Kaylie Wood Ohler English IV 10 February, 2017 The Werewolf Of Wysteria The Werewolf of Wysteria, otherwise known as Hamilton Howard “Albert” Fish, could be described as kind, having a familiar face, perhaps even as a cute old man; but in realit, he was insane, a sado machinist, a child harasser, and a murderer. His whole life was a rather unfortunate one, even when he seemed to be happy after his marriage to his wife. After his marriage failed he started to break down, even yelling “I am Christ!” in the middle of the street. His most famous murder is the one of ten-year-old Grace Budd, of whom he would eat the corpse of in nine days. Fish started his adventure into insanity at an early age, though eventually doctors would argue about his …show more content…
Fish’s methods of killing were, for all purposes, the perfect way to hide his crimes. No bodies meant no discovery, and the parents oftentimes would not suspect the sweet seeming, elderly Fish. However, Fish would strike one last time, through letters written to the parents of his victims. Fish would write terrible things, meant to strike fear into their hearts and to cut deeply into their emotion. Often he would write of how he killed and cannibalized these parent's children, of how he took pleasure in every moment of it, and of how in a way it was the parents fault that their children came to him. These letters would be the downfall of Fish, having written them on borrowed stationary from a person where he was staying, detectives traced the letters back to Fish, and arrested him on the …show more content…
Following his arrest, Fish would be met by a disgusted and terrified court. Many members of the court were held in great disdain of Fish, although some members of the court thought Fish to be sane. These few members thought that such heinous crimes could not carried out by this elderly old man; however the vast majority knew the truth: Fish was insane, and wholly guilty of his crimes. Fish would be sentenced to execution by the electric chair. This was, according to Fish, his greatest dream. Fish thought of the chair as the ultimate pleasure, having heard of a case where a executee was tortured immensely by a malfunctioning chair, this pain was Fish’s idea of paradise. In the end, it took two rounds to execute Fish, and he would smile through every
My studies show that the patient’s actions during my interview with him were unusual, he was oddly calm about explaining in detail what he had done to the old man. I asked the defendant why he would do such a thing as killing the old man. He tells me the old man never did him wrong, “I knew what the old man felt and pitied him” (Poe 204)., it was the eye that tortured my patient. “a pale blue eye...my blood ran cold...thus
He teaches the kid what to do in order to successfully reel in a large, beautiful fish. Ironically, the narrator is the one who learns from the kid in the end. At the beginning of the story, everything is described negatively, from the description of the kid as a “lumpy little guy with baggy shorts” to his “stupid-looking ’50s-style wrap-around sunglasses” and “beat-up rod”(152). Through his encounter with the boy, the narrator is able to see life in a different way, most notable from how he describes the caught tarpon as heavy, silvery white, and how it also has beautiful red fins (154). Through the course of the story, the narrator’s pessimistic attitude changes to an optimistic one, and this change reveals how inspiring this exchange between two strangers is. This story as a whole reveals that learning also revolves around interactions between other people, not only between people and their natural surroundings and
...derer himself, he compares the guilt of his son’s death to that of fishes incident and how terrible he treated himself because of it.
uncovers the truth about the fish, and how it and its environment was abused by the old
As a consequence of the narrator cutting the fishing line, he feels a "sick, nauseous feeling in [his] stomach" as he understood the grave mistake he has done. He can't comprehend that he had made the absurd decision to cut the line that released the fish he wanted to hook greatly. He treasures fishing significantly but his desire for Sheila took command. Throughout the rest of the date, he retained that tainted sensation in his stomach as that lost fish stays in his thought. As a result, after a month had relinquished "the spell [Sheila] cast over [him] was gone" due to it denoting superficial love and not true passion, but what adhered to him was his true love, the lost bass that haunted him all server and "haunts [him] still." The narrator discovers that the affection for Sheila was not authentic but what is genuine is his passion for fishing. He comes to terms with his disastrous error and grasps that judgments formulated on the premise of superficial values lead to sorrow and anguish. Ultimately, the narrator learns through Sheila that the judgment he made because of his shallow desire provokes pain and
The book has vivid imagery making the reader imaging as if her or she was their right beside him in his whole investigation. Such as “In the winter of 1978, through, a fierce blizzard hit southern Connecticut. Temperatures were often below zero and at one point it snowed for thirty-three hours straight. Perhaps it was the cold that killed the fish, or the copper sulfate I helped the caretaker drag through the pond the previous summer to manage the algal blooms, or maybe even the fishermen id noticed trespassing on the estate one day, scoping out my grounds. But whatever caused it, after that never again did I spot a living fish in that pond again.”(Greenberg 12-13). This quote shows how good his imagery, tone, and diction is, when I read it all I could think of is that storm and the pond. The author has an excellent writing style and keeps the reader wanting more. Even though the book has a lot of good things for it the only thing I would tell the author would to give more connections of him to the story. It says “The transformation of salmon and sea bass from kingly and holiday wild fish into everyday farmed variants is a trend that continues with different animals around the globe.”(Greenberg 195). In every chapter about each of the fish it gives some connections to him but it would make it even
Firstly, the poisonous fish is a symbol of the mysterious swift but sudden death that his mother suffered from trying to cook for a woman whom they give no further details other than her name. The fact that the process of cleaning the fish is so dangerous and the people continue to eat it makes the reader wonder why they are willing to take the risk of death. The fish is mysterious because one wrong move on the
In 1910, Fish committed his first murder in which he mutilated and tortured his victim. From that point on, he set his sights on children as he saw them as easy targets. Fish traveled from state to state in the 1920's leaving a trail of victims from molestation to cases of children disappearing. Fish would torture, mutilate and eventually murder his victims using what he called his "Implements of Hell" which consisted of a meat cleaver, a butcher knife, and a saw. Fish also like to inflict pain on himself; he would insert needles far into his body to where they would get stuck. He also liked to have people paddle him with a paddle that had nail sticking out of the end so that it would make him bleed.
By the end of it, Fish was found guilty and sane. Although there was plenty proof that Fish suffered from psychosis and was insane, the jury wanted to see him punished. He was sentenced to death by electrocution and was scheduled to die in January of 1936. Fish arrived at Sing Sing Prison after being found guilty carrying a bible, and when questioned by reporters stated that, “What a thrill that will be if I have to die in the electric chair. It will be the supreme thrill. The only one I haven’t tried.” The first giant jolt of electricity failed to kill Fish due to the needles inside his body creating a short circuit. The second jolt did kill him though, and Fish remains to be one of the oldest men to ever die in the electric chair. His final statements have never been revealed and have been referred to as “the most filthy string of obscenities that I have ever read” by Fish’s defense attorney
Alice Childress is an African American writer author who was highly criticized for her unapologetic writing style. Throughout all of her writing research, she recognized that there was a void in addressing the social issues that plague the black community.
At the time of his birth, his father was aged seventy-five years and his mother was thirty-one years of age (Rawlins, 2003). Fish’s family had a history of mental illnesses. At the age of five, Fish’s father passed away and his family could not function properly without him. Up to this point, Fish had been part of an unhealthy household in terms of mild conflict but was not physically abused in any way. The relationship between his mother and father was not ideal, and there were often high levels of stress in the atmosphere (Taylor, 2004). Fish’s mother saw the father’s death as a sort of escape and placed Fish in an orphanage. It was at this point in his life that Fish experienced major abuse and psychological trauma in the form of punishment from the orphanage workers (Rawlins, 2003). Fish was addicted to masochistic activities, and was reported to often inflict pain on himself with the purpose of self-pleasure. By analyzing the ways Fish acted in his early life and comparing it to the early trauma he endured, it is evident that the two have a strong connection to one
It has just occurred to me - Stella Young isn't comfortable with people being inspired by her for being able to do normal, everyday things in life in spite of her physical disability and I, and many others like me with mental health issues, struggle to make people understand that it's these normal, everyday things in life that we find so difficult to deal with.
A fish is a creature that preceded the creation of man on this planet. Therefore, Bishop supplies the reader with a subject that is essentially constant and eternal, like life itself. In further examination of this idea the narrator is, in relation to the fish, very young, which helps introduce the theme of deceptive appearances in conjunction with age by building off the notion that youth is ignorant and quick to judge. Bishop's initial description of the fish is meant to further develop this theme by presenting the reader with a fish that is "battered," "venerable," and "homely." Bishop compares the fish to "ancient wallpaper.
Hannah Arendt was a political theorist who wrote about the essential features of a state’s authority, the field of political science, pure democracy, political dominance, and the origin of tyranny. While a number of members of both the writing and political science fields refer to her as a political philosopher, Arendt did not feel as though her work put her in the philosopher category. Her reasoning behind the refusal of the philosopher title was that philosophers tend to focus on individuals rather than the population as a mass. Additionally, she is most widely known for her 5 part writing series on the Adolf Eichmann trial published in The New Yorker in 1963. Arendt was a German-born citizen
...nizes the fish because, just like the fish, people fight daily battles to survive in life. This humanization of the fish enables the speaker to relate and respect him, and therefore, ultimately leads to his release.