He Was….

He was the first person I had fallen in love with. He was a young man much younger than me.

His was a name I’d too soon forget and get lost in.

It wasn’t because I had too busy a life with everything and more….

It was because he was dearest to me like lemonade on a hot Summer’s day. Red hair the color of Fall leaves and eyes as green as freshly picked apples.

It was because he was dearest to me like the terseness of the sand; the warm breeze on a Spring day. Blonde hair the color of gold and eyes that burnt an auburn fire.

It was because he was dearest to me like the riches of the earth; the warmth of the sun. Brown curls and sapphires for eyes.

It was because he was dearest to me like the deep depths of the ocean; the cold density of the frost. Black hair the color of ravens and galaxies for eyes.

They say you fall in love three times and that there is different love but never the same love twice.

Things change.

Seasons come and go.

Time goes by fast like the second hands of a clock.

We die everyday and so do the moments.

We must make seconds count.

We must make the weeks seem longer.

The more they linger, the more cherished they should be and hold what is dear to us more frequently than once.

Silly Love Songs

Soon you were all the words inside poetry books.

And all I could do was think about you smiling at me and laughing with me face to face as you opened the door because we both knew that we were for about five seconds in that moment,

that we were meant to be together.

But that was just a memory

and you are only composed of silly love songs.

EN560-01 Discussion Forum and Response #1

My Initial Post: The Gothic trope that I found interesting in “The Anatomy of Desire,” was the idea of the archetypal “parasite” in John L’ Heureux’s short story because of the passage that quotes, “Hanley put on the skin of the saint. His genitals fitted nicely through the gap he had left and the skin at his neck matched hers exactly. He walked the corridors and for once left no bloody tracks  behind. He stood before mirrors and admired himself. He touched his breasts and his belly and his thighs and there was no blood on his hands.” In this quote we find out that Hanley was actually not the victim but the murderer in possession of the saint or the passive female victim called “the saint.”
Hanley is likened to a “parasite” because we recognize in J…’s presentation and the article from last week that Hanley himself is like Buffalo Bill in the film where he lives off of wearing peoples’ skin to feed his desires. The “parasite” is in this case, of American Gothicism, is a person or thing that feeds off of others and lives off of what is or was a living being in order to feed off of others to feed a desirous need to feel something other than the need to live. The parasite is a good Gothic archetype for L’ Heureux’s story because Hanley is feeding his desires by killing “the saint,” and by wearing her skin. He is therefore a parasite because he wants to be loved but finds out that wearing her skin is not enough to be loved and knows now that it was out of his desire that it was his passion to wear her skin by scalping it off of her through first an incision down her shoulders, arms, sides, legs, and feet. The parasite helps me to appreciate, or understand the story because by my understanding, Hanley is a parasite that feeds his desires through the pain of others by wearing the skin of human beings. The story itself helps me understand other issues like the fact that Hanley is a criminal and a madman because he desires to be loved or to be possessed by “the saint” and by possession, he means that he wants or desires her therefore becoming possessed unnaturally by utterly killing her and wearing her skin out of obsession with the desire to be loved. He desires to be loved so badly, that he murders “the saint” by cutting her alive and then wearing her skin.

Works Cited

L’ Heureux, John. “American Gothic Tales (William Abrahams).” The Anatomy of Desire, edited by Joyce Carol Oates, Edition Unstated, Plume, 1996, pp. 339–348.

My Response To a Colleague:

Hi V…! The Gothic motif of “projection” which is where the outside reflects the inside in Carver’s “Little Things” can be found in a number of the stories we have read, but can also be found in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,” where she writes as the narrator, ““I’ve got out at last,” said I, “in spite of you and Jane. And I’ve pulled off most of the paper, so you can’t put me back!”” Therefore, this quote amongst others fits the idea that the woman in the wallpaper had become her because the narrator in the story is revolted by the wallpaper so much that it becomes clear that she has to take it down on the outside to reveal her true self or her inner psyche. In other words, the outside of the wallpaper reflects what is inside the narrator’s mind because it bothers her so much to see apparitions in the yellow wallpaper that she tears it down and suddenly becomes the woman in the wallpaper which is what is inside of her head as we speak. Her inner psyche is then projected by the apparition of the woman trapped in the yellow wallpaper because the narrator herself is also trapped inside the confines of the yellow wallpaper that revolted her. Almost, it seems that the narrator also escalates the more the wallpaper stays there and so, her mentality cannot take it any more so, she tears the wallpaper down from the wall. John and the narrator can also be seen as selfish because the narrator and John also have a toxic or hostile environment in the home and a relationship where John is always in control of the situation and the narrator goes crazy over a wallpaper that is yellow which is also an example of individualistic materialism.

Notes on "The Masque of The Red Death"

The trope that is presented is the “monster” who is Prince Prospero. A monster is a creature or a man that is destructive to other people or to mankind. Although there are some that may argue that there are different kinds of monsters, let us examine the monster through the different archetypes that are apparent in “The Masque of The Red Death” regarding Prince Prospero. “The first of these figures is what [we] will call the human monster. The frame of reference of the human monster is, of course, law. The notion of the monster is essentially a legal notion, in a broad sense, of course, since what defines the monster is the fact that its existence and form is not only a violation of the laws of society but also a violation of the laws of nature […] The monster combines the impossible and the forbidden.”

In this case, Prince Prospero was in control of the commoners outside the gate who suffered from the Red Death, whereas he was the law of the people who combined the impossible and the forbidden. What we are looking at or analyzing are his actions which combined the forbidden being the fact that he only invited the people that were to him as royalty. Meanwhile, the fact that it was impossible to help those people (the commoners) were a combination of monstrosity and political entertainment.

“[We are now analyzing] the history of this moral monster whose conditions of possibility [that we are trying] to indicate. To start with, [let us] present the first outline, the first face of this moral monster called forth by the economy of punitive power. Strangely, and in a way that seems to [us] quite typical, the first moral monster to appear is the political monster. That is to say, crime is pathologized, [as we] believe, on the basis of a new economy of power, and there is a kind of supplementary proof of this in the fact that the political criminal is the first or at least the most important and striking moral monster to appear at the end of the eighteenth century. Actually, in the new theory of criminal law […], the criminal is someone who breaks the pact to which he has subscribed and prefers his own interest to the laws governing the society to which he belongs,” which is Prince Prospero’s very own aristocracy that he is trying to save other than the people.

“The Masque of The Red Death” echoes what Donald Trump had done to migrants of the country of the U.S. For example, he builds a wall and excludes Mexicans from ever entering America in the first place. Trump then tries to exclude African Americans from their own rights as citizens. “The Masque of the Red death echoes the American tragedy that was Trump under the corrupt four years that eh was president thus making a monster seem political.

For example, “four years into the Trump presidency, immigration remains a major platform for the Republican Party. One of Donald Trump’s central promises during his presidential campaign in 2016 was the construction of a wall along the southern border of the United States, for which Mexico was going to pay. As of Election Day, only 371 miles (595.45 km) of the wall have been built or rebuilt, and Mexico has paid nothing for it. However, Trump’s administration has made a legal wall difficult for immigrants to overcome. More than 400 executive actions intending to reduce immigration and make it more selective have branded the four years of Trump’s presidency. Scandals, court challenges and controversy accompanied many of those actions,” which is why Donald Trump is equivalent to Prince Prospero who is the monster. In this case, for people who do not have access to the safe haven which is called America whereas in “The Masque of The Red Death,” these monsters keep the people of their land or safe-haven inaccessible to safety and do not even help them in any way whatsoever.

                                                            Works Cited

            Foucault, Michel. Abnormal: Lectures at the College de France 1974–1975. Verso New

Left Books, 1974–1975.

            zenger.news. “The Invisible Wall That Donald Trump Built to Stop Immigration – The

Wilmington Journal.” Http://Wilmingtonjournal.Com/the-Invisible-Wall-That-Donald-Trump-

Built-to-Stop-Immigration/, 2021, wilmingtonjournal.com/the-invisible-wall-that-donald-trump-

built-to-stop-immigration.

Notes On "The Maids of Tartarus"

            Melville uses the use of the concept of “hell” as the usage of metaphor, but the concept of “hell” in “The Tartarus of Maids” is a major concept in Melville’s story. But why is Tartarus such a major concept? Let us start first off by defining Tartarus. The definition of Tartarus is that “[…] Tartarus was found as far below earth as heaven was found above it; a distance in which a bronze anvil could fall in ten days. Later on, Tartarus was more closely associated with a region of the Underworld, a region where punishment was handed out to those who had angered the gods and those who were judged as sinners.”

In other words, Tartarus is a form of “hell” in the underworld ruled by the God, Hades. Hell is prevalent in “The Maids of Tartarus” because “[…] the country people […] called [this hollow,] the Devil’s Dungeon. Sounds of torrents fall on all sides upon the ear. These rapid waters unite at last in one turbid brick-colored stream, boiling through a flume among enormous boulders. They call this strange-colored torrent Blood River. Gaining a dark precipice it wheels suddenly to the west, and makes one maniac spring of sixty feet into the arms of a stunted wood of gray-haired pines, between which it thence eddies on its further way down to the invisible lowlands.” Melville also calls the entrance Dantean in the essence that it was a gateway into hell from Dante Alighieri’s Inferno.

What Eros has to do with Tartarus is that “Hesiod, in his epic poem the Theogony offers the earliest Greek version of genesis. CHAOS (“yawning void”) provides the beginning for creation. Out of Chaos the universe came into being. Later writers interpret Chaos as a mass of many elements (or only four: earth, air, fire, and water) from which the universe was created. [What the point is, is that], “from Hesiod’s Chaos came Ge, Tartarus, Eros, Erebus, and Night.” So, what this whole quote means is that Tartarus is Eros’s brother. So, in the paper mill which is the heart of Tartarus we have Eros who resides with his brother which could be interpreted as the dark man to be Tartarus as a deity and as the place himself.

The prisoners, or maids of Tartarus, are by interpretation, the danaids who were prisoners of Tartarus. “The Danaids were the 50 daughters of Danaus who killed their 50 husbands on their wedding night, and the Danaids were thus said to have been faced with the eternal punishment of filling up a leaking storage vessel, a task which could never be completed.” We can therefore infer that by this quote we have the maids as danaids and we can also infer that this phenomenon was caused by murderous women who killed their husbands and are no longer married. This is why the bachelors actually say in the story that they have never married in the story. What we can also infer is that the leaking storage vessel is the vessel inside the paper mill that produces paper.

But what exactly is metaphor? “A metaphor is a figure of speech that makes a comparison between two unlike things. As a literary device, metaphor creates implicit comparisons without the express use of “like” or “as.” Metaphor is a means of asserting that two things are identical in comparison rather than just similar. This is useful in literature for using specific images or concepts to state abstract truths.” Therefore, in Herman Melville’s “The Maids of Tartarus,” he is using metaphor to represent not only his story but his meaning on what mythos truly would be in the American Gothic.

                                                            Works Cited

            Admin. “Metaphor – Examples and Definition of Metonymy.” Literary Devices, 1 Sept.

2020, literarydevices.net/metaphor.

Morford, Mark P.O., et al. “Myth Summary.” Oxford University Press: Higher

Education Group, 1985, global.oup.com/us/companion.websites/9780195397703/student/materials/chapter3/summary.

Oates, Joyce Carol. American Gothic Tales (William Abrahams). Edition Unstated,

Plume, 1996.

           

“Prisoners of Tartarus in Greek Mythology.” Greek Legends and Myths, 2021,

http://www.greeklegendsandmyths.com/prisoners-of-tartarus.html.

Notes On "The Birthmark"

The “mad scientist” is the most commonly used trope in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Birthmark.” “As established, […] Aylmer [is] guilty of pursuing a Faustian, higher knowledge. Dr Faustus is granted knowledge by the devil, suggesting perhaps that to reach this level of knowledge, one must go beyond an earthly realm to either heaven or hell. In a letter to Sophia Peabody [who is Hawthorne’s wife,] Hawthorne asks: ‘What delusion can be more lamentable […] than to mistake the physical and material for the spiritual?’ The mistake of Hawthorne’s scientists is perhaps not in their actions, but in their motivational ‘delusion’ that dictates that they can ascend to a higher knowledge, and still remain in mortal form. […] Taylor Stoehr argues that Hawthorne’s characters are punished for remaining in their imaginations, and not the real world. Which is why Hawthorne’s scientist in “The Birthmark” is renowned for being mad because he goes beyond the real world to achieve his desires resulting in the death of his wife because of his desirous nature to erase his wife’s birthmark out of unknown methodologies and methods.

“They, [being Hawthorne’s mad scientists] are however, not completely punished for these delusions. Instead, they are punished for not translating these ‘delusions’ in to a more reasonable version in reality. Their imaginations stretch too far, and mistake a ‘physical’ reality as capable of realizing ‘spiritual’ delusions. In attempting to achieve their fantasies, the scientists reach to realms such as heaven and hell that cannot support physical human forms, and their experiments inevitably end in death. Hawthorne’s fiction explores alchemy and physical chemistry. These pursuits’ processes, results, and consequences all reside in the physical. However, the moral choices which his characters encounter are what subsequently affect the physical realm that he focuses on. The use of alchemy may be detrimental, but the root of evil he examines extends ‘monster-like, out of the caverns of [the] heart.”

This whole quote is the whole meaning of the mad scientist. The mad scientist does not love but extends his love to science, meaning that he does not care for beauty or the affections of the beloved but seeks to bring the natural world to its knees by means of alchemy and of science. It is critical of the mad scientist to remake and progress, but by no means have no respect for nature and that mankind’s evil comes from within his heart and by the product of the affliction itself. For instance, “in the seventeenth century, genuine scientific breakthroughs were ideals of the future. The reality was alchemy, an extremely basic science in which procedures were practically guesswork. It is this sense of the unknown that induces both fear and questions of morality in Hawthorne’s science fiction. The short stor[y] ‘The Birthmark’ […] include[s] [an] alchemist[…], bringing a Frankenstein-esque horror as to the possibilities and lengths the scientists will go to in order to achieve progress.”

“The [scientist], Aylmer, [is] bound […] in an almost religious, Promethean quest to reach a higher knowledge, a higher spiritual being than that of mere mortals. Through reaching for this spiritual ideal, concepts of morality are complicated further. It is here necessary to consider whether if one is dedicated to reaching a higher knowledge, he is therefore above mankind and exempt from mortal laws of morality. The practice of alchemy not only had no written definition, but its process and methodology were also unknown. The danger of exploring the unexplored is heightened by the use of people as subjects.”

The mad scientist does not have a curiosity for nature but rather, a sort of narcissistic operation of his methods and, that he knows everything by way of science. That to procure the scientific would be to promote their affirmations of the known on their victims.

Works Cited

Writer, Essay. “Ethicality of Alchemist Knowledge in ‘Rappaccini’s Daughter’ and ‘The Birthmark.’” Literature Essay Samples, 16 July 2021, literatureessaysamples.com/ethicality-of-alchemist-knowledge-in-rappaccinis-daughter-and-the-birthmark.

Notes on "Rappaccini's Daughter

The “double” and the “foil” are main themes when it comes to “Rappaccini’s Daughter,” mainly because it represents a double in literature. A double is known as in literature, when the events in the story or novel are repeated twice by the characters. Baglioni and Rappaccini are both obsessed with science and thwarts Giovanni’s love for Rappaccini’s daughter, Beatrice by simply poisoning her to prove that Rappaccini loved science more than his own daughter. For instance, they are both rivals in the field of science and are obsessed with Beatrice. Only, Beatrice’s father is obsessed with her as his delicate child-like flower and Baglioni is obsessed with Beatrice’s death.

Here is where Baglioni thwarts their love and plans to poison Rappaccini’s daughter “But, resumed the professor, “be of good cheer, son of my friend. It is not yet too late for the rescue. Possibly we may even succeed in bringing back this miserable child within the limits of ordinary nature, from which her father’s madness has estranged her. Behold this little silver vase! […] One little sip of this antidote would have rendered the most virulent poisons of the Borgias innocuous. Doubt not that it will be as efficacious against those of Rappaccini.” So therefore, his plot for revenge against his rival, Rappaccini is made known.

Baglioni continues, “Bestow the vase, and the precious liquid within it, on your Beatrice, and hopefully await the result.” Baglioni laid a small, exquisitely wrought silver vial on the table and withdrew, leaving what he had said to produce its effect upon the young man’s mind. “We will thwart Rappaccini yet,” thought he, chuckling to himself, as he descended the stairs; “but, let us confess the truth of him, he is a wonderful man–a wonderful man indeed; a vile empiric, however, in his practice, and therefore not to be tolerated by those who respect the good old rules of the medical profession.” With this quote, we see that Baglioni is so obsessed with the good rules of medicine that he manages to get Giovanni to poison her just because she grew up with poisons in her body. Another double is that Baglioni and Rappaccini are both mad scientists who unleash and wreak havoc upon their loved ones which represents the double or the doppelgänger.

First off, Rappaccini wreaked havoc among his daughter and Giovanni because he poisoned her and made her invincible to poison except for the antidote that Baglioni had given her. Secondly, Baglioni poisoned Giovanni’s love for her by feeding him nonsense and finally poisoning the love of his life. Third, Baglioni plays father to Giovanni and Rappaccini plays father to Beatrice. Thus, we have the double that we can depend on which are love versus hate, nature versus natural life and good and evil. Baglioni displays hate while Beatrice’s father shows love while Baglioni is for natural life. Meanwhile, Rappaccini raised his daughter as a young girl who was birthed by poison in natural life versus nature. We therefore, have binary opposites or foil and doubles within the story. These themes are gothic because a foil is in both literary gothic terms, a character in juxtaposition with another character’s qualities in contrast (Baglioni and Rappaccini) and is the character who is driving the plot through his or her actions (Baglioni).

“Rappaccini’s Daughter” strikes shock and mystery for the reader when they find out that Baglioni is also a mad scientist who rivals Rappaccini with his obsession to make him miserable which then drives Baglioni to kill his daughter. The double is gothic in literature because “the terms “double” and “doppelgänger” […] used interchangeably in gothic scholarship, [has] no formal definition for the gothic double; though it can be generally understood as a physical representation of the division of the self, with two figures representing opposing sides of a good-evil dichotomy” which is the definition of the double or the German word doppelgänger.

                                                Works Cited

“The Double in Gothic Fiction | COVE.”

Https://Editions.Covecollective.Org/Edition/Were-Wolf/Double-Gothic-Fiction, 2018,

editions.covecollective.org/edition/were-wolf/double-gothic-fiction.

The Literature Network. “Rappaccini’s Daughter by Nathaniel Hawthorne.”

Http://Www.Online-Literature.Com/Hawthorne/152/, 2021, www.online-

literature.com/hawthorne/152.

See You Again

Perhaps this isn’t love.

Maybe it is not even fate.

But I can still see you I the rain can’t I?

Maybe the clocks will stop ticking…..

Maybe birds will stop flying and disappear.

But what if I never see you again?

Pictures

When I die and lay

myself down to rest take all

my pictures off the walls

promise you’ll burn them.

Love

I love you. I love

your subtle sighs, and your tender

essence that brings me back home. To

you from afar: Love….

Rooms On Fire

Dedicated to probably my most precious and last crush and is inspired by Stevie Nicks which was the song I dedicated to him in the first place.

He makes me want to

go outside in the rain when

he sets the room magically

on fire in the night.

Rainy Days

He will tend to

make me laugh and smile for no

reason at all because he can

control the weather.

Love Me Again

Will he love me once

more or will he find love just

to break my heart and leave me

alone where he was?