The Illusion of Youth - 2846 Words

Katherine Mansfield’s Miss. Brill written in 1920 is a short story a part of Mansfield’s The Garden Party and Other Stories. It is a short story about a middle-aged teacher, who finds joy in spending her Sunday afternoons, sitting in the park. At the park, she finds joy in observing others around her and pretending, they are all actors and actresses on a stage. Miss. Brill finds joy in the illusion that she creates at the park. She is a woman, who lives a very humdrum life and finds joy creating an unrealistic world, where she envisions herself as an actress. She uses illusion as not only an escape from her reality but also from herself. Miss. Brill creates an illusion in order to escape the reality that she is losing her youth.†¦show more content†¦Brill out of the illusion, she has created. She is awakening to the reality that she is not a young fashionable woman but a middle-aged woman, holding onto an item from the days of her youth. After overhearing the girl’s comment, she returns home where she returns the fur to its box. She hears a cry after returning the item but she doesn’t acknowledge the cry comes from her. The acceptance that she has gotten older just like the fur is an inedibility that she denies because she doesn’t want to acknowledge that she is the one that made the cry. She tries to preserve the fur by keeping it in a like-new condition but she admits that the life has dim in â€Å"the little eyes† of the fur because she has to polish them in order to restore the life back. By keeping the fur in like-new condition, she also is keeping the vitality of life. Just like the fur, Miss Brill life lacks vitality but she receives it each time she takes the garment out and wears it on her Sunday afternoons to the park. She is a woman who lives an unfulfilled life, she finds that she receives fulfillment each time she chooses to dress-up in her fur and spend her afternoon at the park. It is there that her life is not only vital but becomes a play, inside her head. Mansfield described her as having â€Å". . . felt a tingling in her hands and arms . . .† (Mansfield 1). She not only feels that her life is vital by her afternoons in the park but also she finds excitement. If she has to lookShow MoreRelatedAnalysis Of A Streetcar Named Desire 1372 Words   |  6 Pages12 November, 2016 In Tennessee Williams’ play A Streetcar Named Desire, Williams explores the internal conflict of illusion versus reality through the characters. Humans often use illusion to save us pain and it allows us to enjoy pleasure instead. However, as illusion clashes with reality, one can forget the difference between the two. When people are caught up in their illusions, eventually they must face reality even if it is harsh. In the play, Blanche suffers from the struggle of what is realRead MoreEssay on Guyana and Family Values1036 Words   |  5 Pagesbuilt upon mutual respect for each other and strong bond between family and friends. The government has created the necessary policies to sustain this culture. On the other hand, American youths in today’s information age are suffering from continued mortification of family values, artificial happiness and youths losing their voice. I will support my main contentions by entering a conversation with two authors. Sherry Turkle, a professor of Social Studies of Science and Technology at MIT, usingRead MoreSonnet 65 Essay examples1051 Words   |  5 PagesSonnet 65 Sonnet 65 by Shakespeare argues that beauty and youth are illusions as they inevitably fade with the effects of time. The reader is pulled into the age old battle between humanitys desire for immortality and inevitable physical decay. Shakespeare suggests that it is only ideas captured by `black ink (verses) that have any hope of transcending the test of time. The metaphoric loss of a legal battle by `beauty against the `rage of time in the first quatrain is intertwined with imagesRead MoreThe Glass Menagerie: Illusions over Reality837 Words   |  4 Pagesand Laura, which was far cry from Amanda’s youth during the Victorian era at Blue Mountain to her present situation of poverty and uncertainty. As a single mother, Amanda was worried about her family’s financial security along with concerns about her daughter’s lack of marital prospects; for that reason, her need to enrich her life by molding the lives of her children resulted in illusions overpowering realit y that also brought out destructive illusions within herself, her son Tom, and her daughterRead MoreEssay about Dr. Heideggers Experiment: Reality Or Illusion812 Words   |  4 Pages Dr. Heideggers Experiment: Reality or Illusion nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;In Nathaniel Hawthornes short story Dr. Heideggers Experiment, one of the central ideas of the story revolves around the idea of reality versus illusion. Of course the overriding theme of the story dealt with the ethical dilemma of changing old age into youth, still a major part of how the story was interpreted involved a personal decision on how you took the story; as literal or figurative. The perception that appealedRead MoreEssay about Analysis of The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams605 Words   |  3 PagesWilliams’s life before stardom. The play occurs during the 1930’s before world war two, in an apartment in St. Louis. Where the three main characters reside and confront on a quotidian basis. Moreover, as well in which they live in their world of illusion. Illusion and reality is practically what the play revolves around. The characters Tom, his sister Laura and mother Amanda are attached to an imaginary world in one way or another. Tom has become the head of the household ever since their father abandonedRead MoreA Streetcar Named Desire By Tennessee Williams902 Words   |  4 Pages Tennessee Williams, playwright of â€Å"A Streetcar Named Desire†, uses symbolism and other elements to establish the overall theme of illusion vs. reality. He uses these elements to show how the character Blanche can t distinguish the difference between the two, ultimately leading her to a lonely life full of lies. And unlike Blanche, Stanley knows this from the very beginning and thus, their differences turn into a play full of mind games. The differences between Stanley and Blanche are vastRead MoreThe Problem Of Teen Violence995 Words   |  4 PagesTeen violence has become a longstanding agent in the culture of the nation’s youth. Every year, approximately one-million twelve to nineteen year olds are murdered or assaulted, many by their peers, and teenagers are more than twice as likely as adults to become the victims of violence. From schools (grammar and high school) being subdued by a fellow student on an angry rampage to figures of the law flipping and dragging students in class. Something has to be done. Although the issue is far tooRead MoreMental Illiness in Tennessee Williams A Streetcar Named Desire642 Words   |  3 Pagesinformation about her past. Blanche’s illusions have become the struggle with her imagination and realism. Even an optimist thinker like herself would have to face an obstacle. The only time she had a positive life and everything was moving the way she liked was in Blanches past with her past young husband Allen. Everything that Blanche does and everything that comes out of her mouth is to have that life back, that youth life. That happiness was also an illusion, her husband’s homosexuality had onlyRead MoreThe Time Of Cholera, By Florentino Ariza1324 Words   |  6 Pagesattempts to win the love of Fermina Daza solely on the strength of the brief relationship they shared during their youth. The two people who find each other in the fading twilight of their lives, however, are completely different individuals from the young lovers seeking ideal ized constructs. Mà ¡rquez depicts the power nostalgia has to alter his characters’ reflections on their own youth, their relationships with one another, and on a society, and way of life, that lives on only in their memories. The