The Yellow Wallpaper vs. The Battle Royal - Paper Example

The story of The Yellow Wallpaper is given as a series of diary events by a woman who is in a post-partum depression. As the narrator, she begins by describing their home with her husband John, which they have rented for the summer. On the other side of the coin, The Battle Royal gives a picture of the enthusiastic young man thrown into the boxing ring of the white men (Nicolau 661) He is forced to deliver the most important speech on meekness and also education to the Americans of the African origin. The two materials will be compared and contrasted to facilitate our comprehension.

In The Yellow Wallpaper, John, being a practical man, is determined to take his wife to a clean and calm environment to enable her to recover from what he thought to be violent tendencies (Gilman n.p). The narrator claims that her husband does not reason with her regarding the condition of the house. She insists that she was left unoccupied for a long time, saying that there was something strange in the house (Charlotte 67). Although the narrator loves writing, she was advised not to take any hard task as a condition of curing.

According to Walker, et al. (280), his grandfather gives him a piece of advice, asking him to be meek in the presence of the white men to one day change the status quo. The narrator is said to have been invited to a party where he later was beaten. The writer emphasis that black Americans must be educated to differentiate themselves from their counterpart whites.

As it has become apparent, the striking similarity existing between these two stories is that both narrators have a strong desire to succeed in all their pursuits. In The Yellow Wallpaper, the narrator wants her husband John to consider listening to her views and advice, as well as avoid treating her as a child (Suess 79). It should also get remembered that some of the problems which had been experienced by the narrator came as a result of the husband not being able to offer a listening ear. In The Battle Royal, the narrator wants her voice heard by white Americans, who show no respect for the Black Americans. His speech which earned him a scholarship is an evidence of his determination.

The scholarship also served as the first step to the fulfillment of the grandfathers' advice. Equally notable, there also exist two direct quotes to support the similarity drawn from the two stories. In the story about the Yellow Wallpaper page 45, the narrator says, "John does not know the extent I suffer; instead, he only acknowledges that there is no reason to suffer, and that gives him satisfaction." The quote supports the quest of the narrator of being heard as she considers that John fails to understand his suffering based on not giving her time (Charlotte, 45). On the part of the Battle Royal, the grandfather tells the son, "Live with your head put inside the lion's mouth, overcome the lion with the ear and undermine him with grins." The quote elaborates on the son being advised to remain meek and finally defeating the Whites (Nicolau, 23).

Works Cited

Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The yellow wall-paper: a sourcebook and critical edition. Psychology Press, 2004.

Nicolau, Juan L. "Battle royal: Zero-price effect vs. relative vs. referent thinking." Marketing Letters 23.3 (2012): 661-669.

Suess, Barbara A. "The Writing s on the Wall: Symbolic Orders in The Yellow. Wallpaper." Women's Studies 32.1 (2003): 79-97.

Walker, Lawrence J., Jeremy A. Frimer, and William L. Dunlop. "Paradigm assumptions about moral behavior: An empirical battle royal." The social psychology of morality: Exploring the causes of good and evil (2012): 275-292.