Yellow Indocterination Essay

587 Words3 Pages
The Yellow Paint, by Robert Louis Stevenson, is a short story about a young mans life in a strangely religious town. He gets himself into several unfortunate situations thinking the paint would 'save' him, but in the end the paint had no effect. The moral of the story is that you are responsible for your own actions. Morally, the story is understandable but overall ineffective for readers of the story. In The Yellow Paint, there is a town in which a 'physician' lives. Much like religious ceremonies, when a man or women reaches adulthood they are dawned a coat of yellow paint. This paint is supposed to protect them from the dangers of life, the bondage of sin and the fear of death. The main character (The unnamed young man) reaches adulthood and refuses to be painted. Until an incident regarding one of his friends and a water truck. The young man is coated with 3 layers of paint and a finish of varnish, in which Robert Louis Stevenson concludes that "The physician (who was himself affected even to tears) protested he had never done a job so thorough." (1) The young man goes through several accidents and misfortunes thinking the pain would somehow help him out of his predicaments. Inthe end, he commits forgery, arson and murder and is to be hung, still unable to understand why the paint has yet to save him. The physician concludes with ". . . Well, well; perhaps, if you had not been painted, you would have been more frightened still." All throughout the story there are a chain of cause and effect circumstances that shows that the moral is that in the end we are responsible for our own actions. An example of one of these circumstances would be when Robert Louis Stevenson wrote: "What is the meaning of this?" he cried, as soon as the door was opened. "I was to be set free from all
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