Survival Themes

“The Yellow Wallpaper” and “A Good Man is Hard to Find”
Comparing the Nature of these Struggles
Both of the protagonists in these stories are strong female characters, and the antagonists of these stories are of the opposite gender. This is an obvious similarity. In “The Yellow Wallpaper” the protagonist is Grandma and in “A Good Man is Hard to Find” the protagonist is the narrator, a woman who has recently had a baby. I find many of the similarities of the struggle having to do with similarities in the protagonists themselves, similarities with the antagonists themselves, and similarities with the situations. Both of these women seem to let their thoughts get carried away and exhibit dreamlike delusions. In “A Good Man is Hard to Find” Grandma really shows her delusion when (p.358 paragraph 45) ‘Outside of Toombsboro she woke up and remembered an old plantation that she had visited in this neighborhood once when she was a young lady…She recalled exactly which road to turn off to get to it.’ She incorrectly remembered where this place really was and did not realize it. Then she lets her thoughts get carried away, intentionally saying “There was a secret panel in this house.” Later (p.359, paragraph 64) she realizes she is not in the place she had thought at all and has side tracked the family for nothing. ‘The thought was so embarrassing that she turned red in the face… her feet jumped …Pitty Sing, the cat sprang onto Baily’s shoulder.’ And this is how the accident occurred. She is in part to blame for the outcome of her destiny also, because of her getting carried away.
In “The Yellow Wallpaper” the narrator increasingly becomes more delusional.(p.368, paragrapgh 44) Firstly it seems not so bad, “But these nervous troubles are depressing.” Later she speaks of the wall paper (p. 374, paragraph 154) “I didn’t realize it for a long time…the thing that showed behind that dim sub pattern, but now I am quite sure it is a woman.” She seems to letting herself become manifested with this obsession with the wallpaper and although it is debatable she may be partly to blame for the outcome as I believe Grandma as I stated in the latter paragraph.
In “A Good Man is Hard to Find” the antagonist is mainly the “misfit,” but also her son Baily and his family. They seem to combat many things she has to say or ignore them completely. In a way they decide her fate.(p.354, paragraph 1) ‘She did not want to go to Florida… “Now Look here Baily, she said, “see here read this”…”Here this fellow that calls himself the Misfit is aloose from the Federal Pen and you read it. I wouldn’t take my children in any direction with a criminal like that…”.(paragraph 2) ‘Baily didn’t look up from his reading….’ The children of her son make smart comments also like (paragraph 7)”…She has to go everywhere we go.” Now if she had gotten to go to Tennessee like she had wished she would not have been shot by the Misfit, that is why I say they had some control of her fate also. Later it is The Misfit who takes complete control of her fate by giving her no other option but to die.
In “The Yellow Wallpaper” the antagonist is the narrator’s husband. He keeps refusing to see that the help he has offered her is not helping her! (page373, paragraph 137-140) After she has asked to go away from the house he says, “Why, how can I, dear? It is only three weeks more and then we will take a nice little trip…Really dear you are better.” She tries to explain, “Better in body perhaps-,” but the narrator continues, “he sat up straight and looked at me with such a stern reproachful look that I could not say another word.” Her husband also refers to her as “Little girl” and speaks as if she truly is a child. As in “A Good Man is Hard to Find” the male antagonist will not listen to the female protagonist. In both stories this aids in making the female protagonists outcomes more fatal or tragic because they are controlling their decisions by making their own thoughts seem irrelevant.