I would suggest that she is. But it's important to see Miss Brill as she sees herself: as a character in a play. Miss Brill is enjoying a Sunday afternoon in the park. Everything seems perfect; the band is playing beautifully and everyone seems to be in their rightful place, acting out their roles as if part of a gigantic stage production. Miss Brill, too, is playing her part in the enveloping human drama, expressing her eccentric individuality through the unseasonal wearing of fur.
Sadly for Miss Brill, her perfect day at the park, her own private performance, is ruined when the two lead "actors" unexpectedly break character. Miss Brill's subsequent retreat to a grim life of loneliness and isolation is sadly all-too-common, especially among people of a certain age. This is what makes Miss Brill such a believable character. Most people will doubtless know someone just like her.
Miss Brill's eccentricities help to make sense of an often senseless world. This world can be a harsh place sometimes, and so it's often necessary for people to indulge in little fantasies to enable them to cope with life's slings and arrows. Some people may find Miss Brill a somewhat absurd, pathetic character. But she, like her fantasies, is completely harmless and unthreatening. And before we judge her too harshly, we should stop to think of how often we ourselves engage in role play, such as when we go online, for example.
Friday, May 1, 2015
Is Miss Brill a believable character?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Summarize the major research findings of "Toward an experimental ecology of human development."
Based on findings of prior research, the author, Bronfenbrenner proposes that methods for natural observation research have been applied in ...
-
The Awakening is told from a third-person omniscient point of view. It is tempting to say that it is limited omniscient because the narrator...
-
Roger is referred to as the "dark boy." He is a natural sadist who becomes the "official" torturer and executioner of Ja...
-
One way to support this thesis is to explain how these great men changed the world. Indeed, Alexander the Great (356–323 BC) was the quintes...
-
After the inciting incident, where Daniel meets his childhood acquaintance Joel in the mountains outside the village, the rising action begi...
-
The major difference that presented itself between American and British Romantic works was their treatment of the nation and its history. Th...
-
The Southern economy was heavily dependent upon slave labor. The Southern economy was agrarian; agriculture was its lifeblood, and being abl...
-
The first step in answering the question is to note that it conflates two different issues, sensation-seeking behavior and risk. One good ap...
No comments:
Post a Comment