The fall of the house of Usher

- Edgar Allen Poe
- Unity of effect, every detail contributes to a single overall feeling
- Strange, fantastic, phsycological terror
- Mood: feeling, atmosphere

- Large, scary mansion, dark, statues
- Handed down in the family
- Came because Usher was ill, only friend
- Madeline has disease
- Buries Madeline alive to end the family curse, but she comes back to get him, retribution
- Usher and Madeline both die, narrator runs away and the house burns down.

Declaration of Independence definitions

unalienable: that may not be taken away

despotism: absolute power or control; tyranny

transient: passing away with time

usurpations: acts of wrongfully taking over a right or power that belongs to someone else

conjured: appealed to

consanguinity: blood relationship

acquiesce in the necessity which denounces: recognize that we must demand

parallelism: the use of similar grammatical forms to express ideas of equal importance

insurrections: an act or instance of rising in revolt, rebellion, or resistance against civil authority or an established government

Declaration of Independence

The list of complaints begins with "He..."
1. Why do they repeat it? They repeat it because it has happened before and want to make a point.
2. Why do they make it personal? They make it personal so that the people will realize what they did wrong, and so hopefully they will change there ways.


3. How does the D.I. anticipate its audiences resistance to change? They are resistant to change because they dont want to leave behind what they are used to.

4. How does the D.I. use parallelism? How does it impact the effectiveness of the piece? He uses the word for and he, to represent that everything has the same amount of importance.

parallelism: when a writer uses similar grammatical forms or sentence patterns to express ideas of equal importance.


5.What to you is the most convincing example stated in the D.I.? Why? The most convincing thing was when we got our independence because the british stopped controlling our colony.

Mark Twain- A murder, mystery, and a marraige

John Gray is the father
Takes place in deer lick village in Missouri
It is a small town
Small farming community
Mary Gray is the daughter, Hue Gregory is a rich man that loves Mary
Dave Gray is the uncle that hates Hue because when Dave tried to steal Hue's fathers land, Hue prevented him from doing it.
Sarah/Sally Gray is the mother. Brother is Tom.
Hue proposed to Mary and everyone thought it was great because he was rich.
Dave left all his money to Mary.
John forbid Mary to marry Hue because it would just cause a bunch of problems.
One day John found a stranger named George Wayne in the prarie.
Later he admited that his real name is Count Hubert and his father is a Lord.
The count starts expressing an interest in Mary.
One day Dave is talking to the Count then Hue joins their conversation and Dave and Hue got into a fight and Dave threatens to write a new will leaving Mary nothing which isn't what Hue wants.
Dave is murdered and everyone thinks Hue did it because there was a scrap of his jacket, blood on his pants, and a bloody knife in his bed, and because of all the fighting between the 2 the odds are against Hue.
One of Counts friends get arrested and Count and Mary get married.
In the end Count only wanted Mary for the money, and his real name is Gean Mercier.

The signal man

The signal man is a ghost story by Charles Dickens.

He was with a visitor and he was having nightmares about ghosts.

The signal man runs the railroads and he controls the movements of passing trains.

When there is danger his signalman alert him with telegraphs and alarms.

The accidents are a collision between two trains on a tunnel, the other one is a young women that jumps out of the train and dies, and the 3rd one is the death of the signalman.

The raven

Edgar Allen Poe

Raven is a bird of prophecy

End rhymes is similar or identical sounds at the end of lines.

Internal rymes are rymes within a line

Rhyme scheme is the basic pattern of the end rhymes.

The Masque of the Red Death

Allegory- a word with 2 layers of meaning. Most of the persons, objects, and events stand for abstract ideas or qualities

There was a plague that killed half of the people that lived in town. The prince invited 1,000 friends and people to live with him because he has plenty of food and they are free from the Red death. There are many different rooms in his abbey. They are all huge with different colors and they all have stained glass windows.

The devil and Tom Walker

Tom Walker and his wife lived near Boston, Mass. Him and his wife were in a horrible marriage where they fought a lot and they didn't spend time with each other. Tom's wife was a women fierce of temper, loud of tounge, and stung of arm. They live with each other in the country near a forrest. Tom heard an old story about a pirate that buried a big treasure in the forrest under the tree. One day Tom discovered the forest. Tom discovered a skull and when he picked up there was a black man that told him to put it down. The man offered the treasure to Tom but Tom declined and he decided to go home and tell his wife about it. His wife was not very happy that Tom didn't bring the treasure home so she decided to go into the forrest herself. She went into the forrest and after a couple days she didnt come back. Tom decided to look for her and when he went back into the forest he saw that her apron was in a tree, with her organs in it. The black man again offered him the treasure and Tom lost all his money. Tom got ripped off for nothing and he was too poor to feed his horses so they died and his house got burned down. He now has to guard the treasure and take the place of what the black man was doing for the rest of his life.

Gothic literature is characterized by:
Grosteque Characters
Bizzare situations
Violent events

It originated in the 19th century
Poe, Hawthorne, and King

Romanticisim: limitations of reason
Celebrate individual spirit, emotions, imagination are the basic elements of human nature
Fascinated by the super natural

Washington Irving
Romantic preoccupation with atmosphere, sentiment, and optimism.

Transcendentalism:
transcendant forms of truth exist beyond reason and experience.
Every individual is capable of discovering this higher truth on his or her own through intotion.

The Dark side of individualism
Gothic architecture- Towers, gargoyles
High stain glass windows to inspire awe and fear
Imaginate destortion of reality

Threshold of the unknown- fantastic, demonic and the insane reside

Romantics see hope
Gothics see evil

Edgar Allen Poe:
Dark midevil castle, decaying ancient estates, weird and terrifying events
Male is insane
Girl is dead or dying, beautiful
Extreme situations, live burials, mental torture

Only when you put to the extreme can you see the dark side.

Hawthorne- fear, greed, vanity, mistrust, betrayl

Gothic Literature

Gothic Literature is a genre of literature that combines horror and romance.

Romanticism is a complex artistic literary, and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Western Europe. 

Transcendentalism was a group of new ideas in literature, religion, culture, and philosophy. 

Edgar Allen Poe- The Raven, The Fall of the house of Usher, Tales of the Grotesque and Arabeque 

Nathaniel Hawthorn-The Scarlet Letter, Moses from an old Manse

Frankenstein was an example of gothic literature

The crucible

The story the crucible all begins when Tibuta, Abigail, Betty, and a bunch of other local girls are found dancing in the forrest late at night. Some of them were getting naked and Abigail drank chicken blood. Betty becomes ill right away and most people think that it is because of witchcraft. All of the girls then have to arrive in court because back then religion meant a lot and if you went against your religion, and commited witchcraft, it could lead to hanging or getting crushed with stones. When Abigail is questioned about it she says that Tibuta made her do it and she blames it on her. Reverend Hale then questions Tibuta about it by whipping her and Tibuta says that the devil made promises to her and she says that Sarah Good and Sarah Osborn were both with the devil. Eventually John Proctors wife is also convicted of witchcraft because abigail is doing everything that she can to go against her because she really likes John proctor and will do anything to get with him. Elizabeth is arrested for saying that she does not think that the devil can take any womens soul. Eventually at the end a lot of people who were convicted were hung, because they did not admit to it. Back then it was weird because if you were convicted of witchcraft and did not say that the devil made you do it, you were going to be hung. But if you admitted to it and said that the devil made you do it, you were going to be fine. But your reputation was going to be ruined. In the end John Proctor was hung because he would not admit to doing witchcraft. Sarah Good and Osborn were also hung, along with many others.

Early Puritans

The early puritans were colonists that left england to come to avoid religious persecution. The puritian code was very scrict. Men and women sat on opposite sides of the church and it was illegal not to attend Sunday church services. People were expected to work hard and were not supposed to complain about it and express there emotions. When the early puritans left england it was the time in which William Phips had arrived in Massachusetts and was filling the jails with so called witches. 

Salem witch trials

The salem witchcraft trials took place from June to September. 19 men and women were convicted of it and were sent to death. Witchcraft was banished in Salem and the towns around it. Throughout the years hundreds of people had been convicted. Most people had been put in jail, and some hung. One man was even crushed to death  by large stones. 

Pilgrims and Indians

In the book i learned that the Pilgrams fled from England and then they came to America to start a new life. William Bradford was the main leader of the pilgrams. They landed on Cape Cod when they landed. The Pilgrims then built there villages and went on in there normal way of life and they were later attacked by the Indians in December. The two never got along to begin with and there was a lot of conflict.  In the end though there was a peace treaty that had 6 laws to it and the Indians ended up helping there way of life and taught them new things. 

School started

Today is the second day of school and its a friday im pumped its almost the weekend.