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How does poe use the setting of the cask of amontllado to extend his meaning
Setting of the cask of amontillado by poe
Setting of the cask of amontillado by poe
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Sarah Wyman is an Assistant Professor of English at the State University of New York at New Paltz. In this article, Wyman insightfully claims “the trope of looking at but not knowing what one sees becomes a central theme of the tale as well as a key to the way the text exploits the tension between appearance and reality” (Wyman 216). She was referring to Rip coming home after his twenty year sleep and not recognizing his village. However, going by Wyman, there is a deeper meaning to that part of the story. Wyman speaks of the change of America during that time and maybe Irving saw life better prior to splitting with England. It all comes to down Irving giving the idea that the revolution started and people began to lose what they valued most,
The book starts out with a chapter called “Over the Mountains”, which in my opinion for this chapter the author wanted the reader to understand what it was like to live on the other side of the Appalachian Mountains. This is where he brings out one of the main characters in this book, which is Henry Brackenridge. Mr. Brackenridge is a cultivated man in Pittsburgh. He was wealthy and he was there to ratify the Constitution. He was a Realist. He was a college friend of James Madison at College of New Jersey. He was also in George Washington’s post as a chaplain for the Revolutionary War. He believed that Indians needed to be assimilated into the American culture. “… ever to be converted into civilized ways, their legal rights were to be protected” (Hogeland 19). He will become one of the leaders of the Whiskey Rebellion.
In the novel Missing Sarah by Maggie deVries she writes and illustrates a sad tribute to the memory of her sister, Sarah. The author Maggie deVries makes a clear connection between Sarah's adoption by her family and Sarah's incredibly sad life. Adoption of children from another background, heritage and race into white families sometimes doesn't go well, despite the best efforts of the family. Sarah deVries was one of at least 21 women who could only be identified by DNA found on a pig farm in Port Coquitlam, BC. The women were all sex workers or prostitutes who were killed, and the cause of their vanishing was not investigated promptly possibly because they were engaged in selling sex to survive. Even the choice of whether to refer to these women as 'prostitutes' or 'sex
In Washington Irving’s “Rip Van Winkle,” an allegorical reading can be seen. The genius of Irving shines through, in not only his representation in the story, but also in his ability to represent both sides of the hot political issues of the day. Because it was written during the revolutionary times, Irving had to cater to a mixed audience of Colonists and Tories. The reader’s political interest, whether British or Colonial, is mutually represented allegorically in “Rip Van Winkle,” depending on who is reading it. Irving uses Rip, Dame, and his setting to relate these allegorical images on both sides. Irving would achieve success in both England and America, in large part because his political satires had individual allegorical meanings.
Within the introduction of Grover’s Corners, Our Town demonstrates the theme that one should appreciate every moment of their life. The first instance of this thematic portrayal lies in the Stage Manager’s brief summary of Joe Stoddard’s life, in which he explains that “Joe was awful bright -- graduated from high school here [in Grover’s Corners], head of his class. So he got a scholarship to Massachusetts Tech. Graduated head of his class there, too. It was all wrote up in the Boston paper at the time. Goin’ to be an engineer, Joe was. But the war broke out and he died in France. -- All that education for nothing” (10). Just like Joe, the threat of death looms over everyone, and it will strike indiscriminately. This is why it is so important
In “Rip Van Winkle” by Washington Irving he writes about a simple man, Rip Van Winkle, who does just enough to get by in life. He lives in a village by the catskill mountains, and is loved by everyone in the village. He is an easy going man, who spends most of his days at the village inn talking with his neighbors, fishing all day, and wandering the mountains with his dog to refuge from his wife the thorn on his side. On one of his trips to the mountains Rip Van Winkle stumbles upon a group of men who offer him a drink, and that drink changes everything for Van Winkle. He later wakes up, twenty years later, and returns to his village were he notices nothing is the same from when he left. He learns that King George III is no longer in charge,
Washington Irving wrote Rip Van Winkle with the American people in mind. At this time society was changing drastically. America was attempting to go through a struggle with forming their own identity. America was wanting to have an identity that would set them free from English culture and rule. Irving uses his main character, Rip Van Winkle, to symbolize America. Rip goes through the same struggles that America was going through at this time before and after the Revolution. Irving uses such great symbolism in this story to describe the changes that American society went through. This story covers a wide variety of time periods including: America before English rule, early American colonies under English rule, and America after the Revolutionary War.
Using the murder of Dee Ann’s mother as a means to intertwine the lives of the characters together, Steve Yarbrough examines the nature of relationships in “The Rest of Her Life.” The relationships in the story take a turn after Dee Ann’s mother is killed, with characters seeking to act more on their own, creating distance between many relationships throughout the story. Independent lifestyles prevent emotional bonds that hold relationships together from forming, thus preventing the characters from maintaining healthy relationships. The dysfunctional relationship present between Dee Ann and Chuckie in “The Rest of Her Life” is the result of the characters ' desire for self-gratification.
“Rip Van Winkle” is set during the reign of King George the Third in a small village near the Catskill Mountains. Rip, the protagonist, states his residence is “a little village of great antiquity,” (page 62). In the opening of the story, the village where Rip held residence was remote and of great age. Villagers did not expand and can be described as complacent. Upon Rip’s return to the village after a mystical event, Rip is perplexed to see that the only thing recognizable is the natural surrounding features of the Catskill Mountains. The small village was now “larger and more populous. There were rows of houses which he had never seen before, and those which had been his familiar haunts had disappeared,” (page
Robert Frost’s poem “Out, out” is set in Vermont during the late afternoon and is about a young boy who is cutting wood for the family stove and gets his hand cut off ultimately resulting in death. Frost uses this poem as a way to show that life has little sympathy for the dead. He does this by using many literary techniques such as imagery, personification, allusion, and blank verse. All of these techniques are important when understanding this poem because it helps to convey certain feeling and emotions from Frost’s perspective. The theme, symbols, and literary techniques Frost uses are essential in coming to terms with how to portray this poem.
Irving uses imagery to help readers imagine the past and also impact the theme of supernatural. Irving writes, “The whole neighborhood abounds with local tales, haunted spots, and twilight superstitions; star shoot and meteors glare oftener across the valley than in any other part of the country, and the nightmare, with her whole ninefold, seems to make it the favorite scene of her gambols. The dominant spirit, however, that haunts this enchanted region, and seems to be commander-in-chief of all the powers of the air, is the apparition of a figure on horseback, without a head” (Irving 3-4). Once again, Irving makes a reference to the hessian soldier, the Headless Horseman, which brings back the past of the revolutionary war, he does this by using imagery in explaining what he looks like. This also ties in with the theme of supernatural. Irving also describes, “ There was a contagion in the very air that blew from that haunted region; it breathed forth an atmosphere of dreams and fancies infecting all the land” (Irving 1). This helps us readers imagine the atmosphere and the theme of supernatural within the town. The mentioning of the hauntings brings up the past once
In Rip Van Winkle, Irving shows his doubts in the American Identity and the American dream. After the Revolutionary war, America was trying to develop its own course. They were free to govern their own course of development; however, some of them had an air of uncertainties on their own identity in this new country. Irving was born among this generation in the newly created United States of America, and also felt uncertainty about the American identity. Irving might be the writer that is the least positive about being an American. The main reason for this uncertainty is the new born American has no history and tradition while the Europe has a great one accumulated for thousands of years. Therefore, in order to solve this problem, Irving borrows an old European tale to make it take place in America. This tale related to the Dutch colonists haunts the kaatskill mountains. In order to highlight the American identity, Irving praises the “majestic” mountains which Europe lacks. He describes the mountains that “their summits…will glow and light up like a crown of glory” Nevertheless, the use of these ancient explorers into Rip Van Winkle only to show that although American has formed its own identity, no one can cut its connection with Europe. No wonder when America was still under tyranny of the British rule, some people still cannot cut the blood relationship with Europe. Therefore, the American identity is blurred by their relationship with Europe since then.
Washington Irving was born in New York City in 1783, he always had an appreciation of the land and people from there. Irving was quite opposed to the fact that New York was becoming and would become one of the biggest and most prominent cities in the entire world. Irving seemed to be fonder of the lush foliage and the rolling hills of the city, rather than a crowded city and huge port. Irving conveys his beliefs through Knickerbocker in "A History of New York," in the essay Irving says "Happy would it have been for New Amsterdam could it always have existed in this state of blissful ignorance and lowly simplicity, but alas! the days of childhood are too sweet to last! Cities, like men, grow out of them in time, and are doomed alike to grow into the bustle, the cares, and miseries of the world." (Irving 570). Irving believed that his New York would not be the same if it was given all of the exporting and importing power in the east, which it was and is not the way he wished it was.
Have you ever imagined being asleep in the forest for twenty years, coming back home and not knowing what has gone on all those years of your absence? Rip Van Winkle went through that, and had to come back home and face some real changes. The author Washington Irving has some interesting characters whom he puts in his short stories. Irving puts some characters in his short stories to reflect on some of his life. For example, Irving has similarities between Rip Van Winkle being asleep in the forest 20 years and Irving was in Europe for seventeen writing short stories and being the governor’s aid and military secretary. These two situations are similar, because they both didn’t know what they were going to come back too and were gone for such a long period of time. Irving does put some of his own life into his short stories and with a reason for his self-reflective works.
Rip Van Winkle tells the story of a man who, on a trek into the Kaatskill mountains, mysteriously sleeps away twenty years of his life during the Revolutionary War. When he returns home, he finds that things have dramatically changed; King George no longer has control over the colonies, and many of his friends have either died or left town. At this point, the story reaches its climax, where Van Winkle realizes that his life may be forever changed.
I could not find Wolf, so I took the gun and headed home. I didn’t anyone I saw in the village. They wore peculiar clothes. I was just going to have to face Dame Van Winkle.When I got to my house, it was ruined! I was happy Wolf was there. I called him, and the dog snarled at me. How had Wolf forgotten me? The town inn had changed. Instead of a picture of King George, it had a picture of a man called General Washington. Who was he? I asked if anyone knew Rip Van Winkle. Apparently he was leaning against a nearby tree. I went over. He was the picture- perfect image of who I used to be. A woman with a baby caught my eye. Her name was Judith Gardenier. Her father was Rip Van Winkle. I asked her about Dame Van Winkle. She had died not too long ago. I was a little bit happy about that. When people hear thunderstorms, they say those men are playing ninepins in the mountains. There is nothing more to say about me. Let’s turn to Wolfert Webber’s story, written by Washington Irving. I’m Wolfert Webber. I live in New York City. I think that the city is getting too big. Those pesky neighbor kids always break into my yard to steal cabbages. When I came to New York, I brought Europe’s best cabbages and I am famous for them. I give my