Sunday, October 14, 2012

Insane Madness


Participles
Absolutes
Appositives
Adjectives out of order
Active Voice
Passive Voice

         This week I am including a section of another essay for yet another English class. This passage was used to explain the reasoning behind the obvious insanity of the narrator of The Tell-Tale Heart.
Differing from the insanity of Victor Frankenstein and his monster, Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart showcases how madness can overcome a person and drive him ultimately to murder. The main character of the story, an unnamed narrator, is quick to let the readers know that he is merely nervous and not mad, “very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses –not destroyed- not dulled them … how, then, am I mad?” (GASS pg. 13). This quick argument, unorganized and fidgety, against his madness only makes the reader believe that he is mad even more. The idea that the narrator claims that he is not mad even before we are given reason to believe that he is supports the idea of his ultimate paranoia, which can quickly lead to madness. The narrator tells the reader, “I loved the old man. He had never wronged me. He had never given me insult. For his gold I had no desire. I think it was his eye! Yes, it was this!” (GASS pg. 13). The narrator seems quite calm and collected until he ends this statement with the idea of the olds man’s eye. It is this outburst that begins his obsession and paranoia. He is so troubled by the old man’s eye that he soon considers murder. Heart racing, sweat dripping, he stalks the old man and soon kills him and it is after that that he tries to reassure the reader that he is not crazy by telling us, “If still you think me mad, you will think so no longer when I describe the wise precautions I took for the concealment of the body” (GASS pg. 14). It is this statement that pushes his madness over the edge. A sane person would not generally plan to kill someone over such a trivial fact, if at all. Overall, the narrator’s constant insisting that he is merely nervous and not mad supports the notion that he is indeed mad rather than just nervous.

Sunday, October 7, 2012

Brush Strokes


Participles
Absolutes
Appositives
Adjectives out of order


This week I am going to include an excerpt from an English paper I was assigned to write for my English 302 class. For the assignment I had to choose two war time poems and compare the two based on tone, audience, and speaker, assuming that I actually read them. Here I am going to include a section of my writing modified to include the 4 patterns of the week.

“Do Not Weep, Maiden, for War is Kind” written by Stephen Crane, outlines a few different scenarios, grotesque and impersonal, that deal with war and the death of soldiers.  In the first stanza, the narrator, a voice of the general public, speaks as if to a loved one of a man at war, most likely a wife. Using general and impersonal language, the narrator tries to convince that, even though the wife’s husband may have died, that war is kind.  Said with little detail, there is no specific reason given to this woman, the poet merely states “do not weep/ War is kind” (4-5). The second stanza is written in a way as if the narrator is speaking directly to a solider.  The narrator explains that “these men were born to drill and die (8)”.  The ‘war-machine’ mentality, brutal and driven by the government, is exemplified through this quote, which explains that men were born to die. The third stanza comments on a child and his father. The narrator speaks to a child who has lost his father at war, but yet again uses the excuse that “war is kind” and encourages the child “do not weep”.  Using non–specific language and blunt terminology, by the fourth stanza the narrator is speaking to the reader of the poem. This stanza encourages that war is equal to eternal glory and that a death in war if glorified, but then again the narrator repeats that “these men were born to drill and die” (19).  The narrator even mentions the image of the waving flag as soldiers carry it into battle. This stanza is actually very conflicting because it covers so many aspects. Some who would read this might view it as a sincere passage, but then once the reader goes deeper into the words, the sarcastic and ironic tone is again obvious. The fifth and final stanza finally touches on a sad subject within war, children leaving their mothers and homes. The narrator here speaks to the mother of a soldier in war, ironically and bluntly, and once again tells the mother of a now dead solider “Do not weep / War is kind”(25-26). The reoccurring line of “Do not weep, war is kind” at first sounds somewhat sincere, but as the poem goes on, the repetition of the line takes away the sincerity and creates once again a sarcastic tone throughout the poem.

To be completely honest, I still am a little wishy washy on the concepts of the four brush strokes. I used the examples in the course packet as a guide and hopefully this will help me grasp them easier.