The Village

       The Village is a movie surrounding a myth that has controlled a small village for years. The myth has been around so long that they have even adopted practices that basically keeps the myth alive and controls their way of living. The villager’s life is controlled by the myth of “those they do not speak of.” They are confined to their village because outside of it is where the “beasts” live and they promised that they would never travel outside of their village. The children of the village only know what’s inside and not outside of where they live, somewhat cutting them off from the world because those were the beliefs they were raised on by their elders. The myth has instilled fear in the village people so much that they are careful of what they say, and only stay in their village. The fear instilled is because of fear of the outside, and it is to protect the village people and preserve their innocence. Later we find out the myth is artificially and was made by the elders of the village. I feel like that was selfish of them because they didn’t want their people to go outside of the village and see what the world had to offer. This somewhat reminds me of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, because the people of the village are confined to one place just as the prisoners in the cave. The people of the village are restrained by the myth, while the prisoners of the cave are restrained from knowledge and reality. In both stories people suffer from a lack of knowledge which is controlled by other people (the elders).

                August Nickolson’s statement to Lucius, “you may run from sorrow, as we have, but sorrow will find you” translated to me that nobody will live a completely perfect life and that is because sorrow will always be there. Just as the people of the village are trying to maintain and keep their village in order, they are experiencing pain and even living in fear, which is sorrow. No matter how happy and perfect they try to make the village they are living in, there is still going to be a negative aspect to it and that’s life. The colors in the movie play a major role in the myth and how it is carried out. The villagers view yellow as the “safe” color and red as the “bad” color. Yellow seems to represent innocence and protection in the movie. The villagers wore yellow cloaks whenever they were close to the forbidden forest where the beasts lived. The beasts wore red cloaks that seemed to represent danger. The people of the village made sure there was no red present on their side. When the beasts would come over to their side they put red streaks on the villager’s doors as a warning and they left carcasses of animals around exposing a hollow headless body with a lot of blood. Yellow is represented as a positive color for protection while red is the color of danger.

                The elders made the village their “real” world, when really it is missing many qualities of the real world. The villagers live in a world where there is no crime, pain, or disaster. The world we live in consists of all of those things, but the elders excluded it from their village so their people wouldn’t have to deal with troubles. They feared that would lead to the corruption of the village if they let those things in so they kept them out and kept their people safe in their made up world. While the elders are trying to preserve the villager’s innocence, they are amplifying the people’s ignorance. The situation is ironic because while the elders made up the myth to instill fear in their people and keep them innocent, the villagers don’t know that the myth is actually made up. The elders took advantage of their innocence and scared them into a certain way of living. I do think the villagers have a choice in the way they live, but their too scared to branch out and explore. At some point I do believe their system will fail them and the secrets will be exposed, and once that happens they will be willing or forcred to investigate the “real” world. Anybody should have a choice in the way they want to live WITH REASON, because if their way of living is controlled then they will forever be ignorant and innocence doesn’t last long in the real world. Therefore they will not be able to adapt or survive. The only reasoning I see behind members of a particular culture being frightened into self protection or self preservation is so that they are aware and know themselves and know how to defend themselves in the world. Also to establish morals and self control. Beliefs come from teachings and observations, and everybody has beliefs. Scaring somebody (to an extent) as form of discipline and control allows them to form beliefs and morals.

                When Mr. Walker sends Ivy into the town to get medicine for Lucius he says, “yes, I have risked and I hope I am always able to risk everything for the just and right cause.” Ivy’s innocence is being risked by exposing her to the town, but it is also her father letting go of his selfishness. With Ivy going into the town she will be doing the good deed of getting Lucius the medicine, but at the same time risking her loss of innocence. The cause is just and right because she will no longer be ignorant to the real world and she will also be helping out Lucius, her fiancé. The situation is two-fold because she is losing innocence and ignorance, but gaining courage and wisdom at the same time.  

The Yellow Wallpaper & The Story of An Hour

                The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman was centered on themes of power, control, and oppression. The narrator is a woman who is diagnosed with temporary nervous depression by her husband and brother who are both physicians. They both refuse to deem her as sick, but she argues otherwise. She likes to exercise her imagination but her husband encourages her not to and forces her to believe what he believes. She writes as a “cure” for her sickness, but her husband, John hates for her to write. “John does not know how much I really suffer. He knows there is no reason to suffer, and that satisfies him.” Throughout the story the narrator’s efforts and opinions are denied by her husband. He just suggests that she sleeps so she won’t have so many thoughts and ideas. John clearly has the control. He controls his wife’s thought by always denying her and making himself seem more reasonable. He uses his career title to his advantage showing that he is more knowledgeable and has all of the answers. “It is a false foolish fancy. Can you not trust me as a physician when I tell you so?” The narrator says, “He is very careful and loving, and hardly lets me stir without special direction.” John has made her believe he truly cares for her since he is trying to help cure her by shutting her up and making her oppress feelings. She is basically brainwashed in believing he has her best interest.

                John puts his wife in a room that used to be a nursery with this awful yellow wallpaper that is very disturbing to her. He puts her in there basically as a form of meditation for her to rest during her “illness.” She constantly complains to herself about the pattern on the dull yellow wallpaper, but she doesn’t really express her hatred about it to John because he will just dismiss it. She describes a pattern in the wallpaper that a lady is trapped in and can’t get out of so she just creeps around. The narrator lives through what her imagination has built out of the wallpaper. In the end she realizes that she is that woman trapped in the wallpaper always having to creep around during the day time and behind bars at night, forced to sleep under her husband’s supervision. She is stuck in the pattern having to live the miserable controlled lifestyle with her husband who is forcing her to believe what he wants her to believe. Along with the power, control, and oppression, gender plays a role in the story. Once again the male is superior and more intellectual and the woman is trapped following his order without much say. The narrator even admits, “The fact is I am getting a little afraid of John.” She knows there is no easy escape from him.

                The Story of An Hour by Kate Chopin is filled with autonomy and irony. The first fact stated in the story was, “Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with a heart trouble.” Mrs. Mallard’s “heart trouble” could easily symbolize the pain she is going through living with Brently Mallard, her husband who was supposedly killed in a railroad accident. The surrounding characters think that her heart trouble would be bothered from the news of her husband’s death, but really Mrs. Mallard feels a sense of freedom now that he is gone. Despite the pain that Mr. Mallard had out her through, Mrs. Mallard was looking past that and looking forward to “a long procession of years to come that would belong to her absolutely.” She didn’t feel like she was living for herself, but now that her husband was dead she felt free of his shackles of oppression. She carried herself “like a goddess of Victory.” She felt that she had overcome her husband and all the hell he had put her through. She felt like an independent woman.

                The story ends with such a twist. Brently Mallard who was announced dead in the beginning of the story is actually alive. That discovery ends up killing Mrs. Mallard, which doctors claim, “she had died of heart disease—of the joy that kills.” That statement shows the ignorance of males to the life of women. Mrs. Mallard clearly did not die from overwhelming joy from seeing her husband alive, she died from her hopes of living for herself crashing right in front of her eyes. The pain had filled her heart all over again and it had killed her, because she knew she couldn’t live like that again when she was just rejoicing the liberation of misery from her husband.