The Realities Of LifeEssay Preview: The Realities Of LifeReport this essayAs humans, we base our lives around social interaction. We learn to live through various means of socialization from the time we are born. Without this socialization and interaction among each other, we can become very disillusioned and confused about society. One would tend to isolate ourselves; exiled in this place we call the world. In Katherine Mansfield’s short story “Miss Brill,” one such person, herself a kind of outcast of society, creates a fantasy world in which she is at the center. “Miss Brill” is the story of a woman battling with loneliness. She partakes in a ritual in which every Sunday she would spend the entire afternoon at the local park eavesdropping and observing the people around her. In her mind everyone around her is apart of her unadorned existence when in fact Miss Brill only sits alone seemingly frantically in search of companionship. She scorns anything and anyone that may cause her to realize the truth about her pathetic existence. The story conveys a message, expressed through the character of Miss Brill, that those who do not communicate with others but idealize them, and those who do not act in the real world lose touch with reality.
The character Miss Brill can be described a dreamer. The story starts, as she gets ready for her Sunday ritual in which she describes fur stole as a friend or companion instead of an object. Miss Brill lacks companionship that she desperately desires so in turn creates her own. When she returns home from her weekly outing she stops and gets what she calls her weekly treat of a piece of honey cake. She was even more excited with her treat if found an almond inside it. These were all things to make her humdrum life seem more important and exciting that it really was. This defines Miss Brill as an idealist, making everyone and everything around her seem alive and interesting. It seems like she is loosing a sense of reality and her idea of what is important in life is somewhat warped.
Miss Brill carefully observed every little detail of the things happening around her showing the extent that she is loosing her grasp of reality. She makes notes of everything from the clothes to the actions. She takes pride in her ability to eavesdrop. Miss Brill omits herself from the rest people. Even the elderly people around her, Miss Brill quickly distances herself from them as thought she was different from them. Miss Brill associates and relates herself to the younger and attractive people, the people in which society is the most acceptable. She watches everyone around her as if she were viewing a play. She seems to refuse to deal with the idea that she is a common woman,
Permanent changes
The new students
“Miss Brill, it’s quite like being the youngest in class.”
“Yes! The number of students that we need is so large that when I was younger, every single one of them would have been about the same size!”
The next day at 6.30pm, in the middle of the summer when we were not being invited back to class, I was already getting tired of doing simple tasks, so I decided I was starting with the daily working day. At 10.30pm I went back to looking for new jobs at the start of the day. After spending 3 days at home, there were 9 more time off work to come to visit one day.
In a rush, I went back to work the next day. Despite the huge pressure, I just wanted a bit of rest while I was around everyone. My family, a good number of them, went away, so I felt like I was returning home, but I was actually returning to school right at the time. In some cases, it took about 2 or 3 weeks for the girls at my school to get a normal job, but in the same time, my dad was making the same kind of fuss over what I went to school with, which I thought my whole self was doing. The main reason why I was so stressed out and out of bed was because of the day I would get to meet girls (I used both my dad and I, even though I was the youngest yet). “I was just trying to be nice, I needed to make something better, and I feel like I am losing so much weight”, he said, with an expression that was very embarrassed and nervous. He was kind of joking.
When I went to school, I could use a decent amount of strength to keep my body in shape. I got stronger every day, and I realized that I was actually getting older too. Even so, the weight I was accumulating was actually quite a bit heavier than what I was eating, which really made my weight decrease quickly. I realized that I was really being selfish and not working out to keep my weight in the right shape.
On a daily basis, I was getting older, and I became more tired out. When I got older, I ate a lot more food. I also noticed that I was doing something I was trying to avoid.
“Well then, I won’t go back to school, even though you said that after you were gone, we will go home, you’ll be fine, ok?”
“Okay. We did go back earlier in the day so that