Understanding literature on a deeper level is never easy, especially in an age where reading books is becoming obsolete. Being able to use a text and tie it together with another text to gain a deeper meaning is a crucial skill. The story "The Yellow Wallpaper" is a story about a sane woman being driven insane by her imprisonment in a room, which leads to dementia. The song "Sweating Bullets" by Megadeth is about the singer also being locked in a room and losing his mind. Bothe of these works can be used to analyze the other. The use of "Sweating Bullets" is very beneficial to gaining an enhanced understanding of "The Yellow Wallpaper" because it provides the reader real life examples and context to relate the story to.

In the story "The Yellow Wallpaper" the narrator is put in a room by her husband who is a well-known physician. She suffers only from mild depression but due to her husband's misdiagnosis she becomes completely insane. The music video for the song "Sweating Bullets" is in a similar setting, the singer is locked in a prison like room and he goes insane and hears voices and sees things. The fact that both people in question experienced the same sort of illusions and had the same experience points to both of these cases being related. In the song "Sweating Bullets" the singer says "A credit to dementia" as he hears voices and sees things. Perhaps the narrator in "The Yellow Wallpaper" was suffering from the same illness. 

The use of powerful mind and body visuals is prevalent in both of these works, Charlotte Perkins Gilman the author of "The Yellow Wallpaper" uses the woman that gradually appears in the wallpaper and Megadeth uses the voices in the singer's head. In "The Yellow Wallpaper" the narrator quotes possibly out of fear, "of course it is only nervousness" (Gilman 211). The narrator is trying to calm herself and possibly knows what is wrong with her but her husband refuses to see what she sees and ignores her. Her husband is ultimately what causes her to go mad, he forces her to stay in and rest for the entire summer and the wallpaper drives her insane. In the song "Sweating Bullets" little is known about why the singer is locked in a prison cell but regardless, his surroundings have driven him mad and the look of solitary confinement is leading him to hear voices and see apparitions that resemble himself. 

At the end of the story the narrator goes into a fit and says "I've got out at last, in spite of you and Jane" (Gilman 221). Perhaps the narrator was talking to herself or a voice that she heard in her head. In "Sweating Bullets" the singer is singing to the voice in his head the whole time and the majority of the song is the voices in his head arguing with him. The singer states at the beginning of almost every verse a variation of "hello me ...  it's me again" which allows the listener to easily determine that he is in fact talking to the voices in her head. Which brings back the point that perhaps the narrator in Gilman's story was talking to the voices in her head at the end of the story. She may have been telling the entire story to a voice in her head instead of the audience. This new perspective changes the entire story, perhaps the reader is the voice in her head and she is simply trying to tell the voice what is going in her life as if it was not always there. The song suggests that the singer is suffering from dementia and since so many of the symptoms or things are also occurring to the narrator in "The Yellow Wallpaper" maybe she is suffering from the same condition as the singer.

The narrator's husband also has questionable character. He prescribed lots of rest and tonics to his wife but perhaps he actually has no idea what is wrong with her. Initially it is determined that she is suffering from a kind of depression that is common after giving birth. She later developed some sort of dementia due to her confinement within the room. Her husband refused to listen to what she had to say and just kept on telling her to rest and not to tire herself out. The song states "feeling paranoid true enemy or false friend" this line can be applied to the narrator's husband. Perhaps she cannot tell if her husband is actually trying to help her or if he is just trying to get rid of her in a discreet and cruel fashion. The narrator talks about how her husband is trying to do the right thing and help her but she may in fact be worried about his intentions. The husband is also very elusive and he does not appear to be very supportive of her, he only comes and tells her what not to do. He never really asks her how she is doing or anything a doctor would normally ask a patient, he basically locks her in a room and forgets about her all day. In the "Sweating Bullets" the singer is questioning if he is his own enemy which also could be carried over to "The Yellow Wallpaper" and perhaps the narrator is afraid of herself.

Perhaps the most important aspect of "The Yellow Wallpaper" is the wallpaper itself, it closes in on the narrator and traps her. In the song the singer says "feeling claustrophobic like the walls are closing in" the walls are mentally closing in on the narrator. She is ensnared and is captivated by the woman that appears in the paper. Perhaps the trapped woman is actually portraying the narrator and how she is trapped by her husband and mental state. The woman in the paper desperately tries to escape the bars that keep her in and the narrator is captivated and watches her relentlessly trying to break free. The narrator may be trying to escape her husband and this is her mind telling her that she must break away. The woman is everywhere the narrator goes or looks. In "Sweating Bullets" the singer says that "you can subdue me but never tame me" and that can be applied to Gilman's story because the narrator always see the woman she is unable to subdue the apparition. The narrator states that "I think that woman gets out in the daytime" (Gilman 218). The narrator also claims to see the woman walking about the yard and appears to be envious of her freedom. The fact that the narrator is envious of the woman in her visions makes the reader wonder if she wants to break free of her husband.

Another case for concern is the physical toll that the mental breakdowns have on the narrator. Gilman states "it is getting a great effort for me to think straight" (214). The narrator's health is not only affecting her mind but she is becoming exhausted from thinking about all of these scenarios. In the song "Sweating Bullets" the signer says "it gives me a migraine headache" because he is experiencing physical pain and fatigue. Both of these cases get increasingly similar and leads the reader to conclude that they must be the same mental issue. The narrator also mentions that the wallpaper follows her around and that it has a particular odor that she can distinctly smell (Gilman 217). In the song the singer is stuck with the voices in his head and he has no control of when they start or stop he is being forced to listen to a conversation between two imaginary beings. He can be seen in the video tearing and grabbing at his hair as if he were trying to fight the voices off but he never managed to silence them. In "The Yellow Wallpaper" the narrator instead tries to help the girl escape and locks herself in the room and starts violently tearing the paper off of the wall.

Although these works are very different in nature the understanding of one can be crucial in helping to understand the other. In this case the understanding of "Sweating Bullets" by Megadeth really helped to clarify and open new doors for discussion while looking at Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper". In both cases a sane person was rendered insane due to a lack of human contact. In the song the singer was talking to himself and seeing apparition that looked exactly like he did. In the story the narrator did not hear voices but instead she saw a woman in the wall, the woman may have been a depiction of the narrator herself and have shown how she was trapped and oppressed by men and her brother specifically. The way that both of these individuals reacted to the voices and apparitions also bore a great resemblance, the singer tore at his hair and the narrator in the story ripped the wallpaper from the wall to free the apparition which was symbolic of her actually freeing herself. These similarities unlock a whole new world of speculation and deeper understanding.

