...Edgar Allen Poe was obsessed with cats and often wrote with a cat on his shoulder. One of his quotes where “I wish i could write as mysterious as a cat”(BrainyQuote.com). Poe was in the army and was a sergeant major until he was discharged. In 1848 after his wife’s death in 1847, Poe attempted to commit suicide by ingesting opiates. Due to the horrific experiences in his life had a lot to do with his writing style. Edgar Allen Poe was born in Boston Massachusetts, January 19,1809 (Poets.org).Poe had a father and a mother who were both famous actors who died when Poe was three years old. As Poe got older he attended the University of Virginia (Poets.org).Soon after he was forced to leave because he was in gambling debt and John...
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...{A Case Study of Madness } Robert “Devin” Earl {Friday, February 5, 2016} Throughout Edgar Allen Poe’s work Tell Tale Heart several patterns, and symbolic elements are present. Each of these elements play respective roles in revealing the purpose of the work as a whole. Poe wants to convey a feeling of paranoia and mental illness. Its as if Poe wants his work to function as a summary of a case study about mental deterioration. He uses his diction purposefully and scarcely in order to have the main character convey a feeling of obsession with very specific entities of the old man. The main character has a unhealthy fixation on the old man’s eye, his heartbeat and even his claim to sanity. As the story progresses sever different psychological contradictions come to illumination that each contribute to the general profile of a murder. In example the narrator openly admits “to being dreadfully nervous”, however he is unable to comprehend why he is thought of as deranged He articulates his self-defense against madness in terms of increased sensory ability. Instead of of viewing this hypersensitivity as a clue to being mentally unwell the narrator uses it to prove to himself his possession of sanity and not a product of madness. Another symbolic element that proves Poe is conveying a study of the mentally unstable is the narrator’s detachment between emotional feelings such as love and hate. Poe uses his story to explore a psychological paradox between those who cannot truly...
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...Critical Essay: Elements of Literature in Poe’s “Cask of Amontillado” Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado” Is a well written shorty story filled with many significant literary elements. Firstly we will write about the plot, the overall summary of the story, and the main themes, the central ideas of this tale. The plot of "The Cask of Amontillado" is a great account of vengeance. The assassin promises “revenge” upon Fortunato for an “insult.” The main theme revolves around the assassin plans to pursue vengeance in support of his family motto: "Nemo me impune lacessit. This means “no one cuts (attacks) me with impunity.” On the coat of arms of his family, which bears this motto, looks "a huge human foot d'or, in a field of azure; the foot crushes a serpent rampant whose fangs are embedded in the heel.” Thus reflects the theme of vengeance because the assassin’s plan of revenge on Fortunato for an insult. Secondly we have characterization, the personalities of the characters of the characters produced. The true focus lies upon the assassin, the wicked Montresor. Montresor is an evil man who is happy at his chance to murder. The costume that Fortunato donned on the night of his murder was that of a jester, while appropriate...
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...Summary Three young men are walking together to a wedding, when one of them is detained by a grizzled old sailor. The young Wedding-Guest angrily demands that the Mariner let go of him, and the Mariner obeys. But the young man is transfixed by the ancient Mariner's "glittering eye" and can do nothing but sit on a stone and listen to his strange tale. The Mariner says that he sailed on a ship out of his native harbor--"below the kirk, below the hill, / Below the lighthouse top"--and into a sunny and cheerful sea. Hearing bassoon music drifting from the direction of the wedding, the Wedding-Guest imagines that the bride has entered the hall, but he is still helpless to tear himself from the Mariner's story. The Mariner recalls that the voyage quickly darkened, as a giant storm rose up in the sea and chased the ship southward. Quickly, the ship came to a frigid land "of mist and snow," where "ice, mast-high, came floating by"; the ship was hemmed inside this maze of ice. But then the sailors encountered an Albatross, a great sea bird. As it flew around the ship, the ice cracked and split, and a wind from the south propelled the ship out of the frigid regions, into a foggy stretch of water. The Albatross followed behind it, a symbol of good luck to the sailors. A pained look crosses the Mariner's face, and the Wedding-Guest asks him, "Why look'st thou so?" The Mariner confesses that he shot and killed the Albatross with his crossbow. At first, the other sailors were furious with...
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...Canterbury Tales AUTHOR · Geoffrey Chaucer TYPE OF WORK · Poetry (two tales are in prose: the Tale of Melibee and the Parson’s Tale) GENRES · Narrative collection of poems; character portraits; parody; estates satire; romance; fabliau LANGUAGE · Middle English TIME AND PLACE WRITTEN · Around 1386–1395, England DATE OF FIRST PUBLICATION · Sometime in the early fifteenth century PUBLISHER · Originally circulated in hand-copied manuscripts NARRATOR · The primary narrator is an anonymous, naïve member of the pilgrimage, who is not described. The other pilgrims narrate most of the tales. POINT OF VIEW · In the General Prologue, the narrator speaks in the first person, describing each of the pilgrims as they appeared to him. Though narrated by different pilgrims, each of the tales is told from an omniscient third-person point of view, providing the reader with the thoughts as well as actions of the characters. TONE · The Canterbury Tales incorporates an impressive range of attitudes toward life and literature. The tales are by turns satirical, elevated, pious, earthy, bawdy, and comical. The reader should not accept the naïve narrator’s point of view as Chaucer’s. TENSE · Past SETTING (TIME) · The late fourteenth century, after 1381 SETTING (PLACE) · The Tabard Inn; the road to Canterbury PROTAGONISTS · Each individual tale has protagonists, but Chaucer’s plan is to make none of his storytellers superior to others; it is an equal company. In the Knight’s Tale, the protagonists...
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...Summary and Analysis Jing-Mei Woo: A Pair of Tickets Jing-mei is on a train to China, traveling with her seventy-two-year-old father, Canning Woo. As the train enters Shenzhen, China, Jing-mei begins to "feel Chinese." Their first stop will be Guangzhou. Like her father, Jing-mei is weeping for joy. After her mother's death, a letter arrived from China from her mother's twin daughters from her first marriage. These were the two children whom she was forced to abandon on the side of the road in 1944. Jing-mei's father asked Auntie Lindo to write back to the girls and tell them that their mother was dead. Instead, Auntie Lindo took the letter to the Joy Luck Club. Together, the women answered the letter, signing Suyuan Woo's name to it. Jing-mei agrees that she should be the one to tell her half-sisters about their mother's death. But after dreaming about the scene many times, she begs Auntie Lindo to write a letter to the sisters explaining that their mother is dead. Auntie Lindo does so. The train pulls into the station, and the visitors are met by Canning's great-aunt. The reunion is emotional. Other relatives join them. Jing-mei wins her young cousin Lili over with instant photographs from her Polaroid camera. They soon arrive at a magnificent hotel, much grander than Jing-mei had expected. Jing-mei is anxious to have her first real Chinese feast; however, the native-born Chinese family decides that they want to eat American — hamburgers, French fries, and apple pie...
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...Rip Van Winkle Summary: “Rip Van Winkle” is an American masterpiece of the short story. It is based on local history but is rooted in European myth and legend. Irving reportedly wrote it one night in England, in June, 1818, after having spent the whole day talking with relatives about the happy times spent in Sleepy Hollow. The author drew on his memories and experiences of the Hudson River Valley and blended them with Old World contributions. “Rip Van Winkle” is such a well-known tale that almost every child in the United States has read it or heard it narrated at one time or another. Rip is a simple-minded soul who lives in a village by the Catskill Mountains. Beloved by the village, Rip is an easygoing, henpecked husband whose one cross to bear is a shrewish wife who nags him day and night. One day he wanders into the mountains to go hunting, meets and drinks with English explorer Henry Hudson’s legendary crew, and falls into a deep sleep. He awakens twenty years later and returns to his village to discover that everything has changed. The disturbing news of the dislocation is offset by the discovery that his wife is dead. In time, Rip’s daughter, son, and several villagers identify him, and he is accepted by the others. One of Irving’s major points is the tumultuous change occurring over the twenty years that the story encompasses. Rip’s little Dutch village had remained the same for generations and symbolized rural peace and prosperity. On his return, everything has...
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...Final Film Critique Saving Private Ryan Sumer Gebo December 20, 2015 ENG 225 Introduction To Film Instructor David Preizler Going through and reading the requirements for this assignment and trying to decide which movie from the AFI’s top 10 list to do my final critique on I finally settled on the World War II epic Saving Private Ryan this movie has an A list cast of actors and director. This movie is one that will pull at your heart strings and make you wonder was this how life really was during this time and was this what was happening in the European theater at the time of the war. Trying to decide which theory to use while critiquing this movie the easiest one for me to chose was the genre theory not because it was the easiest one in the list but because I am the spouse of a combat veteran who has gone through many of the same things that the cast had to endure when they were filming this movie in a generalized sense. Saving Private Ryan begins with the storming of the beach at Normandy in June of 1944 with Tom Hanks and Tom Sizemore and their soldiers trying to destroy a German pill box or fortified machine gun emplacement. Once they have successfully cleared the beach and they move in land and finally have a chance to rest and re-equip all of their men and get food, they are given a mission, to locate and retrieve on Pvt James Francis Ryan who was played in this film by Matt Damon. During their time searching for Pvt Ryan they...
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...These three paragraphs, which are found in the beginning of “The Tell-Tale Heart,” are significant towards the rest of the story. The beginning paragraphs are necessary for the introduction and rising action of the story.. By writing a summary of what the narrator did to the old man, Poe shows the madness in the narrator. Throughout the story, his writing is used in a way to show how the narrator wants to prove his sanity. By using an unreliable second person point of view, symbolism, and syntax & sentence structure, this passage is used to prove the narrator’s point. In the reading, Poe utilizes an unreliable second person point of view. This means that the narrator either cannot or will not tell the reader what really happens in the story. In the passage, the narrator immediately states that his disease has made his hearing intensely powerful, rather than weakening his senses. He claims, “I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I...
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...Hawthorne key figure tales of the nation’s colonial history First symbolic and psychological novel Pearl is special, full of mystery, strange and self-contradictory Lovely and soft & violent and rude She is a living scarlet letter She is a wild rose-bush on the prison hall: an evil flower on the prison wall(1.a sin-born infant 2.the emblem of Hester’s guilt and torture 3.the source of Dimmesdale’s agony She is an innocent bush(1.a savor of Hester’s sin 2.a savor for Dimmesdale) Herman Melville title the largest brain and the greatest symbolism D.H. Lawrence Pearl the most modern child in all literature A devilish girl-child tender loving understanding give you a hit a grin of sheer diabolic jeering She is really a combination of good and evil. 2. 一朵野玫瑰 珠儿重要性分析 霍桑和红字：霍桑 红字 On page 81 and 82 Hawthorne describes her beauty very clearly. Pearl is vividly described by Hawthorn in page 81 as the infant whose guiltless life was the product of inscrutable decree of providence. On page 168 hawthorn talks about the light that happily lingers about the child that is lonely as if it is glad to have found such a loving playing mate. We are also told that the sunshine accepts pearl as an equal. The great forest also becomes the playmate of this lonely child. The natural things become her only friends and this in the end makes this child a very weird child. A good example is where Hester tells Dimmesdale that she...
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...The Flies that Plague Us All " Lord of the Flies" is the book that could strike a nerve of each and every individual whoever reads it. To me, it seems like to start an enthralling and fascinating journey when diving between the lines of this work. Bearing in mind that it was written during the time of WWII , I’m not surprised that this book discusses the essential evil of man. The story begins with a group of fifteen prep-school boys are stranded on a Utopia-like paradise island in the pacific after their plane crashes. With no adult supervision, they immediately try to set up a social system like any modern-world people would. Initially, they elect a chief and call group meetings to discuss important things to do such as building shelters and maintaining a signal fire. Through this system they select an attractive, intelligent boy named Ralph as leader. They also select a wild, power-urging boy named Jack and a mellow, calm, an most importantly peaceful boy named Simon as his assistant-leaders. However, as the boys indulge in the joy of their freedom and find that nothing there could hold them back or their misbehavior, they begin to fall from the floor of civilization and order to the abyss of chaos. Golding portrays this novel with an exploring eye for details and natural images. No one shall ignore the brilliant descriptions Golding made through out the whole book. “A great platform of pink granite thrust up uncompromisingly through forest and terrace and sand and lagoon...
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...Washington Irving “Little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortune; but great minds rise above them.” Washington Irving, a well-known short story author in the nineteenth century, spoke these words of wisdom. Washington Irving became famous in America for his fine works from The Specter Bridegroom to Rip Van Winkle to The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. These satirical sketches are all based on the local areas in New York where Irving resided. His adventures through life spread the word of his writings and he became one of the first renowned short story writers in Europe. Washington Irving was born in New York, New York on April 3, 1783. His mother, Sarah, and father, William Irving, Sr., had eleven children including Washington. He was named after the United States first president, George Washington who was sought to be the greatest hero of all time to his parents. “… He attended the first presidential inauguration of his namesake in 1789” (Biography Channel). Irving was privately schooled and later went to study law in New York after his return from travelling Europe. In 1804 he travelled to France and Italy, while writing journals and letters. When he returned in 1805, Irving continued law school but did poorly for he barely passed the bar exam. (Biography Channel). After Irving finished his studies, he went on to write humorous essay with his older brother William Irving, Jr., and James Kirke Paulding. The Salamagundi papers published the essays in 1807 to 1808....
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...Introduction Frankenstein was Mary Shelley's (1797-1851) first published novel, written when she was only eighteen years old in 1818. In her preface to the 1831 edition, Mary Shelley tells the reader that she was asked by her publisher: "How I, then a young girl, came to think of, and to dilate upon, so very hideous an idea?" Explaining where and why the idea for Frankenstein came to Mary Shelley could answer it Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (living with but unmarried to the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley); Shelley; George Gordon, Lord Byron; and Dr. John Polidori spent the summer of 1816 in Switzerland. According to a 1 June 1916 letter by Mary Shelley, "almost perpetual rain confines us principally to the house." Lord Byron (a friend of Shelley's) and his physician John Polidori, resided nearby at the Villa Deodati. Persistent heavy rains kept them indoors, the four finally resorted to telling familiar and recently published horror and ghost stories. For days they told tales which included gothic elements: graveyard and convent, burial vaults, mysterious trap doors and passages, wild locations, secluded spots, and pursuits by moonlight. Finally, one evening at Byron's villa, they made a pact to see who could write the most frightening ghost story. Both Percy Bysshe Shelley and George Gordon, Lord Byron, had earned widespread fame; even Mary had first published a book at the age of eleven (Mounseer Mongtongpaw). Each undertook the task eagerly. It is said that Mary had a nightmare...
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...“She was much too fond of Heathcliff. The greatest punishment we could invent for her was to keep her separate from him.” How far is Nelly’s comment a fair summary of the relationship between Catherine and Heathcliff and the problems it contains? In Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, the theme of love is central; particularly the love between both Catherine and Heathcliff. Bronte’s illustration of the love between the two protagonists transgresses beyond the “normal”, romantic love previous authors, such as Jane Austen, would portray. Emily Bronte’s love uniting both Catherine and Heathcliff contains undeniable gothic conventions alongside the idea of idolised romance; she has created a love story which includes aspects of passion, lust and suffering. Nelly, commenting on the relationship between Catherine and Heathcliff, states “She was much too fond of Heathcliff. The greatest punishment we could invent for her was to keep her separate from him”, suggesting that the intense love they had for one another will forever be problematic. It is important here to focus on Nelly’s use of the adverb “too”, as it describes that Catherine’s love towards Heathcliff goes beyond average. When having to choose between Heathcliff and Edgar, Catherine concludes “I’ll try to break their hearts by breaking my own”. For Heathcliff, Catherine refuses to eat or sleep and also willingly exposes herself to a chill when she is feverish. Here, Catherine’s love towards Heathcliff has resulted in...
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...love with Demetrius Lysander – in love with Hermia Demetrius – in love with Hermia at first but later loves Helena The Fairies Oberon – Titania's husband and King of the Fairies Titania – Oberon's wife and Queen of the Fairies Robin Goodfellow/Puck – servant to Oberon Peaseblossom – fairy servant to Titania Cobweb – fairy servant to Titania Moth – fairy servant to Titania Mustardseed – fairy servant to Titania First Fairy, Second Fairy The Mechanicals (An acting troupe) Peter Quince – carpenter, leads the troupe and plays Prologue Nick Bottom – weaver, plays Pyramus Francis Flute – bellows-mender, plays Thisbe Robin Starveling – tailor, plays Moonshine Tom Snout – tinker, plays Wall Snug – joiner, plays Lion Play Summary A Midsummer Night's Dream opens with Theseus and Hippolyta planning their wedding, which takes place in four days. Theseus is upset because time is moving so slowly, but Hippolyta assures him the four days will quickly pass. Their relationship has not always been so loving. Theseus won Hippolyta during a battle. While they discuss their relationship, Egeus enters with his daughter, Hermia, and her two suitors, Lysander and Demetrius. Hermia is in love with Lysander, but her father wants her to marry Demetrius. Lysander argues that he is as good of a match as Demetrius, but Egeus won't listen. Instead, he declares that if Hermia won't marry Demetrius, she will die: This is the law of Athens and his right as her father. Theseus agrees that...
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