Stuck on your essay? Browse essays about Short Story Analysis and find inspiration. Learn by example and become a better writer with Kibin’s suite of essay help services · Critical Analysis of a Short Story the Lottery by Shirley Jackson: [Essay Example], words GradesFixer. This essay has been submitted by a student. This is not an example of the work written by professional essay writers
Short Story Critical Analysis: Sample Essay on "Miss Brill"
After you have finished reading Miss Brillby Katherine Mansfield, compare your response to the short story with the analysis offered in this sample critical essay. Next, compare "Miss Brill's Fragile Fantasy" with another paper on the same topic, "Poor, Pitiful Miss Brill. In "Miss Brill," Katherine Mansfield introduces readers to an uncommunicative and apparently simple-minded woman who eavesdrops on strangers, who imagines herself to be an actress in an absurd musical, and whose dearest friend in life appears to be a shabby fur stole.
And yet we are encouraged neither to laugh at Miss Brill nor to dismiss her as a grotesque madwoman. Through Mansfield's skillful handling of point of view, characterization, and plot developmentMiss Brill comes across as a convincing character who evokes our sympathy.
By telling the story from the third-person limited omniscient point of viewMansfield allows us both to share Miss Brill's perceptions and to recognize that those perceptions are highly romanticized. This dramatic irony is essential to our understanding of her character. Miss Brill's view of the world on this Sunday afternoon in early autumn is a delightful one, and we are invited to share in her pleasure: the day "so brilliantly fine," the children "swooping and laughing," the band sounding "louder and gayer" than on previous Sundays.
And yet, because the point of view is the third person that is, told from the outsidewe're encouraged to look at Miss Brill herself as well as share her perceptions. What we see is a lonely woman sitting on a park bench. This dual perspective encourages us to view Miss Brill as someone who has resorted to fantasy i.
Miss Brill reveals herself to us through her perceptions of the other people in the park--the other players in the "company. They are performing for her benefit, she thinks, even though to us it appears that they like the band which "didn't care how it played if there weren't any strangers present" are oblivious to her existence. Some of these characters are not very appealing: the silent couple beside her on the bench, the vain woman who chatters about the spectacles she should be wearing, the "beautiful" woman who throws away a bunch of violets "as if critical analysis of a short story example been poisoned," and the four girls who nearly knock over an old man this last incident foreshadowing her own encounter with careless youths at the end of the story.
Miss Brill is annoyed by some of these people, sympathetic toward others, but she reacts to them all as if they were characters on stage. Miss Brill appears to be too innocent and isolated from life to even comprehend human nastiness. But is she really so childlike, or is she, in fact, a kind of critical analysis of a short story example There is one character whom Miss Brill appears to identify with--the woman wearing "the ermine toque she'd bought when her hair was yellow.
Miss Brill would never use the word "shabby" to describe her own fur, though we know that it is. The "gentleman in gray" is very rude to the woman: he blows smoke into her face and abandons her, critical analysis of a short story example. Now, like Miss Brill herself, the "ermine toque" is alone.
But to Miss Brill, this is all just a stage performance with the band playing music that suits the sceneand the true nature of this curious encounter is never made clear to the reader. Could the woman be a prostitute? Possibly, but Miss Brill would never consider this. She has identified with the woman perhaps because she herself knows what it's like to be snubbed in the same way that playgoers identify with certain stage characters.
Could the woman herself be playing a game? We see that Miss Brill is living vicariously, not so much through the lives of others, but through their performances as Miss Brill interprets them. Ironically, it is with her own kind, the old people on the benches, that Miss Brill refuses to identify:.
But later in the story, as Miss Brill's enthusiasm builds, we're offered an important insight into her character:. Almost despite herself, it seems, she does identify with these marginal figures--these minor characters.
We suspect that Miss Brill may not be as simple-minded as she first appears. There are hints in the story that self-awareness not to critical analysis of a short story example self-pity is something Miss Brill avoids, not something of which she is incapable.
In the first paragraph, she describes a feeling as "light and sad"; then she corrects this: "no, not sad exactly--something gentle seemed to move in her bosom. Similarly, Miss Brill's "queer, shy feeling" when she tells her pupils how she spends her Sunday afternoons suggests a partial awareness, at least, that this is an admission of loneliness.
Miss Brill appears to resist sadness by giving life to what she sees and hears the brilliant colors noted critical analysis of a short story example the story contrasted to the "little dark room" she returns to at the endher sensitive reactions to the music, her delight in small details, critical analysis of a short story example.
By refusing to accept the role of a lonely woman, she is an actress. More importantly, she is a dramatist, actively countering sadness and self-pity, and this evokes our sympathy, even our admiration. A chief reason that we feel such pity for Miss Brill at the end of the story is the sharp contrast with the liveliness and beauty she gave to that ordinary scene in the park. Are the other characters without illusions? Are they in any way better than Miss Brill?
Finally, it's the artful construction of the plot that leaves us feeling sympathetic toward Miss Brill, critical analysis of a short story example. We are made to share her increasing excitement as she imagines that she is not only an observer but also a participant. No, we don't believe that the whole company will suddenly start singing and dancing, but we may feel that Miss Brill is on the verge of a more genuine kind of self-acceptance: her critical analysis of a short story example in life is a minor one, but she has critical analysis of a short story example role all the same.
Our perspective of the scene is different from Miss Brill's, but her enthusiasm is contagious and we are led to expect something momentous when the two-star players appear.
The letdown is terrible. These giggling, thoughtless adolescents themselves putting on an act for each other have insulted her fur--the emblem of her identity. So Miss Brill has no role to play after all. In Mansfield's carefully controlled and understated conclusion, Miss Brill packs herself away in her "little, dark room. Miss Brill is an actor, as are the other people in the park, as we all are in social situations. And we sympathize with her at the end of the story not because she is a pitiful, curious object but because she has been laughed off the stage, and that is a fear we all have.
Mansfield has managed not so much to touch our hearts in any gushing, sentimental way, but to touch our fears, critical analysis of a short story example. Share Flipboard Email, critical analysis of a short story example. English Writing Writing Essays Writing Research Papers Journalism English Grammar. Richard Nordquist.
English and Rhetoric Professor. Richard Nordquist is professor emeritus of rhetoric and English at Georgia Southern University and the author of several university-level grammar and composition textbooks. our editorial process. Updated January 06, Cite this Article Format. Nordquist, Richard. Miss Brill's Fragile Fantasy. copy citation.
Watch Now: How to Write a Strong Essay Conclusion. Black History and Women's Timeline: — Is the Wife of Bath a Feminist Character? Cultural Appropriation in Music: From Madonna to Miley Cyrus.
Analysis of 'The Yellow Wallpaper' by C. Perkins Gilman. Thesis: Definition and Examples in Composition. What's So Funny About Anton Chekhov? Significance of the Gray Hair in "A Rose for Emily". Analysis of "Feathers" by Raymond Carver. A Closer Look at Alice Munro's 'Runaway'.
Analyze a Short Story
, time: 7:45How to Write a Critical Analysis of a Short Story | Synonym
Stuck on your essay? Browse essays about Short Story Analysis and find inspiration. Learn by example and become a better writer with Kibin’s suite of essay help services · Critical Analysis of a Short Story the Lottery by Shirley Jackson: [Essay Example], words GradesFixer. This essay has been submitted by a student. This is not an example of the work written by professional essay writers
No comments:
Post a Comment