Yellow
Intro
We live in a world in which we have numerous of things to look out after, expectations to fulfil and challenges to keep up with. Now, if you’ve found yourself on the bottom of a deep dark whole where you’re constantly failing to meet both your own and society’s expectations, how do you get up and reach the light? This problem is exactly what the protagonist deals with before he makes up his mind in the short story “Yellow” by Peter Carty. The following content is an investigation in the narrative point of view which has a useful effect on how information of the protagonist is delivered. Furthermore, the symbolic features are examined with focus on how they create pictures and depth to the story. Lastly, the essay will explore …show more content…
The symbolism adds and represents small clues and pictures of Jon’s mental situation that goes beyond what the narrator literally says. The first example comes to show shortly into the story. “He reported to the diving school, a new construction of glass, marble and concrete. It contained a deep training pool with an elaborate tiled frieze of a scuba diver on its bottom” (l. 20 p. 1) In this particular excerpt, you might as a reader already get a bad feeling about what’s to come. The construction made of “glass, marble and concrete” seems frighteningly similar to what the material an average church is made of, the place we bury the dead. Hard to overlook is the scuba diver on the bottom of the school’s basin which one might argue is a picture of what faith inevitably will bring Jon soon enough, namely himself lying on the bottom of an ocean. Another place in Peter Carty’s short story where the reader encounters symbolic pictures of Jon’s eventual death comes to show midways through the short story. “He poured more gin, but no matter how much he swallowed it was never enough” (l.39, p. 2) At first, one might think that ‘enough’ refers to ‘enough alcohol to get drunk’ but seen in relation to both his concrete situation and the fact that he eventually drowns himself, one is very likely to interpret his drink as a symbol for the deadly ocean
Intro
We live in a world in which we have numerous of things to look out after, expectations to fulfil and challenges to keep up with. Now, if you’ve found yourself on the bottom of a deep dark whole where you’re constantly failing to meet both your own and society’s expectations, how do you get up and reach the light? This problem is exactly what the protagonist deals with before he makes up his mind in the short story “Yellow” by Peter Carty. The following content is an investigation in the narrative point of view which has a useful effect on how information of the protagonist is delivered. Furthermore, the symbolic features are examined with focus on how they create pictures and depth to the story. Lastly, the essay will explore …show more content…
The symbolism adds and represents small clues and pictures of Jon’s mental situation that goes beyond what the narrator literally says. The first example comes to show shortly into the story. “He reported to the diving school, a new construction of glass, marble and concrete. It contained a deep training pool with an elaborate tiled frieze of a scuba diver on its bottom” (l. 20 p. 1) In this particular excerpt, you might as a reader already get a bad feeling about what’s to come. The construction made of “glass, marble and concrete” seems frighteningly similar to what the material an average church is made of, the place we bury the dead. Hard to overlook is the scuba diver on the bottom of the school’s basin which one might argue is a picture of what faith inevitably will bring Jon soon enough, namely himself lying on the bottom of an ocean. Another place in Peter Carty’s short story where the reader encounters symbolic pictures of Jon’s eventual death comes to show midways through the short story. “He poured more gin, but no matter how much he swallowed it was never enough” (l.39, p. 2) At first, one might think that ‘enough’ refers to ‘enough alcohol to get drunk’ but seen in relation to both his concrete situation and the fact that he eventually drowns himself, one is very likely to interpret his drink as a symbol for the deadly ocean