The Imagination in Miss Brill In the short story “Miss Brill,” an old lady spends her Sunday witnessing human beings at the park. Although she is ignored by her surroundings, Miss Brill still seems to persuade herself that she is still important in that even though she is not noticed. She believes that if she was not at the park, the park attendees will still miss her. It’s obvious that she is a lonely person due to her dramatic thoughts and always trying to entertain herself through nonverbal communication between her and her own thoughts. In the beginning of the story, Miss Brill has a conflict between choosing which kind of fur she would like to wear to go to the park on an early Sunday morning.
When Miss Brill sat on the bench there was an elderly couple sitting on the bench too. They were having a conversation , and while they were talking Miss Brill was listening in on their conversation. She likes to listen and see what people are talking about. When they get and leave Miss Brill begins to listen to the band play their music in the park. She feels as thouh they are playing only for her.
Curley’s Wife is a complex character that is mentioned in the novella ‘Of Mice and Men’. In the beginning of the novella we feel sympathy and negativity towards Curley’s Wife. We feel sympathy because Curley’s Wife has no name. This shows that she is not of importance and that she is no more than an object. The characters in the novella refer to her as ‘Curley’s Wife’.
The bench is like her liberty room, where she can be herself without people blaming her. When she sits on the bench in the beginning she get often disturbed and that’s irritates her. She sees the bench as a friend or a family member there are waiting for her. It’s not like that she don’t like sharing the bench with anyone, that’s just that she like to be consulted first. That can be because she doesn’t talk so
Sal reflects, “sometimes you just wanted to be alone with the birds of sadness” (169). Salamanca is giving Phoebe space to let her feelings out. Salamanca understands what Phoebe is going through, since she went through it herself. A third example of this theme occurs in Chapter 41 when Gram has a stroke, and Gramps will not leave her bedside in the hospital. An intern tries to get Gramps to leave the room, since Gram has no idea he’s there.
Katherine uses a wide variety of different characters to develop the idea of the loneliness that comes with old age. The main character is Miss Brill herself. She is an elderly lady who is socially isolated due to her old age and impoverishment. We realise her loneliness by the way she treats her fur scarf. This is Miss Brills only companion, the only thing she has to love and she treats it like it’s a living being, calling it her “Little rouge” and petting it as someone would a cat.
While she is upset by this, she instead thinks about the things she can do such as, “writing, teaching, raising children and cats and plants and snakes, reading, speaking publicly about MS and depression, even playing bridge” (Mairs 48) In the essay Mairs talks about two women, both with MS, living completely different lives. One lives as though she’s not disabled, while the other suffers through it, almost giving up her life to MS. When she was on her way to California for a family trip, she experienced an exacerbation but went to California anyway because she wasn’t sure whether or not she’d ever be able to make it there again. Mairs refuses to give in to the negative thoughts because she doesn’t want to make any decisions for future Nancy because she doesn’t know what future Nancy
Alienation in Katherine Mansfield’s “Miss Brill” In Katherine Mansfield’s short story, “Miss Brill,” we as readers are confronted with the idea that fantasizing can alienate a person from the world or society and can make us lonely. “Miss Brill” displays this alienation through her fantasies of being youthful, having companions, and being important. Miss Brill visits the park and fantasizes her entire life so much that she doesn’t notice she has grown old alone. Miss Brill always speaks to her only friend, her fur stole, so much that she hasn’t thought to make any other friends. Miss Brill fantasizes so much about being important and that ”somebody would [notice] if she [wasn’t] there” (135), that she didn’t realize what the community actually thinks of her.
The music is a symbol of the band playing in the park. This helps us see that Miss Brill’ emotional state. An example is “tum, tum, tum, tiddle um, tiddle, tum tiddley um ta blew the brash band. This onomatopoeia recreates the sound of the band which reflects Miss Brills own happiness of being at the park continuing her usual routine of observing people at the park which brings joy in her life. But it is very ironic as the life is actually only within the band, whereas Miss Brill’s life is lacking any energy and life immensely as she is just a lonely old lady.
When the narrator views the woman, she speculates on the type of life that she has lived. She imagines that the woman is one of “the lonely ones” whom she believes that are found everywhere in society. (Paragraph 13) She envisions the woman’s life as being one of solitude, one in which everyone who has ever known her has left her, whether that be her kids who “prefer not to visit” or her colleagues whom she “lost to time and the new young employees.” (Paragraph 14) However narrator doesn’t know this for sure, since she is merely speculating and we as the audience cannot be sure if the elderly woman’s life is as described in the essay. The author of the essay also includes a seemingly unimportant detail about how The Box Man and the elderly woman complete the tasks which they are described as doing when the narrator views them. The elderly woman “drags it [her meal] out as long as possible” while also stating that she does not have anything to do after