I'm drawn to literature-both as a pastime and academically-as I love digging deeper into literary texts. It thrills me to be able to explore the minds of brilliant people before me and be a part of their own experiences and views on the world. For example, the poem 'Song for Last Year's Wife' by Brian Patten was an enlightening experience. Upon first reading I felt compassion for the narrator of this particular poem and found the tone to be very plaintive throughout. It wasn't until further inspection and debate in class that I felt my first interpretation of the poem to be completely wrong. For this very short dramatic monologue to contain hidden sinister tones and more themes than I previously thought excited me. It made me regret not being…show more content… The fact that these themes are not entirely new either makes them even more important; there are hundreds of novels already dedicated to these themes out there which we can learn from. For example, whilst studying Plath's 'The Bell Jar' for Literature coursework I picked up her poetry, as well as others such as Gilman's 'The Yellow Wallpaper'. The autobiographical short story told in epistolary form is a microcosm for the misogynistic society in which Gilman's narrator finds herself. In the same way Plath uses metaphorical symbolism to encapsulate mental illness, Gilman's yellow wallpaper serves as an insight into one woman's madness and captivity. The gothic tones encapsulate the claustrophobic nightmare faced by the narrator, evoking outright discomfort from the reader, helping Gilman pursue her agenda, commenting on the harmfulness of 'rest care' and the treatment of creative women. It allows for a transcending piece of literature, which allows for ideas and concepts to be taken from them to fit within our modern society, one of the reasons why I love literature and poetry so much to begin
