~Tell Tale Heart Analysis~

Edgar Allen Poe's The Tell Tale Heart is one of his classics. The enthralling tale of a man so upset by the "evil eye" of the old man whom he lives with that he kills him in cold blood. And of course, the belief that the man was completely insane. Driven mad by the sound of the dead man's beating heart, the narrator loses his mind and tells the police where the chopped up body of the old man is. But is he actually crazy? Did he kill the old man? As readers, we can never be fully sure what really happened, as we can't go and ask Poe himself. But that makes it all the more interesting.

Personally, I believe the man actually was "touched" in the head. Most of Poe's stories and poems had a main character who wasn't completely sane, but that's what made his stories so great. Being inside the head of a madman and viewing the world from that perspective is something most people would think of writing about. But Poe does an excellent job at it.

To me, the story of The Tell Tale Heart is one of someone reaching the breaking point. For instance, the "evil eye" that provokes the man to commit murder could be seen as either a blind eye or one with cataracts. The fact that the eye appeared to stare into one's soul could imply that the eye couldn't see at all, so it appeared fixated at all times. People are unsettled by blind eyes for that very reason. And why should this man be any different? The only reason he is extremely unsettled by it is because he is slightly insane.

The parts where the man is being interviewed by the police is something that also could have been his insanity acting up. He describes how he was pacing and threw his chair at some point, yet the police continue to sit there and chat, seemingly oblivious to the deterioration of the man's mental state. This could be explained by the man simply imagining himself performing those actions, when he could actually be still sitting in the chair. But then this begs the question that if he could imagine that, couldn't he have imagined the whole murder? While this is also valid, I still believe that the man murdered the old man, but the murder itself was the breaking point to his mental stability, thus he begins to see and hear things after that.

~Love At Death's Door~

Alabama, 1923

It was close to midnight on a hot summer evening. Crickets were chirping and fireflies were lazily flitting through the fields. A scream broke the silence, shattering it into pieces. A dog barked once. Twice. Another scream pierced the air. Then silence.

The next morning the police arrived at the small cottage on the edge of town, where young Hattie Baker lived. Hattie’s mother was concerned that Hattie was ill, for she had not come to visit this morning like she always did on Saturdays. But when the police got to Hattie’s front door, they found a black rose pinned to the front, freshly cut. The Aphrodite Killer had claimed another victim.

Chicago, Present Day

“Millie, I don’t know what we’ll ever do with ourselves in this heat. I feel like I’m melting!” “Oh hush Liz, it’s only 89 today. It was hotter yesterday,” replied Mildred Blackthorn, sunning herself on the porch. Her complaining neighbor was Lizbeth Evergreen, a young college student who’d moved into the house next to Millie’s a year ago. The two became quick friends and were constantly seen together. “Honestly, it never gets this hot up in the mountains in Colorado. You’re from the South and I’m from the North. Two completely different areas,” remarked Liz. Millie looked up from her latest novel, another horror classic, and rolled her eyes at Liz. They had had this exact conversation just yesterday, and it was only resolved when Liz’s boyfriend Caleb came out with lemonade. Unfortunately, Caleb had to work today, so no fresh lemonade to settle this dispute.

Suddenly, Millie stood up and rushed back inside her house. Liz paid no attention, as this was something Millie did often. But she usually did this when it was about to storm. PLINK! “Argh! Spoke too soon!” Liz quickly rushed to pick up the book Millie left on her chair, tripping over it at the same time. Landing with a thud on the porch, Liz only then noticed the day’s newspaper lying under the chair. Picking it up along with the dropped book, Liz rushed inside just as the thunder started. “That’s Chicago for you I guess. One minute it’s nice out and the next it’s storming. Talk about being bipolar.” Liz threw the newspaper on the table along with the book and went to go towel off. When she returned to the table, the title page of the paper caught her eye: “Second College Student Goes Missing.” Now intrigued, Liz opened up to page two of the story and read: “On Thursday evening, 23 year-old August Fairview went missing after eyewitnesses saw her leaving the local Dominick’s off of Clybourn Avenue. When she failed to show up for classes at DePaul University on Friday morning, concerned classmates tried to get in touch to no avail. Upon further review…” Liz put down the paper and sighed. But then another sentence stuck out at her: “…these disappearances are similar to the ones that have plagued many states dating all the way back to 1923 in Alabama. The police were not available to comment on whether these are merely coincidental or if someone is continuing the line of previous occurrences.”

Liz couldn’t believe that someone could be twisted enough to look up kidnappings from over eighty years ago and mimic them. “And it’s not as if the same person who was kidnapping people back then is the same person today,” Liz thought out loud. “I wonder if Millie knows about this. I’m pretty sure they were in the same class together. And didn’t she like the guy August was going out with?” Just then Liz remembered Millie’s book she had saved from the rain. Picking it up, a bookmark fell out of the place where Millie closed the pages last. Liz recognized a Greek goddess on the front, but she couldn’t imagine why Millie would have this bookmark. “She always told me she hated Greek mythology, especially the love stories,” Liz wondered. “Well I better go return it to her. She seemed really engrossed in this one and I bet she can’t wait to get back to it.”

Leaving with her rain slicker and Millie’s book, Liz headed over to Millie’s house next door. The house always made Liz uncomfortable, for it was right down the street from the house that burned down on its own a few years ago. “But that’s what makes it so interesting,” Millie had explained to Liz when Liz first moved in to her house a year before. “Anything that has to do with death and destruction is fascinating. How we can be so strong in life but even the smallest thing can either crush us or kill us. That’s why I study biology and chemistry; two subjects that can truly explain how our world works and what destroys what.”

By now the rain had worsened and the wind had picked up enough to blow over the trash cans left out from Friday night after garbage pick-up. Upon arriving at Millie’s front door, Liz noticed that all the lights were off in Millie’s house. When she tried the front door, she found it unlocked. Not bothering to knock, Liz entered the house. “Hey Millie, I brought your book back!” Liz shouted to the silent house. No response. “That’s funny, where could she have gone off to?” Just then Liz noticed there were black petals of some flower littering the floor. Following them, she came upon Millie’s room. This was the only place in the house Millie never let people into. “Way too messy, what with all my art projects and school books. Someone could die in there and not be found for weeks,” Millie joked one time. But it really did smell like something dead was in there. Bracing herself against the stench, Liz opened the door.

At first, the bright lights from all the candles made Liz’s eyes tear up. But her eyes quickly adjusted to the cavernous room, filled with dozens upon dozens of black roses. Then she noticed the stench coming from the lit end of the room. She saw a dark figure, which appeared to be decaying right before her eyes, looming over a covered body. The sheet fell slightly, revealing the dead face of August Fairview, twisted in terror. Backing up, Liz fell over a stack of newspapers. The titles all jumped out at her: “Fifth Kidnapping Victim Found With Missing Heart and Black Rose”, “Young Woman Seen Fleeing Scene of Latest Kidnapping”, “Still No Clue to the Whereabouts of the Aphrodite Killer” and so on. Then Liz noticed the dates: 1923, 1947, 1993, 2011. “I see you’ve found the collection of articles about my past,” rasped a voice from the corner. Liz turned in response and stared at the decaying figure before her. “Men are such fools when you think about it. They say they love you one minute, but then they go off with some other woman once you turn your back. You can only be betrayed so many times in life until your heart eventually turns as black as these roses. But young hearts are so much nicer. They jumpstart the blood long ago frozen in my veins,” cackled the figure. Liz could only stare. “But why are you doing this? What did they ever do to you?” The figure sighed. “They stole from me my friends, my love, my life. Long ago, when I was once your age, I too loved someone. But he betrayed my love for him and killed me for another woman. But I was given a chance for revenge.” The figure paused before continuing, as if to build suspense. “As long as I brought before my maker the heart of the young woman whom my love killed me for, I would be given eternal life. But death has funny ways of twisting the rules, so to keep myself as ‘alive’ as I can be, I must bring Him the hearts of young women who steal away any man I look at, keeping me from ever loving again.”

“So you’re…a zombie?” asked Liz. The figure screeched in response. “We prefer not to be called such degrading names such as that! But you stupid living have discriminated against my kind for generations. We have suffered, but have been given new life at the price of love. And you are loved and your heart still beats, while mine has stopped loving long ago. But I still possess jealousy, and it is a terror in its own right. Don’t think you have gone unwatched. There are plenty of women who would die for your place in life right now. But seeing as I’m already dead, I’m already ahead of the game.”

Turning back to the body on the table, the figure pulled out a long, deadly knife. It then plunged the knife into August’s chest and twisted. There was no blood, but when the knife slipped out, the heart came with it. Then the figure plunged the knife into its own chest and pulled out what looked like a human heart. But this didn’t appear to be any human heart Liz had ever seen. It was pitch black, twisted, and scarred. “You see what love does to you?” sighed the figure. It then slipped the stolen heart into its chest and removed the knife. Where the knife had cut a gaping hole, the skin promptly grew around it. The whole process took but a few minutes. “And tonight I seem to have gotten lucky. Two young hearts right here for the harvesting. Oh but I can’t use you right away. Perhaps in a few months time you will become useful to me. Until then, I’m sorry to say, you will have to stay here in this room with my dearly departed friend here.”

The figure then turned toward Liz. Before, the decaying skin and dark robe and room had masked the appearance of the figure. But now Liz recognized it immediately. “M-Millie?”

It was close to midnight on that rainy summer evening. The sounds of the city were muffled and slowed. A scream broke the quiet, shattering it into pieces. A dog barked once. Twice. Another scream pierced the air. Then silence.

~Song Lyrics Breakdown~

PARAMORE~BRICK BY BORING BRICK

She lives in a fairy tale
Somewhere too far for us to find
Forgotten the taste and smell
Of the world that she's left behind
It's all about the exposure the lens I told her
The angles were all wrong now
She's ripping wings off of butterflies

The first lines give us a sense that this girl has been living in a fantasy world away from reality for so long that she has lost touch with what is real and what is not. Ripping the wings off of butterflies can be interpreted to mean that she is destroying something peaceful and beautiful, or possibly destroying the power of flight and freedom, maybe even her freedom. 

Keep your feet on the ground
When your head's in the clouds
Well go get your shovel
And we'll dig a deep hole
To bury the castle, bury the castle
Go get your shovel
And we'll dig a deep hole
To bury the castle, bury the castle
Ba da ba ba da ba ba ha

The first two lines in the chorus are a description of what to do to keep in the realm of reality. Even when your mind is elsewhere, always keep a firm stance or grasp on what is real, or else you'll float away. The rest of the chorus is telling us to bury or pull ourselves out of that fantasy. Castles are generally found in fairy tales with princesses and magic, but it's not real. Bury that false world deep down in the ground, far away from yourself. 

So one day he found her crying
Coiled up on the dirty ground
Her prince finally came to save her
And the rest you can figure out
But it was a trick
And the clock struck twelve
Well make sure to build your house brick by boring brick
Or the wolf's gonna blow it down

The first half of these lines brings up more of the fairy tale aspect with her prince picking her up from the ground and standing her back up. But it then goes on to say that it was a trick, and that the clock struck twelve. These two lines are a sort of reference to Cinderella, where when the clock struck twelve, she was reverted back to her poor self. This could mean that the girl was only able to hold on to that fantasy for a little while, but it all fell apart in the end. Then the last two lines could mean that your house, which can be your whole being, needs to be built of sturdy material, or else it will collapse. 

Keep your feet on the ground
When your head's in the clouds
Well go get your shovel
And we'll dig a deep hole
To bury the castle, bury the castle
Go get your shovel
And we'll dig a deep hole
We'll bury the castle, bury the castle

Repetition of the chorus makes the message of keeping a clear head and not getting caught up in false world even stronger. 

Well you built up a world of magic
Because your real life is tragic
Yeah you built up a world of magic
If it's not real
You can't hold it in your hand
You can't feel it with your heart
And I won't believe it
But if it's true
You can see it with your eyes
Oh, even in the dark
And that's where I want to be, yeah

By building up a world of magic, the girl has rejected all that is real in her life because it wasn't a good enough life and created a place that she fit in to. But a real life is something tangible, or something that has value to your life, as the fourth through sixth lines express. And if you believe in something true, you'll be able to find it, no matter how dark things might appear, as in the last four lines. 

Go get your shovel
And we'll dig a deep hole
To bury the castle, bury the castle
Go get your shovel
And we'll dig a deep hole
To bury the castle, bury the castle

And yet another repeat of the second half of the chorus further pushes home the idea that fantasy is not reality, nor should it be the world you live in.

~On the Reservation~

Reservations were a way for Americans to give some of the land back to the Indians without having to lose much on their own end. Reservation life was not nearly as well off as the lives Americans lived. There was poor schooling, not enough food, and disease running rampant. The living conditions were horrible and there were usually too many people forced into an area that couldn't hold that kind of capacity.

While reservations did have some sort of community set up in them, they were still just a place the whites pushed all the Indians off to. Americans, at that time, were extremely racist when it came to people who weren't of the same skin color as they were. So to make sure they were still supreme, they made their own areas and neighborhoods to segregate themselves from anyone who wasn't white. Even if it meant those people had to live in conditions no person could or should ever live in.

I don't think anyone would ever want to have lived on a reservation, but we still forced people to live like that. Why is it that Americans could never see past skin color to truly understand who a person was? We always manage to judge a book by its cover and never actually read it for ourselves. We've missed out on a lot of great books in the course of generations of living here in America.

~Propaganda Today~

Propaganda-information, ideas, or rumors deliberately spread widely to help or harm a person, group, movement, institution, nation, etc.

 

Today, we see many examples of propaganda, from the smallest advertisement in a magazine to the biggest political endorsement commercial whenever some election comes around. Propaganda has been around for years, and there's definitely no shortage foreseeable in the near future. Propaganda today has the connotation of being something bad. We don't see much propaganda helping people in a positive way anymore. The only way it "helps" people is by making everyone else look bad, thus putting them in some pathetic kind of "hero spotlight" for everyone to look up to.

 

Propaganda usually comes in the form of something relating to politics or our country. For instance, there was the HUGE bp oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. That had just about everybody up in arms about it in some way or another. And what was right beneath the surface of that accident? You guessed it: politics. See more bp logo redesigns here: http://twistedsifter.com/2010/05/funny-creative-bp-logos-competition/

Politics always seems to somehow squirm its way into anything and everything that comes up in the news these days. No matter where you go, you can't avoid it. The worst are those TV advertisements where politicians running for an office blatantly put down their opposition by bringing up instances where their opponents stated this or that, making them seem bad in the public eye. I personally hate those. I just don't understand why people can't go and talk about all the "great" things they could do if elected instead of bashing their opponent to make themselves look better. We could really do without all the mud slinging.

 

Let's face it: propaganda is something we will all have to deal with, probably for the rest of our lives. It has become something so "vital" to the political scene today that politicians can't seem to run for anything without it. They physically cannot be elected if they don't go out, drag their opponents' names through the mud, and make it seem as though they have a deal with the devil. What ever happened to go ole' honesty and showing people what YOU can do to fix things instead? It went down the drain, along with the economy and our country.

~Hungry For Attention~

There are times in everyone's life when they want attention. A lot of times it is because something or someone has taken away the attention from you, attention that you're very used to getting. But then there are times when you might feel neglected. You want attention merely to let people know that you are still there.

Richard is more of a combination of both. He starts off wanting attention because he feels that he isn't getting enough from others. That's why he set the curtains on fire. He thought his grandmother was getting more attention than him because she was sick. And then later he wanted attention because he had basically been abandoned by everyone he saw as family. Richard didn't grow up the way normal kids do. Most six year-olds don't earn money by going to saloons, getting drunk, and telling people things for others in the saloon. Richard was getting attention, but it was from the wrong type of people.

Attention is something most people enjoy getting, but sometimes not for the best reasons. Richard is young, so it's normal that he would want attention, but he got it from the wrong places. It's not a childhood anyone would wish on even their worst enemy. Attention is something that can truly go to your head.

~Read and Respond: Walden~

In Thoreau's Walden, he tells the story of how he wanted to get away from all the material things in life that take away from the true human being. So he decides to live in the woods in a cabin to try to get as simplified a life as he can possible manage. He manages to do so for two years but then returns to his old life because he realizes that he has been subjected to so many "necessities" of the common world that it becomes hard for one to give those things up entirely.

What appealed to me in this story was how someone was wanting to actually "degrade" themselves, according to what people think is the normal life and what is a lower, poorer life. But it was because Thoreau wanted to live without all these strings attached. He was trying to achieve the simple life by doing what he did. And I'm sure all of you have thought about going out and trying to live off the land. We may think at first it would be really cool and that it wouldn't be that hard to do, but it's the exact opposite. We've lived with so many common necessities that if we had to give those up, most people wouldn't be able to. And the few that could, you probably wouldn't last very long out there.

In the end, you even see that Thoreau came back to his old life. He realized that not only is going and having to do everything for yourself a challenge, but the fact that you have to completely change your lifestyle so you live without commodities you use every day is very taxing. Not many people can stand up and say "I want to be a farmer," and then go off and be a farmer. We've lived with too many things that make our lives easier that giving them up would be next to impossible.

So I commend Thoreau on what he tried to do, because it's something that was not easy in the least. But he found something out for all of us when he tried to live on the land by himself. It proves that there is no simple life: no matter if you live with everything you can imagine, or next to nothing, you will still meet challenges in life that will require you to actually do something about it. If anything, we've learned that what we call "the simple life" is actually way harder than our "pampered" lifestyle.

~Is King Still King?~

Every year when January rolls around, we get out of school for Martin Luther King Jr. day. But do people still think about why we get this day off anymore? I know I still do. King was a great man in our history. He truly believed that for this country to be called the United States of America, we would all have to accept one another for who we were, without any discrimination and segregation. He was one of the few people who wasn't afraid to go out and tell the world what needed to be done. That took great courage and determination from one person. And it proved that you can make a difference if you try hard enough.

I like to believe that people today still remember that what King did had a huge affect on our lives. Without people like him, we probably not be where we are today. Out country would still be horribly racist and everywhere would be segregated. Think about it: some of your best friends wouldn't be your friends or even in the same school as you if things were still the way they were back then. You wouldn't know the same people, and you wouldn't have the same wonderful experiences that you've had because you've been able to get to know so many different people. That's what truly makes us so diverse as a community, a state, and a country. And to think all this spawned from the actions of a few people who truly wished to see, or at least set in motion, a place where everyone's children could play together without being judged by the color of their skin. Really makes you think, doesn't it?

So when Martin Luther King Jr. day comes each year, think back to what he did and how it affects your life and the whole world. It wasn't something that had a big effect when it happened and has since only been written into history, it was something truly radical that changed the life of the country as a whole.

~Read and Respond: Children of the Sea~

The short story that caught and held my attention the most out of the ones we read was Children of the Sea. The story is written in the form of letters written back and forth between two young lovers who were living in Haiti. The boy had made it onto a boat that set sail to America for a better life but the girl  was still back in Haiti with her parents so there was no way these letters could reach the recipients. But it was a touching story nonetheless.
Your typical 'love story' (if you can even call this a love story) wouldn't normally be found in this format, or even surrounding this topic. Most love stories are the classic hackneyed Romeo and Juliet romances. Bleh. But this story was more than just about two lovers; it also majorly focused on what was happening in Haiti and why people were fleeing. During that time, the government was in turmoil and wanted to eradicate all those who spoke out against the government. The people were literally like slaves in their country, forced to do horrible things for the amusement of the soldiers just to stay alive. It was a very hard time indeed, which is partially why I was drawn to this story.
What's also nice about reading a story written in an epistolary style is that we can get two or more (in this case two) points of view. We are able to see what both the boy and the girl are facing on the boat and back in Haiti. It's so touching how they continued to write to each other even though they knew neither one was going to get these letters. And it's interesting how the letters from the boy stopped, leaving us to try and fill in the blank as to what happened to him (did he drown, is he alive, etc.).
All in all this was a very interesting story (from what we read) and a bittersweet one at that. It's nice to see something other than some sappy love story surface in the great sea of literature. And one that I found interesting too.