Preview

The Loneliness Of Miss Brill

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
335 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
The Loneliness Of Miss Brill
The story shows a character full of loneliness. There is no literally exposed information that she has a psychological issue; however, it is evident that the main character of the story has a problem of severe diffidence. Furthermore, the fact that she is an alien, meaning that she does not belong to the place she lives in, gets things more knotty for her. However, Miss Brill is apparently happy. She enjoys her fictional happiness with a very predictable and regular routine. She spends a few hours in the park on Sundays, and on the way back “home“, she stops at the baker’s to have a honeycake. So far, nothing wrong with Miss Brill; yet, voyeurism and eavesdropping are essential activities for a fully-pleasant Sunday afternoon park adventure

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    "Oh, how fascinating it was! How she enjoyed it! How she loved sitting there, watching it all!" It is obvious how much pleasure Miss Brill receives from such a humble activity. She has a habit of eavesdropping on other people’s lives and “listening as though she didn’t listen” which gives the impression that this activity helps her cope with being lonely and helps her leave “the little dark room” that she lives in. Miss Brill takes the time to notice every individual around her and hopes that others notice…

    • 638 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Weatherall did not have an easy life. She was jilted at the altar, lost a child, and later on played the role of mother and father when her husband died. When she talks about herself she talks about all the hard work that usually corresponds to the man along with the typical responsibilities of a mother that she had to do. Even when lying on her deathbed, she tries to convince herself and those around her that she is in perfect health and makes plans for the following days. Miss Brill, on the other side, is an English teacher in France who lives an uneventful and routinary life, but maintains a panglossian attitude. She spends her days at the park eavesdropping and every once in a while she wears her old fur wrap with great pride. The only thing that makes Ms. Brill’s life better is finding an almond…

    • 607 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    The story of J. D Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, is a view into school student, Holden Caulfield’s life in the times leading up to his nervous breakdown. David Fincher’s The Social Network, is a recount showing the creation of Facebook, primarily from the view of Mark Zuckerberg. One of the personal dilemmas seen in both The Catcher in the Rye and The Social Network is loneliness. Salinger and Fincher explore loneliness using a number of techniques, including setting, costume, camera shots and characterization.…

    • 1056 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    How do you spend your Sunday afternoons? Most people spend it with family and friends. Others as a spiritual day or even sports day. However you spend it, it is usually around the most important people in your life. However, in “Miss Brill” we find out her Sundays are spent at the park. She spends them alone because she lives in solitude. The time she spends at the park is a twisted reality of what she really is seeing. Not having companions with whom to spend her Sunday afternoons lead to Miss Brill making up scenarios and ideas about the people around her. She is able to feel better about herself when speaking and assuming things for others. This is really a mask to cover the loneliness she is feeling inside. In “Miss Brill” by Katherine…

    • 904 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    "Of Mice and Men" essay on Loneliness is a basic part of human life. Every one becomes lonely once in a while but in Steinbeck's novella "Of Mice and Men", he illustrates the loneliness of ranch life in the early 1930's and shows how people are driven to try and find friendship in order to escape from loneliness. Steinbeck creates a lonely and blue atmosphere at many times in the book. He uses names and words such as the town near the ranch called "Soledad", which means loneliness and the card game "Solitaire" Which means by ones self. He makes it clear that all the men on the ranch are lonely, with particular people lonelier than others. In the opening chapter, Steinbeck introduces the idea of loneliness and men who work on ranches living temporary lives, with no aim in life. Steinbeck uses the setting to convey these ideas. As they were walking along the path, it is described as " a path beaten by hard boys coming down from the ranches to swim in the deep pool, and beaten hard by tramps who come wearily down from the highway in the evening to jungle-up near water" (p.18) This creates a setting and shows how men who work on the ranch have had temporary, isolated and lonely lives. He also writes "an ash-pile made by many fires" (p.18) This shows that many men must have walked through this road to enter a lonely and miserable life, moving from ranch to ranch finding useless work. I think all the people living in the ranch are lonely. This proves this where Steinbeck describes the bunk house where all the workers sleep. "Over each bunk there was nailed an apple box with the opening forward so that it made two shelves for personal belongings of the occupant of the bunk." (p38) The way Steinbeck describes the bunkhouse indicates their lonely lives. Also by only having two shelves for their personal belongings shows their lonely insecure lives.…

    • 2148 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Virginia Woolf Loneliness

    • 300 Words
    • 2 Pages

    In Virginia Woolf’s essay A Room of One’s Own, Woolf states that Carmichael has gained an advantage that many women lacked: the ability to separate herself from the issues of gender, and to be able to write freely, instead of trying to fit the mold provided . There are so many aspects of the world that are designed to hinder people, in some way or another; if not gender, race, physical and mental abilities. When one becomes consumed into the expectations of their category, it can cause paranoia towards their own actions. This in turn leads to lack of self-confidence issues amongst others. Instead of thinking of oneself as an individual human being, one may think they are a secluded, lonely being in their vacant category. The loneliness can…

    • 300 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    People tend to seek out literature with which they can connect to. Perhaps that is why J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in The Rye is still relevant to many readers, especially teens, today, because the experiences and feelings that Holden has resemble that of teens today.…

    • 430 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    My hands shook harder than an earthquake as I walked down the fourth grade wing to the office. My fourth grade teacher, Mrs. Bilbrey, never believed a word I said. As I walked into the counselor's office, my knees felt like jelly.…

    • 446 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    A famous catholic sister of god once said “the most terrible poverty is loneliness, and the feeling of being unloved.” Loneliness is shown profoundly throughout the book Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck. In this essay I will be observing the characters Lennie, George, and Curley's Wife, I will be discussing how loneliness impacts them individually.…

    • 307 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Better Essays

    literatur

    • 1613 Words
    • 7 Pages

    “Miss Brill,“ is one of her finest stories, capturing in a moment an event that will forever change the life of the title character. Miss Brill is an older woman of indeterminate age who scrapes by teaching English to school children and reading newspapers to an "old invalid gentleman.” Her joy in life is her visits to the park on Sunday, where she observes all that goes on around her and listens to the conversations of people nearby, as she sits “in other people's lives.” It is when she tries to leave her role as spectator and join the “players” in her…

    • 1613 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck, shows an outcast who is excluded from the company of others in the book. The books shows that everyone will eventually feel loneliness and isolation. Almost everyone in the book has some sort of issue or reason for them to become lonely and isolated. People that are outcast in the book are Crooks, Lennie, and Curley’s wife.…

    • 405 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    How does loneliness affect people’s emotions, actions, and words throughout their daily lives? Loneliness is a feeling in which a person has no one to comfort them and is a deep feeling of isolation, According to Robin Williams, “I used to think that the worst thing in life was to end up all alone… The worst thing in life is ending up with people who make you feel all alone…” (my pillow has this quote on it). Even though Robin Williams is no longer alive, he sent a message that stated something that will last because it is very true; a person could feel lonely without even being alone. That person could be around millions of people and still feel lonely because people isolate other human beings. In Of Mice and Men, Curley’s wife is lonely almost all the time. For this reason, she tries to sneak out and talk to people while also being a little too flirtatious. For example, “I get lonely,” she said. “You can talk to people, but I can’t talk to nobody but Curley” (Steinbeck, 87). This shows that loneliness can cause a person to feel sad and want constant attention from people that the person would…

    • 551 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Death is an inevitable process of life, when a significant other is lost it can cause a traumatic disruption in the way someone continues living their life. When someone neglects change the feelings of being isolated, may be resulted by self-imposed thoughts of not belonging with society or by being rejected by others leading to the feeling of loneliness. Just as in the short story “A Rose for Emily”, in which William Faulkner conveys the struggle of loneliness and isolation from the inability to adapt and accept change. This is emphasized through the relationship Miss Emily had with her father, Homer Barron, and society itself.…

    • 1905 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Better Essays

    A person is always trying to find a bond with another person, but in this lonesome world that doesn’t always occur. When people are deprived of companionship, a lot of different effects happen in different people. The different situations that everyone is in can lead to different outcomes and can lead to people developing different personalities and different situations in life. This longing for companionship is a theme that is widely explored in the book in the book Of Mice and Men. In this book, John Steinbeck uses the characters Crooks, Curley’s wife and Candy to show that loneliness is sadly a part of life that everyone has to fight against.…

    • 1552 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Part one of Dorothy’s Day The Long Loneliness was about her searching. It takes many years to figure out who she was and what she believed. In order to be content with her life and who she is, she was put in many different situations. Whether it was right or wrong she over came the situation and learned from her experience. She met many different people and went to different places that influenced her…

    • 75 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays