Ballad of Burmingham

-A little girl wanted to go march the streets with other children in their honor because they were finally free. Her mother told her that she was not to march the streets because she knew the dangers of what could happen. Just because the blacks became free, didn't mean everyone was going to be happy about it. So her mother told her strictly to go to the church if she wanted to celebrate with other children. The little girl obeyed her mother and went to the church. All of the sudden, while her mother was still at home, she heard a big bang. She went running to the church and surely it was the church that had exploded. She found a little shoe that was her daughters right outside the church...her daughter had died.

Coming of Age in Mississippi

-High school students walk into a sit in restraunt and sit in the front of the place. The waitress told them that they had better switch spots and move to the back but they refused. Then, there were whites that came in and saw this and weren't very happy about it. So they began to bully the blacks. They poured mustard and salt on their heads and demanded them to leave. But they would not leave. They were made fun of and spit on and anything else you can think of. They were kicked and drug and pushed around the sit in. The whites also spray painted their clothes. The owner of the sit in tried closing down but no one was leaving until the blacks had left first. There were many policemen sitting outside watching everything that was going on but did nothing about it. Finally, the blacks were escorted out and the policemen were supposed to protect them but they didn't. When the blacks walked outside the policemen stood there and let the whites throw anything they could get their hands on at them. Later that night, there was a rally at one of the local black churches. The three students walked across the stage and everyone began to clap. They chanted "We Shall Overcome!" The one student had written to her mother about what was going to happen and what she was going to do regarding the sit in. Her mother wrote back to her telling her not to do it; she did anyway. Her mother didn't think that she would survive because blacks can easily get killed by a white mob. But she was bound and determined to make a difference.

The Fall of the House of Usher

-A man rides to the house of Usher on a horse
-He goes there because he used to be friends with Rodrick Usher
-Usher is very sick, mentally and physically
-Rod was always quiet and didn't say much
-House features gothic architecture
-Rod's had a sister named Madeline and she had a disease along with himself
-Their disease was a curse put upon their family
-Rod buried his sister alive in hopes that she would die so the family curse would be broken
-Madeline does not die and she gets out of her coffin and comes and kills Rod and the house burns down and everything goes away and is gone, including the curse

Declaration of Independence

The list of complaints begins with "He..."
1. Why do they repeat it?
They repeat it because when people read this, they want them to realize that is was he who did all of those things. They want the blame to be focused all on him and no one else.
2. Why do they make it personal?
They make it personal because they want to put him in the spotlight and all eyes to be on him.
3. How does the D.I. anticipate its audiences resistance to change?

4. How does the D.I. use parallelism? How does it impact the effectiveness of the piece?

5.What to you is the most convincing example stated in the D.I.? Why?

Mark Twain

What does his name mean? Safe to navigate.
What is his real name? Samuel Langhorne Clemens
Why are his books controversial? They were in a way racial. And so students in schools would get the wrong idea about colored people and so they had to take his books out of schools.
What are some interesting facts about his life? His father died when he was eleven. He gave his first public speech in Keokuk, Iowa. Died at age seventy-four. He said he came in with Haley's comet and therefore, he is going out with it too.

The Signal Man

*Spector-->Ghost
*basically he has dreams about what is going to happen and every time someone sees a ghost, they die.

The Raven

*Prophecy-(raven was the bird of prophecy), mystery, evil, omens, and death.
*End rhyme-similar or identical sound at the end of lines: door, lore, before.
*Internal rhyme-rhymes within a line: words in the middle of a line that rhyme.
*Rhyme scheme-the basic pattern of the end rhymes:Stanzas-have some amount of lines and same rhyme scheme.
One night there was a man sitting in his chair about to fall asleep and out of nowhere there came a knock at his door. When he got up to go see who it was, there was no one there. He began to think it was the ghost of Lenore. Once this happens again he thinks it is the wind so he opens a shutter. It was the raven the whole time. He talks to the raven and asks if he is bringing death. The man asks God to give him relief from his memories of Lenore. He also begins to drink because he really wants her memories to get out of his head. The man accuses the raven of being the devil and evil. The raven's shadow is cast upon the floor next to the man and the raven comes and takes his soul.

Danse Macabre

*Dance of Death*
-the bug behind the door theory= it scares you more when the volume is turned up, but it does take away the suspense when the volume is turned down; you anticipate what is coming.
-the thing that scares people the most is when it's leading up to the scary action, not the actual scary thing itself.
*Allegory-a work with two layers of meaning, in a allegorical tale, most of the persons, objects, and events stand for abstract ideas or qualities.
-The prince's decor was bizzare; he had a fine eye for color
-he was seen as mad, but he loved the grotesque
-The chambers held dreams inside. When the clock dings, the dreams stop. When the clock is done, they begin again.
-No maskers at the ball go to the Hall of Velvet.
-In all of the other rooms, the beat of life continued.
-At midnight, the twelve strokes of the clock hypnotized the people during that time. The people noticed a masked person. The figure was tall and shrouded head to toe with clothing from the grave. His mask was a skull and he looked as if he was sprinkled with blood. Like "Red Death".
-When the prince sees him, he shudders of terror and distaste. The prince orders for him to be unmasked. The prince goes up to this figure and and the figure stabs the prince with a daggar.
-The skulled mask man was Red Death. He killed everyone who was at that party. Once that happened, the clock stopped.
*This story is basically about how death is coming and these people don't even realize it. Everytime the clock chimes, the people stop. And every time it chimes, it gets longer and longer. Once death gets them, the clock stops working.

The Devil and Tom Walker

-Boston, Massachusetts
-There was a pirate named Kidd that had buried treasure and money.
-Tom's wife did whatever she could to hide and keep things from him and she had a really bad temper.
-Tom went to visit Old Fort (there, Indians held verbal charms or spells recited to produce a magic effect and made sacrifices to the evil spirit).
-While he was there he discovered a skull with an Indian tomahawk buried in it.
-A strange man appeared and told Tom to leave the skull alone. He also wanted to know why Tom was there on his grounds in the first place.
-Tom pretty much just said that he was passing through and found the skull there. But the man did not want him to take or even touch the skull because it was on his grounds that Deacon Peabody gave him so he could cut down the timber.
-The man told Tom that he was the devil. Tom swore to him that he would not tell of him or of his grounds and what is secretly buried there.
-Tom did not keep his word. As soon as he got home he spilled the beans to his wife and she went crazy. She wanted this treasure to herself. She told Tom to go find it and bring it home for her and he refused; so she left on her own to find it herself.
-The most "current and probable story" of what happened to Tom's wife is, that he went out to look for her because she did not come home. He found her tied in a bundle up in a tree. What was left of her was her heart and her liver, in her apron, up in the tree. Instead of grieving over his wife; Tom thought of this more as a gesture than a favor.

Gothic Lit Notes

Gothic Literature is characterized by grotesque character, bizarre situations, and violent events. Originated in Europe. 19th Century. Edgar Allen Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne and Steven King.
*Puritans, Age of Reason, Fear of God*
Romanticism (Romantic Writers)
-saw limitations of reason
-celebrate individual spirit
-emotions
-imagination
*Basic Elements of Human Nature*
-splendors of human nature
-fascination of supernatural
-Washington Irving= 1st American writer to achieve the International Fame.
-romantic preoccupation with atmosphere, sentiment, and optimism
-transcendentalism
-transcendent forms of truth exist beyond reason and experience
-every individual is capable of discovering this higher truth on his or her own, through intuition
*Dark Side of Individualism (American Gothic)*
-gothic architecture of the Middle Ages
-gothic cathedrals with their irregular placed tower and their high stained glass windows were intended to inspire awe and fear
-gargoyles=carvings of small deformed creatures (supposed to ward off evil spirits)
-imaginative distortion of reality
-threshold of the unknown=the shadowy region where the fantastic, the demonic and the insane reside
-gothic tradition can be called the dark side of individualism
*Romantics see 'Hope'
Gothic writers see 'Potential for Evil'*
*Edgar Allan Poe*
-dark mid-evil castles or decaying ancient estates
-male narrator=insane
-female narrator=beautiful and dying (dead)
-involve extreme situations--ex: live burrials, physical and mental torture, and retribution from beyond the grave
-people revealed their true natures
-Hawthorne: fear, greed, vanity, mistrust, and betrayal.