Blog Set #13

For the readers choice, I chose to explore fantasy a bit more. I feel like we stayed on that topic a short amount of time. I am a huge Harry Potter fan and I think those series of books really impacted society in a good way.  The Harry Potter has many aspects of fantasy because of their wizards and witches and spells. I think it fascinating to think up of a world full of amazing creatures that don't exist. Granted JK Rowling didn't come up with unicorns or dragons up by herself, but when you add those elements into a story like the Harry Potter series, it makes it a magical experience. I'm going to also talk a little bit about wizardry and witchcraft because this series is full of them. When we were talking about witches last class I was surprised when I didn't see any witches from the series. All the female characters in this series were witches and all the male characters were wizards. I also think it's interesting because last class we talked about how a typical witch looked like; green skin, wart or mole and long pointy nails. In the Harry Potter series the witches look just like you and I; no green skin or warts on nose, which was cool because they blend in with the humans really well. I will also be addressing the main message about the series which is to stand up for those you love. The series addresses loyalty, friendship, betrayal, and the constant good vs. evil (Harry vs. Voldermort of course.) This series shaped my childhood. It is a story that will remain with me and many Potterheads for many years to come.

Blog Set #12

The Premature Burial
       I think what Edgar Allan Poe is describing is very legitimate. For one thing I sort of cheated and looked up "catalepsy" on Google and there is such thing. Second, I do believe people would think that people with catalepsy would be considered "dead" because there was very little medical advancement at that time; in fact I would say little to none. What I thought was interesting about this story written by Poe, is the narrative. Usually we get the narrator doing, being or seeing something scary but in this one Poe takes a psychological twist and adds experiences of other characters to the story. What Poe does is actually super clever; he leads you to believe that he was buried alive when he wasn't. PLOT TWIST! He was just chilling on a boat, no big deal. This shock of being shaken up by a friend makes him realize that his fear of death and being buried alive is silly. Actually a sort of nice ending.
The Monkeys Paw
       Be careful what you wish for (literally). This is the story of a nice small family that wish for more than what they need. In actuality, this family looks like they have it all; a nice house and nice family members. The monkey paw is stolen from a family friend who got is by being in exotic countries. The Sergeant-Major tells them the monkey paw grants wishes but at a terrible price. The White family doesn't heed his warning! It's like people back in the day couldn't care less! If someone told me that monkey paw granted wishes BUT at a terrible price I would burn that monkey paw myself and dump the ashes in a river. Seriously, the White family was just careless. Then they wish for 200 pounds. Really? I would never wish anything on the monkey paw but if I were to, I would have gone higher that just 200 pounds! But anyway their wish comes true all right; but not like they expected at all. The Whites son dies in a freak accident and what does the company the son worked for pay the parents? 200 pounds, just like they wished for huh? This story is SUPER super natural because we have clear evidence of the son coming back from the dead like the parents wished for and no it wasn't a cataleptic attack haha! The sons body was horribly mangled. Moral of the story (for me anyways) was to be grateful for what you have and live life a day at a time.

Blog Set #11

 Berenice
       I honestly feel that Edgar Allan Poe was one of, if not the first, to write short horror stories like this one. In many of his stories I see a pattern of disease. Such as this one, where Berenice is slowly rotting away from a disease and all that remains are her teeth. Creepy. Also, mental diseases come into play, like the narrator Egaeus suffering from monomania; which is when you obsess over one thing at a time. Berenice and Egaeus were set to be married even though she had a degenerative disease. The monomania comes into play when he sees her smile and sees her teeth for the very first time. He doesn't become obsessed with her beautiful smile, but her teeth. The teeth you go to the dentist for. One thing sets another thing off and Egaeus finds out Berenice has to be buried in which she does. Then one day Egaeus' maid wake him up and tell him that Berenice's burial spot has been disturbed. Someone dug up Berenice, but who? Yup, you guessed it; Egaeus violated her resting place. The only weird thing is, was that he didn't realize he did it until he saw a shovel in his room and mud and blood on his clothes. Then he peers into a box that is in his room and sees "thirty two small, white and ivory looking substances" (Berenice's teeth.) He was so obsessed over them that he went and removed them from her corpse in the graveyard. If that isn't obsessive I don't know what is. I would probably ask Egaeus how he blanked out through the entire teeth removing process. And he would probably say "My monomania does that to me; I blank out when I'm doing the deed."
 The Furnished Room
       I feel like I was sort of, in a way, reading Romeo and Juliet. A young man commits suicide when he finds out the young woman he was searching for tirelessly, kills herself. But I would say it was a darker version of Romeo and Juliet. The room in which this all takes place, I feel, has a lot of history. It is a dark, musty room with stories in every wall about other people who have been there. I feel like their lives or the lives of the others in the room where rather bleak. Before the young man commits suicide, he goes into the room and looks for a belonging of his love interest but all he finds is something intangible; a sweet smell. Maybe the sweet smell was her, maybe is wasn't I'm still a bit fuzzy but he commits suicide after he smells the smell. Only later do we find out that smell was just gas. I feel like it was her from beyond tricking him into committing suicide so they both can be together but who really knows. This story reflects a city because a city has drama on every other corner. A city has stories to tell and I think that applies in this situation.
 The Boarded Window
       This story was a little crazy but in a good way. Here we have a young narrator talking about a story his grandfather told him. It was about an old man who once was, full of life. But in the story he was described as stoic. The story has the usual "love of his life having a disease" and one day she was presumed dead; only by him of course. He binds her hands with a ribbon and is preparing her for burial as he lies her down onto a table. He falls asleep next to his "dead" wife. In the middle of the night he hears a series of noises but he is so scared that all he does is look up. He quickly grabs his rifle and fires aimlessly and the flash of the rifle is the only way he is able to see bits of what is going on. He lived in the west frontier but he was able to see (with the flashes of his rifle) a panther attacking his "dead" wife. The panther scampers off because the rifle scared him, but then he looks closely at his wife and her hands aren't bound with the ribbon anymore. Her hands were clenched almost as is she was fighting the panther back. He then looks at his wife's face and sees that the panthers ear was in her mouth. Leading the reader (or me anyways) to believe that she was alive and well but the maul of the panther actually killed her and not her disease. He was planning her burial a little too soon. I think it did involve supernatural powers because he saw that his wife was dead right? And it was toward the end where he woke back up and fought off the panther so I do think the supernatural was involved to some extent.

Viewing Blog #1

[last lines]

Marty McFly: Hey, Doc, we better back up. We don't have enough road to get up to 88.

Dr. Emmett Brown: Roads? Where we're going, we don't need roads.

This movie, I think, would be classified as a classic. It's a science fiction movie but with a twist; it's a comedy. Funny science fiction movies back then were just coming out and in their prime. I think that people really enjoyed this movie because it had the "science fiction" element to it without feeling like it totally was "science fiction." People watch this movie and don't realize they are watching a sci-fi film! Back To The Future was a success because, besides the great ensemble of a cast, it was full of adventure. People go on a legit adventure with Doc and Marty McFly, and what's an adventure without a couple mishaps along the way; Marty McFlys mom falling for her son, encounters with Biff Tannen (your usual bully) and a scientist with a wild imagination. The movie starts out with Doc showing Marty Mcfly his "time travel machine" which is pretty much a decked out DeLoreon. All they wanted to do was test out time travel, but it wasn't that easy. Of course, something happens to ruin the unveiling of the time machine; Libyan terrorists gun down Doc but Marty escapes in the DeLoreon but one thing leads to another and Marty is sent back to the year 1955 by mistake. All this leads to Marty McFly changing his future for the better. In the beginning Marty's father was still bullied by Biff, his mother was and alcoholic and was stuck in the past but after Marty went through what he did in 1955, once he returned to the present his father was a successful author and no longer bullied by Biff, and his mother wasn't an alcoholic and was living in the now. I recommend people to what this movie because it's just an all around feel good movie! 

Blog Set #10

       I do believe that "The Fall of the House of Usher"  can very much be read in a realist tone. I feel like in that era it would be possible to mistaken someone to be dead, after all there where no medical advances at this time. Fun Fact: Around this era or earlier before, they used to sell caskets with bells on them so that is someone where to wake up from being mistaken for dead they can ring the bell so people around the cemetery would hear and lift up the person trapped inside the casket. Because I know this fact I'm a little more biased towards thinking that "accidentally" burying someone after thinking they are dead can be indeed a great possibility. But then again, maybe it is some kind of psychological encounter because Roderick seems to be a little off, mentally. So I think this could be Edgar Allan Poe trying to depict or describe the mind of a mentally ill person. I do think it could be interpreted but I still don't know what that interpretation could be. It could be just Poe describing in his way, what it's like to be "mad" but also it can just be a poetic piece with a somber twisted tone. When the narrator described the house I instantaneously thought of a haunted house; dark rooms, spooky staircase and so much more. 

       The first thing that came to my mind while reading "Afterward" I thought to myself why this couple would want to for one, retire in England (no offense to people from there or Englad enthusiasts but its always so gloomy there to me) and two, why they would hope for their retirement cottage to have ghosts in it?! Why would these people hope that a ghost resides in their new house? To me that was just plain creepy. The definition of "American Gothic" we were given I think does a great job of describing this story. The pasts ghosts will haunt the present and in this case it rings true. The "figure" in the book I think is a ghost but I get a little confused on how the ghost came to be or who it is. I don't think the definition differs because like I said it does a great job describing this specific story.   

Blog Set #9 Raven

       As soon as I begin to read I start to notice how this doesn't seem like a dark poem, but those are just the first couple of lines. Then I continue and quickly realize that he is upset or distraught because "Lenore" has passed. I begin to suspect that Lenore is someone who he loved dearly. The line "namles here for evermore" is how I got to the conlusion that she is no longer on this Earth. As I go on to reading, the narrator hears a tapping on his front door and he thinks it's just someone tapping the door but he opens it thinking that it might be Lenore. As he opens the door it obviously isn't Lenore but he still calls out her name. Why? Why would he even think it was her? There is know way she came back from the dead but maybe his constant thinking of her and yearning he thinks that is enough to have her back? Then the raven shows up onto his windowsill. The only thing that the raven says is "nevermore." For one thing ravens don't talk so I took this as a sign of insanity. To me the raven is the narrators conscience. The raven keeps reminding the narrator that Lenore is nevermore on this earth. He keeps battling between the raven and himself even though (to me) the raven is a figment of his mind. The "raven" that keeps telling him nevermore would be the reality part of his mind even though this entire scenario has insane written all over it. I think that the death of Lenore made him this way. He couldn't bear losing her and when he did he lost it. But in the beginning he acknowledges Lenores passing yet he had an entire conversation with the raven which seems mad. 
       Annabel Lee was so captivating yet eerie. Captivating because of the fact that the narrator of the poem knew this girl since they were children and they developed a love for eachother. Not just a little crush but seriously in love. The narrator says in the poem that "The angels, not half so happy in Heaven,   Went envying her and me—" to me meaning that their love was so strong and beautiful that even the angels in heaven were jealous! The narrator also believe the angels killed Annabel Lee because they envied their love so much so they (in his mind) killed Annabel Lee. When she dies the narator is devastated because her family takes her away to be shut into a tomb. This is where the eerie part comes in; he lies down with her every night in or around her tomb. I guess he loved her that much he could not let her go; sort of similar to The Raven. 

Update For Blog Set #8

I think that when we discussed this in class with other peoples views, it opened my mind just a bit which I like. Having great discussion on the stories also helped me see things a lot better. I remind myself that my opinion isn't the ONLY opinion. Even though some people thought a certain way that I didn't think of, it was interesting to see their side and their version and also how they came about with their opinion. But for the most part we all agreed on the base and foundation of the story. "Day Million" was one where it was, to me, revolutionary in the sense that a story like that was written in the time that it was written in. We all agreed in the class discussion that this type of writing was beyond its time. We also agreed that it sort of, in a way predicted the future. As we started to discuss "When It Changed" we all overwhelmingly agreed that this story was also written ahead of its time. Joanna Russ writes a story with a basic message: female empowerment. We all agreed that the men were not necessary in the story which I thought was pretty funny for some guys to admit in the discussion. But in this story it's true, men aren't in anyway needed. Women on that planet where capable of doing anything and everything. I feel like if a woman where to read that story back in the 70's when it was published, she might or might not look at the world differently (hopefully she did) because it is all about female power. The 70's (as we discussed in class) where a changing time for women, a start to a movement of power to the females in the world. We aren't quite finished yet but the 70's were deffinitely where it all began.