Since the beginning of literature, authors have been harnessing empathy and the feelings of a reader to generate emotion in their writing. When creating a story, writers nearly always take advantage of this to convey a certain meaning or feeling in their writing. By making those reading a story feel happy, sad, scared, or any of a countless number of other emotions, the person who wrote that text gave the reader an emotional connection to the story. However small, this connection is important in literature, and is the reason why authors can convey a theme or meaning in a story to a reader. This ability allows readers to form a deeper connection to a piece of writing, and it is this connection that bridges the gap between literature and society, …show more content…
When a readers knowledge is limited, the focus shifts from analyzing what can be seen, to interpreting what cannot be. There is a significant difference between being able to believe a narrator and analyze a story, and having to build one’s own reality based on a broken narrative. This shift from objectivity to subjectivity in a reader’s mind is what creates fear. Edgar Allan Poe’s story, The Pit and the Pendulum, for example, is a story from the perspective of a prisoner. This narrator spends most of the story in complete darkness, with no knowledge of his surroundings. In a dungeon, the narrator offers no explanation as to the reason he is trapped there, and the events in the story that occur are out of his control. “The blackness of eternal night encompassed me. I struggled for breath. The intensity of the darkness seemed to oppress and stifle me. The atmosphere was intolerably close. I still lay quietly” (Poe, 5) With the narrator of the story in pitch blackness, unaware of his surroundings, the reader sees the story through the smallest eyes of any possible perspective. This severely limits the reader’s ability to build a complete, chronological narrative of events in the story. This, like previously discussed, forces the reader of the story to make their own conclusions. Conclusions made by the reader create a different environment in a story. “The conception of the contents of experience as given by its accuracy condition is initially motivated by the idea that one can be misled by one's experiences.” (Zalta, 4) In a story, a reader will be able to notice this difference between what they see and read, and the truth found in a novel. Forcing a reader to think and interpret as opposed to having one simply read the words off of a page develops not
The Tell-Tale Heart and The Cask of Amontillado are two stories written by Edgar Allen Poe in the 18th century. Both of these stories are primarily focused on the mysterious and dark ways of the narrator. Since these stories were written by the same author, they tend to have several similarities such as the mood and narrative, but they also have a few differences. For instance, the characteristics of both narrators are different, but both stories portray the same idea of the narrator being obsessive over a certain thing.
Writers utilize their writing abilities in order to create a piece of literature that would transmit a meaningful message to their audience and create an impact on them. This is the case of Octavia Butler’s Kindred , a historical science-fiction novel evolving around a twenty six year old woman named Dana living in 1976. The story in the novel is rather unique since the plot alternates between the past and the present as Dana time travels from the commodity of her house in 1976 Los Angeles to Maryland in the antebellum period. The catalysts for these trips to the past are the near death experiences of the son of rich southern planter, a boy named Rufus, who is one of Dana’s ancestors. Every single time Rufus fears for his life, Dana is summoned
An English professor of many years at the University of Michigan-Flint, Thomas C. Foster has delivered an impressive book: How to Read Literature like a Professor. This book is an invaluable tool for readers at any level that can be used to more easily identify and interpret the many symbols woven into books, short stories, poems, and other writings. In the book, Foster not only explains what common occurrences, such as rain or illness, can mean symbolically, but also gives numerous examples from the works of popular authors. While a quick glance at the title may not give the impression that the reading will be particularly enjoyable, a book cannot be judged by its cover.
During the American literary movement known as Transcendentalism, many Americans began to looking deeper into positive side of religion and philosophy in their writing. However, one group of people, known as the Dark Romantics, strayed away from the positive beliefs of Transcendentalism and emphasized their writings on guilt and sin. The most well-known of these writers is Edgar Allan Poe. Poe was a dark romantic writer during this era, renown for his short stories and poems concerning misery and macabre. His most famous poem is “The Raven”, which follows a man who is grieving over his lost love, Lenore. In this poem, through the usage of tonal shift and progression of the narrator’s state of mind, Poe explores the idea that those who grieve will fall.
Fear is a feeling that people wish they could escape and not have control their life. However, fear is a valuable asset to life. Fear is what holds us back from going swimming in the ocean at dawn, after hearing about a shark attack. Without fear, there would be nothing to withhold us from irrational acts. Fear can also become overbearing, it can thwart any rational thoughts and cause paranoia to consume all. Through terror, paranoia can overcome rational thoughts and cloud judgment. As portrayed in “The Masque of Red Death,” “The Pit and the Pendulum,” and “The Tell-Tale Heart,” without any rationality fear leads to rash acts. Edgar Allen Poe uses symbolism, irony, and imagery to illustrate how fear can influence perceptions of reality, and the repercussions of their acts.
Being able to connect with someone through their experiences and being able to put one’s self in someone else’s shoes, that is empathy. Reading fiction teaches the readers how to become more empathetic towards one another. Reading can put one in the characters position in the story thus making the reader empathetic toward the character because they can picture what they are going through. Becoming more empathetic towards one another starts with reading fiction.
The article “Writing for and Audience” by Linda S. Flower, discusses the three steps that a good writer connects with his or her audience. The first step that Flower discusses is that of being knowledgeable of what the reader needs to know. This step usually includes self-reflection to portray what ideas the writer hope to teach, how extensive the writer believes the reader’s background knowledge is, and what the reader needs to learn from the writer. The second step is to understand the reader’s attitude about the subject that is being publicized. This statement means that as a writer one should know how his or her audience will feel about the subject matter at hand. The last step that Flower mentions is needs. What Flower means by needs is
“In the deepest slumber- no! In delirium- no! In a swoon- no! In death- no! Even in the grave all is not lost. Else there is no immortality for man.” A central theme in “The Pit and the Pendulum” is that even when faced with death all is not lost. The narrator’s situation is as grim as can be yet in the end it resolves itself just as the theme states possible. “The Pit and the Pendulum”, written in 1842, tells of the menacing terrors of the Spanish Inquisition back in the 1400s. Unsure of his fate, the narrator cannot differentiate between reality and some self-made delirium during his sentence. Intense symbolism creates a dark undertone and gives sense to the absolute terror experienced by the main character. Tortures experienced by the narrator,
“Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,” (“The Raven” 1). “The Raven” arguably one of the most famous poems by Edgar Allan Poe, is a narrative about a depressed man longing for his lost love. Confronted by a talking raven, the man slowly loses his sanity. “The Haunted Palace” a ballad by Poe is a brilliant and skillfully crafted metaphor that compares a palace to a human skull and mind. A palace of opulence slowly turns into a dilapidated ruin. This deterioration is symbolic of insanity and death. In true Poe style, both “The Raven” and “The Haunted Palace” are of the gothic/dark romanticism genre. These poems highlight sadness, death, and loss. As to be expected, an analysis of the poems reveals differences and parallels. An example of this is Poe’s use of poetic devices within each poem. Although different in structure, setting, and symbolism these two poems show striking similarities in tone and theme.
What is fear? Is it being in a prison so dark a person can not see in front of them? In this complete darkness the narrator finds himself eating and drinking, then passing out on a cold floor. When he wakes he is somewhere else in the dark cell. Or is it a cell? Could it be a tomb? Just when he thinks the cell is so big he finds himself almost falling into a pit. He eats and sleeps again. Where or how will he wake? Does he wake from his drugged food? In this story “The Pit and the Pendulum,” by Edgar Allan Poe, he tells the terrifying struggle of a man dealing with fear, torture, and confinement.
Your imagination likes to twist situation when fear occurs. There are infographics in “ How to Tell You’re Reading a Gothic Novel”, by Adam Frost and Zhenia Vasiliev that tell us how certain things said in the story that are suppose to surprise the reader making them fear the story. The examples shown tell us what we are suppose to fear most in a story. Setting and how characters act in a story are the reason why imagination can overcome reason. For setting, a lot of gothic novels are set in the olden days to give the story a creepy vibe. The way characters act in a story can also scare or confuse the reader. Gothic novels use the olden day setting because it can set the tone for a scary story, which the reader’s imagination uses to make their own scary assumptions. This happens in “The Fall of the House of Usher”, when the narrator describes everything around him as lifeless.
The warm summer breeze lifts your hair from the nape of your neck. The tree’s leafs rustle above your head, as you sit at the foot of their tree. The edge of the pages from your latest fiction novel flicker as you hold the page down to continue your viewing of the world their author has created for you to read. You smile when the protagonist has a small victory, cry when they fail, and even laugh out loud to the jokes they tell. You are in the world made up just for you; you are in a land of fiction.
Roberts, Edgar V., and Zwieg, Robert, eds. Literature: An Introduction to Reading and Writing. 10th ed. Illinois: Glenview, Pearson Education Inc. 2012. Print.
Literature is rarely, if ever, merely a story that the author is trying to tell. It is imperative that the reader digs deep within the story to accurately analyze and understand the message the author is trying to portray. Authors tend to hide themselves in their stories. The reader can learn about the author through literary elements such as symbolism, diction, and structure. A good example of this is Robert Frost’s poems The Road Not Taken and Nothing Gold can Stay in which he uses ordinary language unlike many other poets that became more experimental (Frost, Robert. “1.”).