Insanity as a Part of Human Nature in American Literature - Essay Example

? Insanity People do not just become insane without any reason. There are a whole lot of reasons that bring about insanity in someone. At the same time, insanity has multiple effects, although all of them are destructive either of one’s sanity or even of one’s life. Nevertheless, through the various pieces of American literature one learns that insanity is a part of human nature whose cause is a great desire to express something and whose result is always destruction. In the story “The Most Dangerous Game,” one can see that General Zaroff is insane as he is so engrossed at the idea of hunting people as he would animals, and that such a desire is somehow based on his need to fulfill his wish of hunting a rational animal. It could also be a need for pleasure, as in the line: “Precisely…That is why I use them. It gives me pleasure” (Connell 7). In Zaroff’s words, there is actually an insanity that reveals his true nature as a cruel man: “I wanted the ideal animal to hunt…[the ideal animal] must have courage, cunning, and, above all, it must be able to reason,” which refers to none other than a human being (7). Moreover, Zaroff justifies himself to Rainsford by saying, “Life is for the strong, to be lived by the strong, and, if needs be, taken by the strong” (8). This belief is actually not only illegally unsound but also outright insane, as it is the basis of dictatorship. Dictatorship therefore could be the option of those people obsessed with their own selves, and thus, I believe that insanity is a quality of those people who selfishly think of themselves only. Zaroff may also be insane because of his perceptions. When Zaroff said, “I have electricity. We try to be civilized here,” somehow he does not understand the concept of civilization, which is actually all about human interactions and not about electricity (8). Zaroff may therefore call himself civilized because he uses electricity but in fact, he murders people so he is actually very different from being a normal civilized human being. Such image may actually indicate an insanity buried so deep that it cannot anymore be consciously recognized by the self. Even with his dealings and rules on how to make a decision on something, there is really something insane with Zaroff, for even at the last moment, he gambled his life. He tells Rainsford, “Splendid! One of us is to furnish a repast for the hounds…The other will sleep in this very excellent bed” (15). Although Zaroff was defeated in the end, his actions and antics somehow showed a mentally deranged man who had a great need for bloodthirsty manhunt. In the same way, insanity expresses itself in the violence of the youth in T. C. Boyle’s story. In “Greasy Lake,” the punks are technically insane for they are driven by cocaine (Boyle 168). In fact, the narrator imagines something insane as he suddenly, for no reason at all, thinks of “reeking frogs and muskrats revolving in slicks of their own deliquescing juices” (171). Such image is pure and vivid and almost hallucinatory. This could be caused by extreme fear as the narrator dived into the water to hide himself from the other punks. It is also possible that this is due to the horrible effects of cocaine which the young men undoubtedly took prior to the incident (168). This is therefore a proof that insanity may not be instinctual but it can naturally result from a great need to use drugs in order to conjure up images in the mind that the person wants to experience for the purpose of pleasure or satisfaction. The result, however, is sometimes the opposite, as “reeking frogs and muskrats” is far from a pleasurable sensation. Nevertheless, the young men in the story used rather insane acts and reactions whether or not they liked doing it. At the same time, while underwater, the narrator accidentally feels “the dead man rotating to expose a mossy beard and eyes cold as the moon” (171). Whether this man was indeed real or not, the fact remains that the fear and the sense of touch involved in this stimulus was actually more vivid than usual because of the cocaine. In fact, there was even also a mere possibility that the image was not real because cocaine could have produced such strong hallucinations in the narrator’s brain. Insanity is also evident through violence, just like people breaking down the narrator’s car: “I heard a door slam, a curse, and then the sound of the headlights shattering” (172). The second car actually just came from nowhere and had obviously nothing to do with the young punks or the girl. However, they could also have been a similar group of young men heavily stoned with cocaine. They must have simply reacted to what the lie that the girl told them: “It’s them, it’s them: they tried to, tried to…rape me!” (171). The gap between “tried to” and “rape me” shows that the girl was actually still thinking of what to say to the second group of punks in order to get even with the narrator and his two friends. The second group merely reacted out of an exaggerated desire to show gentlemanly concern for the girl. The result is violence. The insanity in the story also lies in the denouement, when after all the violence that the three young men went through, the two girls took everything that happened casually, and even offered some drugs. This is totally unexpected and therefore seems like an insane reaction. In fact, instead of offering a moment of rest to the guys, one of the girls offered sex and said, “Hey, you want to party, you want to do some of these [handful of tablets] with me and Sarah?” (174). This is a clear example of how insane the drug culture in America was during the 1960s. This particular part of the story also teaches the reader that there is no way that they can ever stop the drugs no matter how tired they are and no matter how much trouble it has caused them. The insanity is simply never-ending. Sometimes, however, there is no need for drugs in order for one to experience insanity. In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,” it was insanity that gradually made its way to the female narrator and eventually led to her own break down at the end. The female narrator was actually becoming more and more depressed about her condition in the room after being kept there by John. In fact, the yellow wallpaper symbolizes insanity. In fact, according to the female narrator, the pattern on the yellow wallpaper that shows itself is “like a woman stooping down and creeping about” and that she “seemed to shake the pattern, just as if she wanted to get out” (Gilman 652). What she does not realize is that she is this strange figure of a woman that she can see on the wallpaper. This woman is “stooping down and creeping about” because it seeks escape, and what is obviously insane here is that the female narrator seems to experience a dissociative disorder or one where she sees herself objectively and without her realizing it. The female narrator’s reactions somehow show us that negativity comes as a result of depression and it is this negativity that transforms someone into an insane person. The female narrator reacts negatively towards the wallpaper as if the latter were symbolic of her life and lowly existence: “The color is hideous enough, and unreliable enough, and infuriating enough, but the pattern is torturing” (653). From this reaction, one can see the experiences of the female narrator herself – she is being tortured and that she is being infuriated by her existence and by the people who cause it. Finally, the climax of the story is the full and total release of insanity by the female narrator. She has finally become totally insane. As she continued creeping, she said “I’ve got out at last…in spite of you [her husband John] and Jane…And I’ve pulled off most of the paper, so you can’t put me back!” (6). From this, one can see the eventual or ultimate result of depression and repressed emotions of anger and pain – insanity. The point when the different selves that used to perceive separately converge into a single entity is perhaps the most difficult. The female narrator in the story has joined forces with the creeping woman of the yellow wallpaper, thus producing an insane character. Not all depressed women, however, become as violent as Gilman’s female narrator. Some are silently insane. In Ann Beattie’s “Janus,” insanity controls Andrea’s day-to-day living in a world of coldness and indifference coming from her own husband. Because of this, she has bought a large piece of bowl, with which she feels “a deeper connection” (Beattie 597). It is actually both confusing and strange why a woman with a good professional for a husband would turn her attention towards a bowl and not to the husband himself. The insanity that Andrea has is rather obvious if one were to know how deeply and affectionately she feels for the bowl as if it were like her lover. This is perhaps because the husband is a rather cold man – a businessman who rather lacks appreciation for art. He is simply one who “had [simply] pronounced the bowl ‘pretty’” without even showing a bit of desire for it (597). It is also possible that Andrea may simply have identified herself with the bowl, for it is empty and hollow, just like her life and the marriage she has. Thus, the bowl not only represents her but somehow makes her wonder “how people lived together and loved each other” (598). This has perhaps been the riddle that has been consuming Andrea day and night, and so it must have had an effect on her mind. Her great need for affection and closeness has made her silently insane and secretly longing for some love and some care which strangely she finds in a piece of bowl. This inanimate object therefore determines her emotions and insanely gives her direction in life. Love, or perhaps the lack of it, is also the reason for the insanity that happened to Miss Emily Grierson in Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily.” Emily knew that Homer, the only man that she learned to love is known for his indecisiveness in marriage, and so he buys arsenic for him (Faulkner). Poisoning him was rather the best way for Emily to keep him forever, if she cannot ever have him alive in marriage. This is definitely insane as there is nothing normal in this way of fighting for one’s love. One normally accepts one’s defeat in love. However, perhaps, Emily’s personality as an outcast in their neighborhood has rather maximized her pain, her paranoia and her insecurities. Thus, she might not have been thinking of Homer’s life when she poisoned him, and she may have only been thinking of how to keep him forever with her. Moreover, in the story, necrophilia is also a theme that exemplifies insanity. Finally, Emily Grierson kills Homer, and everything was normal until the neighbors and the investigator found out that “the [dead] body of [Homer] had apparently once lain in the attitude of an embrace” while “in the second pillow was the indentation of a head (Faulkner). This means that Emily secretly poisoned Homer and kept him in a room while sometimes putting him beside her in bed even when he is dead and rotting. Although this is a demonstration of true love, it is also an exemplification of insanity. No one would normally sleep with a corpse no matter how much one has loved that person. Nevertheless, Emily’s longing for Homer’s love is after all understandable, considering the fact that she has been totally insecure and discriminated against all her life. Fear of being left by Homer and of living alone has indeed consumed Emily and transformed her into a murderer and necrophiliac. Nothing ever comes closer to insanity than this. In the same way, fear of death is another reason for insanity. Just like in Keat’s poem, one is consumed by fear: “And think that I may never live to trace/ Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance” (Keats 7-8). The “their” in the above lines actually mean the same as the stars in the night sky. The fear can be overwhelming, insanely poetic but overwhelmingly insane at the same time. Moreover, as one’s fear increases, one’s desire for life or to hold on to dear life also increases as well. Despite his fear, the narrator in the poem thinks of “full ripen’d grain” (4), “high romance” (6), and “the magic hand of chance” (8). These are things that make life so rich beyond description. Add to this other lofty and wonderful things like “faery power” (11) and “love and fame” (14). There is therefore a whole lot of things that someone would insanely desire as one’s death approaches. There is also a tendency to overindulge in these things out of a fear that one will never have it again in life. This is perhaps the reason why some people seem to overindulge themselves in the goodness of life to the point of extravagance and even disease and death. This is insane but this somehow has a rational explanation, just like the narrator in the poem who eventually realizes that his “love and fame to nothingness do sink,” and that this is what is real and what has to be accepted (Keats 14). Insanity is expressed by man in many ways but it remains as a consequence of a great desire that cannot be restrained. However, it is also destructive in the end. In “The Most Dangerous Game,” insanity resulted from a desire to hunt men and it eventually ended in death. In “Greasy Lake,” insanity came from a need to have an identity through the help of drugs, and eventually ended up in violence and destruction and more drugs. In “The Yellow Wallpaper,” insanity is caused by depression and repressed emotions, and it ended up in full-blown insanity. In “Janus,” insanity came because of coldness and resulted in an emotional desire for the inanimate. In “A Rose for Emily,” insanity is due to a fear of loss of love and resulted in murder and necrophilia. Lastly, in “When I Have Fears,” insanity is brought about by a fear of death and has its consequence in overindulgence. Top of Form Bottom of Form Works Cited Beattie, Ann. “Janus.” Scribd. 2013. Boyle, T. C. “Greasy Lake.” Teacher Web. 2013. Connell, Richard. “The Most Dangerous Game.” Duke of Definition. 2013. Faulkner, William. “A Rose for Emily.”University of Virginia. 2013. Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. “The Yellow Wallpaper.” National Institutes of Health. 2013. Keats, John. “When I Have Fears.” Poem Hunter. 2013. Read More