What's That Mean Again?

From Keesey's Contexts for Criticism:

"The paradox reflects the peculiar nature of coherence, which is not an absolute, but a dependent quality" (Hirsch 24).

This is one of those words that no matter how many times I look it up, never sinks in.  I think that it is because it is so hard to find an example of a paradox in a text because it requires deep thought, and it isn't in neon lights or anything to draw your attention to it.  A paradox is "a trope in which a statement that appears on the surface to be contradictory or impossible turns out to express an often striking truth" (Hamilton 56).

What I did notice, however, while looking up this word for about the thousandth time is that the word right after it, oxymoron, is a term that I can use and am comfortable with.  That word is oxymoron.  As I see it, the oxymoron is the child of the paradox.  I can remember this because they both have "x"s in their names!  Anyway, the definition of oxymoron is "a compressed PARADOX that closely links two seemingly contrary elements in a way that, on further consideration, turns out to make good sense" (Hamilton 57).

First, I have to point out a little picky English thing.  Why does Hamilton have to say "good sense?"  Would you ever say something makes "bad sense?"  Ok.  Now that I've gotten that out of my system, I can move on to my point.  An oxymoron is a baby paradox.  Finding a paradox, is difficult to do but by George, I think I may have found one!  I believe, although I have been known to be wrong before, that this sentence from "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a paradox: "John is a physician, and perhaps...that is one reason I do not get well faster" (531).  You would think that this doesn't make sense because you'd think a doctor's wife would get all the best treatments.  However, because her disease is of the mind and there seems to be relatively little known about the symptoms and severity of postpartum depression (the story was originally published in 1892), her husband would not be able to do much for her, and even seems to push aside her concerns (531).

Teleport back to the homepage.