Take a break and laugh!

Hey guys, I am sure that you are all working very hard on your papers for this class, and fretting about how you will get it done along with all the other things that are due etc. etc. etc! I just wanted to share this clip on Youtube with you all. I think we can all appreciate it as English majors! This has nothing to do with Poe, I just thought that everyone in the class could use a laugh at this point in the semester. This is a comedy skit about proofreading that is done by a teacher ( I think he is an English teacher) and these are all things that we are guilty of! I hope you enjoy it, and listen closely! Good luck to everyone finishing up final papers!

Here is the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjhOBiSk8Gg&feature=related

Poe,Your Life is Calling

I am not sure, but is this a summary of Poe's life to some extent? He begins with his father thinking him a genius. This was mentioned in the Norton about how John Allan used to take Poe with him to show off his talents. He talks about being fifteen when he first begins to write, the dissolution of their relationship and so on. I also find it interesting that he mentions Aristotle and Milton as people that he copied. His dream of owning a literary magazine is how he ends the story, with him owning everyone that ever criticized him. He even talks about plagiarism and how he was introduced to being a critic when he began "Thomas Hawk'ing. It is amazing that everything in this story can be related back to Poe's life and stories. He even uses direct quotes from his stories; "I will make a man of you"(783) is a direct quote from Hop-frog. Was Poe attempting to explain away his life through this story?

The Cask

I have read The Cask of Amontillado many times, and I actually discussed it in one of my recent classes. I was thinking about that and remembered that we had talked about the ending and how it ends with Montresor calling in after Fortunato. Is it remorseful? Does he only realize once his wall is almost finished that he needs Fortunato in his life? ("to these words I harkened in vain for a reply.") Everyone has established that Montresor is an unreliable narrator and because of the fact that we don't know what crimes Fortunato committed against him some assume that he is crazy. What do you think? Also I remember talking in class about reasons why there is no response from Fortunato. Is he dead? Is this his final "win" over Montresor? The fact that he is not speaking could suggest that Fortunato has the upper hand because he is still controlling the situation. This may be far-fetched but it does say that he had sobered up... What do you think?

Cultural Presentation

Fondest Greetings!
Hope everyone had a good weekend. Well, tomorrow is the event you have all waited for...my Cultural Presentation! I'm just kidding...but here is a little preview.

Instead of Poe himself, I am going to be talking about one of the characters that he created, and how this character was personified, swiped, and portrayed. This character is the "Red Death" from his not-so-famous tale, "The Masque of the Red Death."

Here is the video I will be showing.




Have a good Day!

"Hop -Frog"

" I now see distinctly," he said, "what manner of people these maskers are. They are a great king and his seven privy-councilors--a king who does not scruple to strike a defenseless girl., and his seven councilors who abet him in the outrage. As for myself, I am simply Hop-Frog, the jester--and this is my last jest" (908).

I don't know about anyone else, but I think this passage from "Hop-Frog" shows the reader, Poe understood the wrongness of slavery and misogyny.

I was disturbed after reading "The Black Cat." I was bothered that the story was not told from the battered wife's perspective, but from her abuser's.

What make "Hop-Frog" so powerful is that it is told from the point of view of the abused. Poe's use of the kingdom imagery and symbolism speaks volumes on what I think Poe was trying to tell us about, Southern knights of old, mentality. What do you all think? Was Poe a secret abolitionist, and supporter of women's rights?

Colors in Red Death

Room 1: Blue
Room 2: Purple
Room 3: Green
Room 4: Orange
Room 5: White
Room 6: Violet
Room 7: Black with Scarlet (Deep Blood Red) Panes
GOLDEN Ornaments
EBONY Clock
RED Death

Psychologically, each of these colors signify different emotions. So I'm thinking that since Prince Prospero left the "external world" and secluded himself and his one thousand selected people and that the people are not allowed to grieve or think, the colors signify the other emotions or feelings aside from the constant pleasure they are supposed to feel. Near the end, the Prince is standing in the blue room. Blue can stand for peace, confidence, and strength. The Prince seems to have confidence standing up to the intruder in the corpse mask. Then when this figure moves so quickly through each room, it is as if he is showing that emotions mean nothing to him, he can easily pass them by. Which results in him being in the black room, the symbol of power, evil and death, after killing the Prince. And after that he kills off everyone else which is obviously killing off all their feelings and emotions. The red in "Red Death" plainly attributes to the blood and killings but what else? Maybe anger? If so, anger at what? The fact that the Prince essentially ran away from the country away from the "Red Death"?

These are just some quick thoughts to start off with. I'm not sure where I'm headed yet except trying to figure out why did Poe use so many colors and those specific ones? And what emotion does each one represent, if any? What does everyone else think?

Imagery and Sensation in "The Pit and the Pendulum"

I found it a bit troubling that the narrator in "The Pit and the Pendulum" was constantly in and out of consciousness yet he was able to perceive images and feelings that were concrete and solid in form. It is not even until page 493 that the narrator even opens his eyes. I don't think it is the fact that the narrator has the ability to sense things while he is in and out of consciousness, it is the idea that he is the only person that the reader can rely on for deatail in the tale. Can we trust his descriptions? He obviously makes mistakes when trying to feel out the measurement of the room he is confined to. When I read this story the first time, I found all the sensational writing appealing because I omitted where it was coming from. This time I had to stop myself and say, "wait all of these descriptions and images are the perception of a delusional person." Are they all that great anymore? I still think Poe shows his ability to describe an image with the utmost of talents to capture the reader, however is this tale to be considered another one of Poe unreliable sensationalist stories? Every time you turn around it is like Poe is asking you to trust a mad-man or a delusional drugged out narrator! That little trickster.

En Evening With Edgar Allan Poe --Vincent Price

Truth and senses in "The Tell-Tale Heart" and "The Black Cat"

While reading "The Tell-Tale Heart" and "The Black Cat" one after the other I found interesting similarities and differences between the two. In the first story mentioned, the tale begins with the word "True (555)" and throughout the entire text Poe is pushing the notion that the story is true and that the narrator is not mad. It is also stated that "the disease had sharpened my senses (555)" which is interesting. What disease? The eye itself or did it physically do something to our narrator?

In the next story the narrator states "I neither expect nor solicit belief (597)" which is opposite the view of the first. However, this narrator, like the first, does not want us to think he is mad but brings in his senses in a different way; he says, "Mad indeed would I be to expect it, in a case where my very senses reject their own evidence. Yet, mad am I not (597)."

I wanted to bring up these points in hope that someone else may have seen another connection that I missed between the two stories. What do you think Poe is trying to say here? Perhaps something about the uncertainty of verbal stories. Maybe if the stories were written down they would be more believable but since they are coming straight from the mouth's of the criminals/"madmen" the reader/listener should suddenly be wary of the truth? Also, what do you guys think about the senses that Poe brings up in both stories?

"Premature Burial"

This story especially reminds me of the book review by Margaret Alterton. This story was written during the time that people were reading “medical jurisprudence” and learning of new advances as well as strange occurrences in medicine. Death was becoming big business. As stated by ABC, embalming was becoming widely accepted and the need to “send a loved one off well” was becoming a fashion statement as well as religious one.
According to Alterton, there were many instances in the journal citing stories about people being buried alive. It was this phenomenon, that doctors were inspired to dig up graves for experimentation and a chance to find someone buried alive. It also led to numerous murders where people were buried alive and then dug up to prove that this “medical marvel” really occurred.
It is amazing that the narrator was completely consumed with death and being buried alive, that he took precautions to ensure against it. Yet it was only after sleeping in such a condition as to cause him to believe that he had been buried alive did he realize that he had a life to live and he then began to do so. Was Poe speaking out against those who were so consumed with death that they could not enjoy the life they had?

Appearance of Death

"The boundries which divide Life from Death, are at best shadowy and vague." (666) In "The Premature Burial," Poe plays with the idea of appearance of death and life. I thought this kind of strange because it is pretty normal to make sure a person is dead before they are buried. He uses the phrase "supposed to be" and similar wordings to describe the people he talks about being "dead." I was wondering how someone does not know that someone is dead? On page 668 the narrator describes a lady, "at least her condition so closely resembled death as to decieve every one who saw her." Are these numerous deceptions just used as an excuse to not feel guilty that people were being buried alive or were they there just to let the reader that these types things happened sometimes and thus creating a preface to what happened to the narrator himself?
I also noticed the introduction of the "Destiny of man." (676) So is being buried alive to be considered the destiny of the person that it happens to. The support that we have on this idea is the narrators very own story. He uses the support that even though he took all the proper precautions so that it would be impossible for him to be buried alive, he was still put in that position. How ironic was it that he got sick while away from home? So my question is do you think that it really is a persons destiny? I don't or else he would have died and so would the rest of them (not just a few). You can't mess with destiny (if you believe in it) becasue it will change the course of the rest of one's life.

PS Audrey we had talked about Poe's short tales containing poetic elements, I wanted to point out the last paragraph of this tale, page 679, is that poetic or what?

Perverseness in "The Tell-tale Heart" & "The Black Cat"

I think the "imp of the perverse" functions differently in these two tales, but I am not quite sure. In "The Tell-tale Heart" the narrator kills the old man because of "the eye" (555), and he makes no mention of how he knows what he is doing is wrong. Also, his confession comes at a time when he is so close to being in the clear. He is driven to confess by his guilt, which cause him to confess at the wrong time. The narrator in "The Black Cat" kills the cat because of the "spirit of perverseness" (599): "It was this unfathomable longing of the soul to vex itself...to do wrong for the wrong's sake only--that urged me to continue and finally consummate the injury I had inflicted upon the unoffending brute" (599). There is no direct confession, he just comments on the structure of the house which draws attention to where he has put his wife, and then we get the sound of the cat.

Lastly, he says "But may God deliver me from the fangs of the Arch-Fiend!" (606). In "The Imp of the Perverse," the narrator says "And we might, indeed, deem this perverseness a direct instigation of the Arch-Fiend, were it not occasionally known to operate in furtherance of good" (829). So, in "The Black Cat," is this "Arch-Fiend" the cat (as I first thought), or is it the "imp" of the perverse? Or, does the cat represent the "imp" of the perverse? If the cat and the "imp" of the perverse are the same thing, then I guess that means the perverse drove the narrator to murder and gave him up to the police. I think if you treat the cat and the "imp" of the perverse as two separate things, then that changes your reading of the story.

cultural appropriation

some other goodies:

here's a neato:

Treehouse of Terror -- "The Raven

That Darn Cat

He almost got away with it! There are many similar themes between The Tell Tale Heart and The Black Cat, one being the fact that the murders are found out by what are seemingly other sources than themselves. I just wanted to pose the idea that in The Black Cat, that maybe it wasn't the cat screaming from inside the "tomb" that gave away the crazy man, but it was in fact he himeself by even opeing his mouth when the detectives were getting ready to leave the house. If he had not said anything he would have been cleared. Does the two tales portray the concept that an act of the perverse will come back to haunt you because your guilt is so vast after committing it?

Poe and Hitchcocok

Here are the videos from my cultural appropriation. I didn't show The Birds, so you may find it pretty interesting.

The Imp of the Perverse

The Imp of the Perverse starts off sounding like a philosophical essay. After a few pages, suddenly it's a story out of the blue! This seriously threw me off. I couldn't get my head around having no transition from essay-style to story-style and yet we're expected to agreeably accept this and somehow understand that the first part relates to the narrator's tale.

When I re-read the essay-part (as I'll now call the first few pages), I realized it was like a prologue to the story-part. With all the talk about impulses , logic, and reasoning, I feel as though the narrator is trying to justify himself to the reader before the reader even knows what actions he carried out. It's like a little kid who has done something bad and builds up their parents for what's happened with the underlying message being 'It's not really my fault' when it really is. The line "Had I not been thus prolix, you might either have misunderstood me altogether; or with the rabble, you might have fancied me mad," clinches it for me. He's stuck in a prison, which I gathered from "fetters" and "tenanting this cell of the condemned." But he's telling us that basically it's not his fault at all. Its the fault of the "Imp of the Perverse" which he spent the past several pages trying to explain to us.

Now really, to me as the reader, all that wordiness does the opposite of what the narrator is trying to achieve: it proves he truly is mad. It reminds me of Shakespeare's quote "the lady doth protest too much." At times though, all the essay-ish words made me lost and confused and I found myself having to go over lines I had just read.

My question to everyone would be, what do you think is the point of this story? The philosophical perverse mind of a murderer who kills with poisoned candles? And I want to know, do you think it was really necessary to carry on as long as he did before getting to the story?

In both Mesmeric Revelation and The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar both men suffer from tuberculosis and are kept alive after death through hypnosis. I looked it up and found these stories were written in August 1844 and December 1845 respectively. January 30, 1847 Virginia died of tuberculosis. My question seems to be do you think that these stories were written as Poe wish for a way to keep Virginia alive? Or for Poe to get his feelings out about the immortal soul, as if to say Virginia may die but its not the end, to make himself feel better?

Its interesting that if these stories are in a way referencing Virginia and his feelings about her situation, then why are the two characters who die men? As a proponent for the death of a beautiful woman you would think he would use a woman as the victim. Could it be that this would bring the event too close to home for him?

And again, if this references Virginia then why did Valdemar die so grotesquely? Do you think Poe had absolutely no hope of Virginia being kept alive?

Did anyone else have any thoughts on these two stories? Honestly, a lot of Mesmeric Revelation went over my head. I had to read analysis online to understand what was going on. So any other thoughts on this would be great for my understanding of the text.

A Portrait of Power

In this story, I see Poe making a statement concerning the power of the artist. Whether the artist is a writer or a painter. The power of words seemed to be the theme of the last stories that we read. He used newspapers as proof to make hisstories believable, yet he was showing the editors the power they held and their obligation to the public. I think Poe is linking the power of creative artists together. The power of the painter to convey the essence of a subject would go along with this story. The picture holds the same power as words and is no less important. Poe believed that the artist has obligations to the audience that is involved with the medium. In this story it was the power of the artist to literally paint the life from his bride in to the portrait. "And he would not see that the tints which he spread upon the canvas were drawn from the cheeks of her who sate beside him" (483). The artist was unwilling to see what he was truly creating. He did not know the power that he held. Without regard to the effect he would have on others with his work, he worked for his own satisfaction. Is Poe saying something about art for the sake of art? Once he had completed the portrait, he realized the power he held as a painter, artist; which was evident when he cried.."This is indeed Life itself!" (484) when he gazed upon his own work. He saw that he not only created for himself, but that his art transcended into therealm of reality. It became a living entity, separate from the artist, the creator. The subject of the art becomes immortalized through the art, not theart through the subject.
April 2, 2008 4:55 PM

"The Oval Portrait" & The Nature of the Artist

Reading "The Oval Portrait" made me think that Poe is doing something with the nature of the artist. Although I'm not such a big fan of the "suffering artist" narrative, I like how Poe has made the subject of the art suffer, rather than the artist. I guess you could argue that the artist suffered too since he was so obsessed with his work, that he didn't notice that his subject had died. Not only did he not notice, but "he would not see that the light which fell so ghastlily in that lone turret withered the health and the spirits of his bride..." (483). It's not as though he couldn't see, but he chose not to. I guess what I'm getting at is: Does Poe want to say that artists are selfish and obsessed people that get so wrapped up in their work, they choose to ignore everything around them? Also, the artist "already [had] a bride in his Art..." and his wife hated "only the Art which was her rival..." (483), so was their relationship never possible because the artist was and will always be tied to his art? I also wonder what we are to make of the woman since she hated his art, but she stayed with him anyway, even though she became the subject of his art. Maybe she thought since she became the subject, somehow he would see past his art and see her.

Here are a couple of images I came across when I googled "The Oval Portrait:"
static.flickr.com/52/109300294_cb0fd6a717_o.jpg
http://www.amazon.com/Edgar-Allan-Poes-Oval-Portrait/dp/0966026616