Edgar Allan Poe's Narrative Techniques Essay

The mood, or atmosphere, of a story helps a reader to have a greater understanding of what he or she is reading. The mood is established by the writer’s tone, which is a reflection of the author’s feeling towards the subject. Edgar Allan Poe was a remarkable American writer from the 19th century who mastered the use of mood and tone. He is widely known for his ominous style of writing, especially in his short story titled “The Masque of the Red Death”. In this story, Poe engenders a mood of…

“Conrad Jarrett the anxious failure dress this guy in blue and grey”. (Guest 2). Is one of the very first lines that tells you more about Conrad and how he feels about himself. Throughout the book Ordinary People by Judith Guest, we learn more about Conrad and how things affect him such as the colors blue and grey, which represent anxiety and failure. At first anxiety and failure rule over his life but throughout his journey of life something changes. We learn how death and sex impact how he…

Mentally Insane Simon Winchester’s interesting story, The Professor and the Madman, explains the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary by an unlikely pair and rare circumstances. For years, the dictionary has been a common item that is taken for granted. Simon Winchester reveals the masterminds behind the Oxford English Dictionary’s long process and shocking creation story. The main character, Doctor William Minor, is a mentally ill man who is locked away in an asylum for murder. He offers…

A Dream’s Weary Awakening Life is both fearfully wonderful and death mysteriously petrifying. Death holds true promise, the only inevitability for one’s future. With one hand it steals away a life and with the other it has transpierced all who loved the departed soul, eventually knocking upon their own door. In 1915 Katherine Mansfield lived this tragedy when her beloved younger brother passed away, and she was soon after diagnosed with extrapulmonary tuberculosis, ultimately leading to her…

Hurst of Hurstcote E. Nesbit’s short story, “Hurst of Hurstcote”, is an eerie tale that takes place in England. The short story had a confusing start, but the further I got into it, the more it started to make sense. The narrator, Bernard, tells the story of his old friend John Hurst, who would later become John Hurst of Hurstcote, the owner of one of the nicest mansions in England. John attended Oxford and was not particularly popular with the other guys because of his strange infatuation with…

The Plague by Albert Camus is a novel that demonstrates the selfishness of the people of Oran, Algeria as they fall victim to a plague, causing the entire town to be quarantined. The book’s narrator, Dr. Bernard Rieux, shows his viewpoint of the citizens of Oran through his remark, “In this respect, our townsfolk were like everybody else, wrapped up in themselves; in other words they were humanists: they disbelieved in pestilences.” The Plague was written not only to demonstrate how selfish…

"Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" has gotten significant critical attention, generally positive. Writing in The Virginia Quarterly Review, James M. Cox (1959) states that this lyric contains "haunting rhythms" which are shaped partly by the "rationale of the rhyme conspire." This rhyme plot, he says, "is an expression of the growing control and determination" of the speaker. John T. Ogilvie (1959), in his article in the South Atlantic Quarterly, recommends that the lyric ends up plainly…

Mon mai longe liues wene, Ac ofte him lieth the wrench. Feir weder turneth ofte into reine And wunderliche hit maketh his blench. Tharuore mon, thu the bi-thench, Al schal falewi thi grene, Weilawei, nis king ne quene, That ne schal drinche of deathes drench. Mon, er thu falle of thi bench, Thine sunne thu aquench. (Lisle, “The Three Living and The Three Dead”) Having revised the concept of childhood from the Antique period up to the later Middle Ages, with special attention paid to the…

Luis Bunuel pioneered surrealist cinema. Many of his films revolve around three themes he was fanatic about. These being, religion, class and sexual desire. These topics can be linked to Bunuel’s early years. He was born on February 22nd, 1900 in Calanda, Spain. His birthplace was of highly religious mindset as many places were in Spain. In Bunuel’s semi autobiography My Last Breath he says, “The middle ages lasted until World War I” (8). The “Miracle of Calanda” (13) was a tale in which an…

The comics Lighter Than My Shadow, Marbles: Mania, Depression, Michelangelo, & Me, and “Adventures in Depression” and “Depression Part 2” from Hyperbole and a Half each depict the struggles of mental illness in distinct ways. Interestingly, all of them share a unique element in portraying this mental illness. Each comic uses imagery of the main character interacting with what seems to be another self. This fragmenting self is used to highlight each character’s growth and progress from their…