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Yellow Woman Analysis

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World Literature 7/20/2011 Yellow Woman Analysis After reading “Yellow Woman” a sense of mystery is imposed on the readers. The story itself is very short and dreamlike. It is as if there is no beginning to the story. The narrator wakes up on the sand of a river bank next to a man she does not know. The man known as Silva acts very strangely towards her throughout the entire story. He is always laughing and smiling while at the same time forcing the narrator to do what he wants. By the same token, the narrator never puts up any sort of a fight to leave. The Narrator in the story knowingly follows Silva’s every word even knowing deep down she knows that she probably shouldn’t. She uses her time with him as an escape from her own …show more content…

But those desires are not strong enough to make her leave the domesticated life that she has chosen for herself. She becomes a storyteller herself as she recounts her own Yellow Woman story and believes that the other Yellow Women had names like she does, but they do not reveal them. The Yellow Woman stories allow the narrator to justify her actions as she considers herself another chapter in the Yellow Woman saga. To sum up, the narrator in the story is able to fulfill her instinctual desires by becoming a Yellow Woman. She transforms through her dream-like journey into the person she longed to be. It was not until Silva became violent and she sees “something ancient and dark” in his eyes that she begins to snap back into reality. The story reaches out to all of its readers and allows them to relate to the narrator because we all have unfulfilled desires throughout our lives. The sensational descriptions that are given of the landscape as well as her sexual interactions with Silva make the narrator’s thoughts and feelings very easy to understand. In fact many of us who have read the story “Yellow Woman” have a feeling of jealousy that the woman was able to have her adventure and return home and resume her life as normal, without consequence. Works Cited Silko, Leslie. “Yellow Woman”. The Norton Anthology: World Literature. Ed. 2. Peter Simon. W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.: New

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