Death By Landscape Analysis

"Death by Landscape" v. "The Yellow Wallpaper""She was tired a lot, as if she was living not one life but two: her own, and another, shadowy life that hovered around her and would not let itself be realized…" (391). For many, the "shadowy life" of mental illness hinders one's ability to be happy and whole. Mental illness and delusion has been a fascinating but devastating topic throughout human existence, and as such, has provided much interesting literature, both fictional and factual. Two stories from two completely different time periods: "The Yellow Wallpaper," 1898, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and "Death by Landscape," 1939, by Margaret Atwood both have deep roots in humans' infatuation with mental illness. In both stories, while having
Before this point unfolds, maybe the protagonists were perceived as just maybe being "a little off," or "weird," but afterwards, they are undoubtedly loonies in any reader's mind. This point occurs in "The Yellow Wallpaper" when the narrator reaches the conclusion that the pattern has two depths: An empty depth on a farther plane in which a woman lives, and an intricate frontal plane with pattern used like the bars of a jail cell to keep this woman caged. She states her delusion in her journal; "I didn't realize for a long time what the thing was that showed behind, the dim sub-pattern, but now I am quite sure it is a woman. By daylight she is subdued, quiet. I fancy it is the pattern that keeps her so still. It is so puzzling, it keeps me quiet by the hour" (86). Obviously, wall paper is one dimensional, so it is quite impossible for it to move, much less for a woman to live inside of it. These ideas are taken one step further when the narrator actually begins to believe that she is the woman being trapped in the wall paper. Her paranoia leads her to believe her husband and maid want to trap her inside the wall paper- all leading up the final scene in which the narrator rips the paper off the wall and exclaims, "'I've gotten out at last…in spite of [my husband] and Jane. And I've pulled off most of the paper, so [they]
Every one of them is a picture of Lucy. You can't see her exactly, but she's there, in behind the pink stone island or the one behind that. In the picture of the cliff she is hidden by the clutch of fallen rocks towards the bottom… Everyone has to be somewhere, and this is where Lucy is… In Lois's apartment, in the holes that open inwards on the wall…" (392). Lois is logically unable to accept the reality that Lucy was never found. Therefore, she creates the delusional concept of her being inside the paintings, like they are windows to another world. She even imagines that she hears Lucy calling every once in a while: "She was always listening for another voice, the voice of a person who should have been there but was not. An echo. While Rob was alive, while the boys were growing up, she could pretend she didn't hear it, this empty space in the sound. But now there is nothing much left to distract her" (391). A logical person could clearly infer that Lucy, although a body was never found, died in those woods, but because of Lois's emotional attachment and traumatic experiences in the aftermath of her disappearance, has circumnavigated reality to retain hope and disregard the grieving of