analysis

At first the hardest part of the literary analysis was comming up with a thesis and ways to support it using the text. As I was writing my paper I found it difficult to stay focused on my thesis, I often found myself going off on tangents. It was also challenging to explain the claims I made fully in detail and relate it back to my thesis.

I dont expect to have this problem when writing my comparitive analysis because after writing the literary analysis I feel like I can do a better job focusing on one main point. Other problems that I might have with the comparritive analysis is connecting both of the texts in my paper so that the paper has a flow to it rather than jumping from one text to another. To address this problem I could plan out what I want to say about each literary work and tie them togerther through quotes or the common theme.

The Use of Force: Reality or Fantasy?

The Use of Force by William Carlos Williams exposes the fear and resentment people (especially children) have towards doctors. In the story the doctor almost enjoys putting the child through pain, the story makes you question the integrity of doctors. This is shown through Williams' style of writing.

Williams' style of writing is different than that of the other stories we've read in class. He does not spend any time developing the characters (like Updike did in A&P), or establishing a setting (Like Gilman did in The Yellow Wallpaper). By not describing the child, he doesn't give her an identity, making the story (and experience of the doctor) less personal. And by not setting the scene it shows that nothing else matters except what is going on between the doctor and the child.

Also, Williams does not use any quotation marks during the dialogue between the doctor and the child or between the doctor and the child's parents. This made me question whether or not the conversation actually happened, or if it was a fantasy the doctor created in his mind or an internal dialogue he was having with himself. I just found his style of writing interesting and it helps to conveys the message of a "bad doctor".

Trapped Behind the Yellow Wallpaper.

The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Gilman is by far the strangest story we have discussed so far. The story deals with psychological disorders, feminism, marriage, and the feeling of entrapment. What I found most interesting about The Yellow Wallpaper was the way John treated his wife. He is controlling, talks down to her, and treats her like a child. What is interesting is her husband is also her doctor. In the story the narrator is suffering from a mental illness and no one- especially her husband- seems to take her condition seriously, she is suffering alone. Gilman hides behind the yellow wallpaper and is disconnected with reality.

In the end when she 'creeps' over her husband she says, "Why should that man have fainted?" I found it strange that she referred to her husband as that man. Why didn't she say "my husband" or "John". After reading the story I asked myself those questions and I came to the conclusion that she did not recognize her own husband. In the beginning she said her husband was compassionate and caring, but his actions in the story did not show compassion or care. Because of the way he was treating her she did not recognize him.

The Importance of Mother-Daughter Relationships in Two Kinds.

This week we discussed the short story Two Kinds by Amy Tan. This story was about the relationship between mother and daughter. The mother was obsessed with the idea of a child prodigy, she wanted her daughter to be great at something. Throughout the book she pushed her daughter forcing her to take piano lessons, recite Shirley Temple acts, and quizzed her on state capitals, hoping that she was a child genius.

The first time I read this story I felt resentful towards the mother and sympathetic towards the daughter. At first I thought that the mother was selfish, overbearing, and harsh towards her daughter. At the beginning of the story the daughter constantly fought with her mother while her mother pushed her. She became the most angry at her mother when she was forced to take piano lessons, then forced to perform in a recital. I felt the most sympathetic for the daughter during her recital because she didn't hit any of the notes and embarrassed herself. After the recital she told her mother that she wish she was dead like all her other children. For me, this is when the story shifted from feeling bad for the daughter to feeling bad for the mother.

The photograph above is of an old piano. It represents the deteriorating, broken relationship between the mother and the daughter. I chose a picture of a piano because the mother forced her daughter to play it and it was a common cause of argument.Towards the end of the story I started to feel bad for the mother because all she wanted was for her daughter to live a successful, easy life. She wanted to giver her daughter the life she never had. Also, I felt bad for her because she lost all her other children and all she wanted was to provide a good life for the child that she did have.

The most interesting, and important part of the story was when the daughter reconditioned the piano and sent it back to her parents house after her mom died. After rereading the story I interpreted the reconditioning of the piano as the reconditioning of the mother and daughter's relationship as well. The piano was always something they disagreed on, so by fixing the piano it is like the daughter is saying she wants to fix all their differences and finally have a good relationship. The sad part is that her mother is no longer around to see that her daughter truly did love her and wanted a good relationship.

(The photograph above is of a new piano. This photo shows that she wants to start over, or recondition the relationship between her and her mother. Fixing the piano shows that the daughter wants to mend the differences between her and her mother.)

John Updike's use of Imagery in A&P.

Out of the four pieces of literature I read this week my favorite was the short story by John Updike titled A&P. In this story the main character Sammy, a cashier at A&P Grocery store, notices three girls walk in wearing nothing but bathing suits. As the three girls walk around the store, Sammy voyeuristically watches their every move, one girl in particular catches his eye, Sammy decides that she is the "Queen" of the three. Updike describes her in great detail, the color of her bathing suit, the way it hangs on her body, the color, size, and feel of her hand and just her demeanor in general. So, when the girls are done shopping they come to Sammy's line and he rings them up. As they are about to leave the Manager of A&P confronts the three girls telling them that they are dressed inappropriately. Sammy sees that the girls are embarrassed, so as an attempt to win them over Sammy quits his job, but when he walks out of the store the girls are no where to be found.

What I liked most about this story was the picture Updike painted of how the three girls

looked, while reading this story I knew exactly, without a doubt what they looked like. I felt like I was there, and like I was seeing everything Sammy was seeing. The great use of imagery kind of justifies Sammy's actions at the end. When describing the girls Updike makes it seem realistic that someone would quit their job just to impress them. The line that gave the most imagery was when Sammy first saw the girls and described the one he called the Queen, " She had on a kind of dirty-pink --beige maybe, I dont know-- bathing suit with a little nubble all over it, and what got me, the straps were down. They were off her shoulders looped loose around the cool tops of her arms, and I guess as a result the suit had slipped a little on her, so all around the top cloth there was this shinning rim. If it hadn't been there you wouldn't have known there could be anything whiter than those shoulders."

Another example of imagery is when Sammy compares the grocery store to a pinball machine. My favorite line in the story is when Sammy says, "The whole store was like a pinball machine and I didn't know which tunnel they'd come out of." After reading this sentence I thought of the three girls rolling around a pinball machine, bouncing off bumpers, and going through tunnels.

As the author was describing the main girl I was reminded of Marilyn Monroe. Updike described the girl as having sun and salt bleached hair. He also said that she walked with her head held high, and had long white prima-donna legs. She was described as a confident and classic beauty, all of which reminded me of Marilyn Monroe, especially in the photograph at the top right.