Hawthorne, Baudelaire, and Poe

Madeline Usher is a vampire because in the text it first hints that she is supernatural when it explains that "The disease of Lady Madeline had long baffled the skill of her physicians."  And it also describes Madeline as having a pale complexion and a dark/haunting presence. You can also connect Madeline to being a vampire because her brother becomes more pale throughout the story which connect him to being Madeline's only source of food. Which would also be the cause of his nervous system breaking down. Then the last piece of information that lets you know that Madeline is a vampire is when she comes back from her burial and attacks her brother with supernatural strength.

Gothic Writers like to test the boundaries with their writing and use their stories to open up new possibilities for their readers to think upon. Many of them talk about vampires, ghosts, and other supernatural things, in this, they doing a simple but complicated thing, they are testing the limits of reason. Back when Gothic Writers started writing, they were adding these scary, dark, and haunting things to go against religion and make others think if all the different claims of religion were actually true. They communicate this to the readers by simply putting the idea of the unknown in our head. Every single person who reads these short stories will now have the idea of vampires or ghouls and goblins or something like that in their head. Whether they believe it or not is a different thing. But it helps the reader realize that there might be those things in such a big world. The readers all have similar attitudes in their writings as they boldly express their stories characters. They take control of them and don't let others question their existence or their actual personalities.

Sleepy Swinging, Sweet Chariot Talking Hollow

Sleepy Hollow appeals to all kind of readers as it includes comedy, romance, horror, a hero, competition, and the little kid touch that Disney adds to their movies to make one rockin' book/movie. Some examples of these appeals in the book would be when it says, “I profess not to know how women's hearts are wooed and won. To me they have always been matters of riddle and admiration.” Appealing to the romantic touches in the book. This next example appeals to comedy, and is one of my favorite quotes in the whole book, “All these, however, were mere terrors of the night, phantoms of the mind that walk in darkness; and though he had seen many spectres in his time, and been more than once beset by Satan in divers shapes, in his lonely pre-ambulations, yet daylight put an end to all these evils; and he would have passed a pleasent life of it, in despite of the devil and all his works, if his path had not been crossed by a being that causes more perplexity to mortal man than ghosts, goblins, and the whole race of witches put together, and that was - a woman.” 

Swing Lowwww, Sweet Charriiioooottttt

Swing Low Sweet Chariot talks about a slave wanting to die and asking God to come and take them up to heaven, you can tell this when the song says "a band of angels coming after me," talking about how the angels are coming to retrieve her and take her to heaven.

This song is about religious hope and faith because it talks about Gods 'chariot' coming and taking her away to her home and how from his chariot "I looked over the Jordan" which lets you know that they were extremely high in the air and were going to heaven considering no one just goes on a joy ride with God to look down over the earth and then go back to being a slave. 

This song relates to its period because there were hundreds of religious slave back the and almost all of them wished to die because of the emotional and physical intensity of being a slave and how harsh the conditions were. It would not be like if we had a maid today and they just cleaned up the house. It was definitely worse. "Tell all my friends im coming to" shows you that almost everyone she knew wanted God to take them up to heaven as i stated earlier. 

I think this song relates to today because even though we don't have slaves, there are still a lot of people who ask God to take them back up to heaven because they can't live in society's conditions. Some conditions that are similar from that time period to today's time period would be working in factory's, working as a house maid, and also many women who are kidnapped are forced to work for their kidnappers and get abused just like the slaves back then did.

Essential Questions I'm Supposed to Answer

How are the Romantics' beliefs of optimism and individualism reflected in their writing? 

• Their beliefs and individualism come through their pieces by letting what they wish to happen to them and others happen to their characters.

What is Romanticism, Gothic Romanticism and Southern Gothic Romanticism? How are they similar how are they different?

• Romanticism is a movement in the arts and literature that originated in the late 18th century, emphasizing inspiration, subjectivity, and the primacy of the individual. ex. "Satire is people as they would like to are; romanticism, people as they would like to be; realism, people as they seem with their insides left out." -Dawn Powell
• Gothic Romanticism is a genre or mode of literature that combines fiction, horror and romanticism ex.“One hand was behind his back, and he held it out, presenting a bouquet of white and smoky purple lilies...They’re straight from the underworld, by the way. They are everlasting. They won’t die.”(The Devilin Fey)
• Southern Gothic Romanticism is a submergence of Gothic Fiction and takes place in the American South. The four themes in SGR are--Imprisonment, Violence, Sense Of Placement, and Freakishness ex. “Later he saw Jesus move from tree to tree in the back of his mind, a wild ragged figure motioning him to turn around and come off into the dark where he might be walking on the water and not know it and then suddenly know it and drown." (Wise Blood)
• These are all alike because they all involve romantic crap, its just that GR is creepy romantic stuff and SGR is the same but after the civil war and in the south

How is the Southern Gothic movement a response to literary movements that have preceded it as well as a manipulation of Romantic literary conventions?

•  It is a response to it because it is basically the same thing but in it's own form it's taken on its own personality traits and style. It's like in Mean Girls when Cady becomes the new Regina George, just with her own different touches. It's a response to it by becoming it. And that's also how it's a manipulation, because it is manipulating it and forming it into its own.

How did the American culture prompt the dark sides of Romanticism (think Gothic and Southern Gothic)?

•  I think it prompted the dark sides because the people were sinning a lot which made it OK for someone to write about that kind of stuff where before it would've been weird for a random dark book to come about in the midst off all these good people. Also, it was the people doing bad things that probably gave someone the idea that people in real life can do terrible things so people in books can to.

How do the writings of these time periods influence the writings of today?

• They formed the main ideas of our writing. It's like our ancestors gave us some of the traits we have today, we derived off of them. And that's how writing is. It all came from somewhere and as we evolve, we still keep some of those ancestor-y traits.

Southern Gothic Romanticism

 Southern Gothic Romanticism

is a subgenre of Gothic Fiction and takes place in the American South. The four themes in SGR are--Imprisonment, Violence, Sense Of Placement, and Freakishness.

Some traits of "A Rose For Emily" and "The Life You Save May Be Your Own" that exhibit Southern Gothic Romanticism would be---

"A Rose For Emily" has the traits of Emily being "imprisoned" in her house, not able to leave because of her own feelings not letting her. But then again, who says she wants to? She shuts everyone but Tobe out of her house for tons of years. "the women mostly out of curiosity to see the inside of her house, which no one save an old man-servant – a combined gardener and cook – had seen in at least ten years." It has a sense of placement in Emily's house itself as well, we all know that one house in town that is old and big and gives off those certain creepy kind of vibes because it represents an era in which we are not in (in this short story it would be that the house is an old crumbling mansion and the houses and new sidewalk beside it are very different then this house.) The atmosphere in a lot of this book is gloomy and mysterious with the touches of creepiness sprinkled on in a lot of the places. Giving off a perfect Southern Gothic Romanticism.

"The Life You Save May Be Your Own" starts of with a sense of placement, describing the house with a porch with a rocking chair and it looks off into the sunset. It shows that the house represents a basic snug home kind of living where the house is an actual home for the people that live there, not just a place to stay. The Man (Mr. Shiftlet) that comes has only one arm, giving him the freakishness trait but the daughter mainly shows this trait as you can tell that she has a mental disability being deaf and not able to talk and childish even though she's almost 30. Then to wrap it up, the imprisonment is shown when the old woman doesn't want her daughter leaving the house and not allowing anyone but Mr. Shiftlet ever taking her away from her or the house.

SGR is a lot like Romanticism only in the south, after the civil war, and it's a lot creepier. It goes along with Dark Romanticism in the aspects of violence and imprisonment usually, however, DR is more dark and creepy than SGR and includes the devil, ghosts, demons, and supernatural things a lot more.

The two SGR stories have some Romanticism in them but I think they go along with SGR a lot more, especially in ARFE, considering it says "nigger" and makes comments on her skin color a lot, going with the aspect of that it's after the Civil War and people still call different colored skin people those kind of names. And in TLYSMBYO (hahaha long name) it has romantic aspects like when the old woman is talking about how Mr. Shiftlet and her daughter would be good together and how they should get married. I think that ARFE goes along with Dark Romanticism when it goes over the crime in the end, but doesn't completely fit the expectations because it doesn't go in great detail about the crime/murder. And TLYSMBYO has a little bit when he ditches the daughter but I don't really think that counts.

Miss Emily's crime goes undetected because -

1. She locked the upstairs wing/floor/rooms and sealed the door that lead to her crime scene shut. You realize this when it says that the people had to "violently break down the door."
2. She doesn't let anyone in her house except her servant-man-slave Tobe. It says in the story how no one had been in the house for 10 years since Miss Emily had 'stopped giving China lessons'
3. And lastly, when Homer Barron goes missing, no one would think it's because she killed him. They instead think it's because he went back to where he came from.

Thinking that he declined her marriage offer and they were disappointed that there wasn't a 'public blowing-off'.

The hitchhiker in the end of the story showed that Shiftlet was a hypocrite and cruel and only cared for his car that he has now achieved, because after the hitchhiker jumped out of the car he "Very quickly he stepped on the gas and with his stump sticking out the window he raced the galloping shower into Mobile"  but other than that, I feel like the author just threw something in the end of the story and called it good.

Short Story Socratic Questions

For my short story I read Where Are You Going? Where Have You Been? Below you will find Socratic Questions going over the piece said above. The answers to these questions will be below the questions.

1. Where did Connie's parents go on Sunday?
2. Why does Connie decide to leave the house in the end of the story?
3. In the 21st century, do people get kidnapped this way usually or is it different now, if so then how?
4. How has 'hanging out with your friends' changed now? For example, they went to the diner or the mall to hang out and then she went to eat with the boy, but that's obviously not what we do now as teenagers...what's changed? 
5. Does Oates do a good job of revealing Connie's deeper thoughts as the kidnappers talk her to coming out the door?

Answers

1. To a barbecue.
2. To save her family and because she never really felt apart of them anyways
3. It's extremely different now. There's many different ways, some are car pick ups, candy, date rape drugs, things like that usually. Especially rape is becoming increasingly common now, society "Teaches to not be raped instead of not to rape."
4. Now it's usually a party with drinking, drugs, and sex. Teens use lots of excuses to go out and party like “I need to go to parties, Raisa mused, so I don't think so much" (The Demon King).
5. I think partly yes and partly no, she gives off the hint of Connie being able to do something for herself for once and being able to go out there alone without help and be able to do it on her own. But Oates also doesn't officially make this revealed so its confusing if it's just a thought or not. "Connie felt the linoleum under her feet; it was cool. She brushed her hair back out of her eyes. Arnold Friend let go of the post tentatively and opened his arms for her, his elbows pointing in toward each other and his wrists limp, to show that this was an embarrassed embrace and a little mocking, he didn't want to make her self-conscious." This tells you that she does leave the door and she's still comprehending everything but other than that it's confusing.