The Goophered Grapevine, The sheriff's Children and Jean-ah Poquelin

This short story week was fun because we could actually relate all the three stories that we read because they were written on a similar theme. All the stories were based on the time of slavery. There were deeper meanings to the stories and the meanings often co-relates with the background of the authors especially in the story "The Sheriff's Children" where the author would relate the children of mixed race as he was one at his time.

In the short story "The Goophered Grapevine" there is a mysterious curse that was cast down upon the person who eats the grapes and Henry a slave who did not know about the curse eats the grape. They try to lift the curse but the only way he could survive was by using the sap of the grapes to be healthy and strong. This is a co-relation of slavery and the old southern economy where the slavery dependent upon the plantation. If the plantation was thriving the slavery was growing. The curse can be related to the condition the slaves had to live in during those dark times. The grapes would perish after a season and so did the health of Henry. This might be suggesting that when there was work to be done slaves would have better health may be because they would have more food in the table or more care as the owners needed them. Henry's owner sold him every off season and buy him back making some profit. This story represents the culture of the old south and has some deeper meanings. The Gothic images used are the mysterious and magical curse. The idea of being sold as a property itself is very Gothic as it incites terror.

The Sheriff's Children is also based on issues of slavery and represents the old south. It tries to address the problem of mixed race children as the author Chestnut was had mixed heritage. In this story a person of authority, a Sheriff commits a crime by raping a slave women who eventually gives birth to a son. The Sheriff ends up selling his own son. The son later is charged of murder. There is a lot of internal conflict represented in the story. Tom the mixed racial child is not accepted in the society. He feels like he would never get fair treatment like the whites because he was half black. This is a very important part of history as several mixed race children would have to struggle against the society primarily controlled by the white Americans. It is a story about acceptance and struggle for being accepted into the society. Tom lets himself bleed to death because he feels like he would never be accepted, and he gives up fighting for the fair treatment for himself. This story is very revolutionary of the time and I am sure that the author at some point had experienced similar attitudes from the others for him being mixed racial

Jean-Ah Poquelin is another story which is around the time of slavery. The story however doesnot directly touch upon slavery and its issues. It is more subtle and the meanings are very deep. For example the slave that the brothers have cannot speak or in other words is mute. George W Cable perhaps want this to be a political statement to the people of the time as the slaves did not have a voice meaning the fundamental rights that the other had. Also it is a tool to make the affairs of the house to look more suspicious as the caretaker of the house would not be able to talk about what goes on in the house. The location of the house is bizarre and he history of the family has some Gothic elements to it.

Behind a Mask--what you see is not what you get

Reading the story Behind the Mask I could see how we can relate the things to our present day life. In the story the characters have dual identity, as they literally have two faces. The central character Jean is new to the house and family members. It takes her one moment of fainting and showing of her feminine side to take over the entire family. She likes to get attention from the people and she is highly manipulative. She is hiding her real identity which is an old women with makeup and dentures hiding behind the look of a young woman. The external apperance is a mask that she puts on every day to manipulate the family and get whatever she wants. This should remind of people or even some agencies that have a front face and the evil dark intentions lurking behind. We also talked about this in class where there is a front side view like in the common living room area of a house where it is clean and tidy as opposed to the rooms where people spend their private life which may not be just as pretty. The dual nature is very well represented in this story. The part that makes it gothic is that the real intent of Jean is disguised by the show she puts on everyday. Every day is a show and the audience is mesmerized by it. All others are just like puppets and she is sort of controlling them. This is subtle but the gothic part of it. It was a decent read and was not very long. I didnot like the overly dramatic imagery but liked the concept very much.

The Fall of the House of Usher and Ligeia

The story is very unusual as an unknown narrator is describing the events that are happening in the lives of all the characters. The interesting thing is that the wealthy Roderick Usher calls for his childhood friend who he had never seen after a long time to take of him during his strange illness. We can see the story is full of gothic elements. The narrator tells us that how the Usher's are cursed. Only one person form the Usher's lineage is able to survive through adulthood. The house is very mysterious as it is in a marshy land and surrounded by decaying trees. The house almost seems to represent the condition of the owner and tell the history of how the others might have perished. The house itself is diseased as it has cracks. One can expect the scene to be more bizarre once the narrator goes inside the house of the Usher. Roderick seems to be very sick and it almost felt like his life energy was being sucked by the cursed house. The idea of counterparts and double is well represented in the story. The house is dry while it is on a wet ground and the house is firm at some place while cracked at others. Most interestingly Roderick’s sister Madeline is also stricken with a strange sickness and soon she dies. They decide to rest her body in the house fearing the body snatchers and the scientific experiments. Why would someone keep the dead one in the house? This is a horrific image the author was trying to create. I realized the dead body would come to life as soon as I read what was going on. It was sort of predictable in the writer’s part. Madeline’s body comes to life but we are not sure if she was dead or she was just unconscious due to her strange condition. Roderick Usher could not bear the shock to see her alive and he dies of fright. Narrator flees the scene and as soon as he leaves the house the house crumbles to the ground. It appears that the stability of the house was dependent upon the life and health of the Usher. As the health was deteriorating so was the condition of the house and when the Usher died then the death of the house was eminent. This story was a very good story full of symbolism and gothic elements. Could make a good movie based on this story.

The short story Ligeia also has some similarites with the Fall of the House of Usher. The nattator is unknown and there is that strange illness again that causes a death. In the earlier story there was a reference to a gas that was considered not harmful by the Ushers and we want to think that might be the cause of the conditions of the Ushers. Similarly, we can argue that in this story the narrator is perhaps seeing things due to possible opium induced hallucination. An opium addict narrator loses his credibility and we can say that the narrator is unreliable. Which is not the case in the earlier story that we read. I was suspecting there was no death and the person he married was the same person and was just his hallucination that made him see a blue eyed person that was different from his earlier wife. This story was just weird.

Young Goodman Brown

The tale is set in a small village of Salem in near Boston. The settlers are the early 17th century puritans who came from England. The puritans are English Protestants whose lives are very much influenced by Christianity. Christian belief had influenced the morality of the townsmen. The protagonist Goodman Brown is an interesting name that Hawthorne chose in this story. We could almost predict by reading the few paragraphs that the story is going to be about the character of Goodman. In the story Goodman leaves his wife Faith, to meet a mysterious figure in the woods. Leaving his wife Faith is allegorical to leaving the Christian belief or having lost faith in God. So the mysterious man who we can relate to the Devil himself can be compared to temptations that people have in daily life. As the Goodman travels through the forest with the mysterious man he finds he is not alone in the quest. His discovers that the people highly regarded for being devout Christians and being very kind and moral are walking along with the mysterious guy. He does not want to proceed with the group and he often looks back thinking about his wife. He is surprised to see his wife Faith proceeding with the group. This is done by the author to create dilemma because Goodman has to either follow his wife Faith or follow his religious faith. This is very much practical in our daily life where we have to decide whether we follow certain things because everyone else does or we follow only the things we like to. Finally, he denies his loyalty to the mysterious man and tells his wife to fight the devil that is trying to take her away. He wakes up middle of the forest and when he returns he finds everyone acting normal. This story is about the power of one’s belief and Goodman like his name is very Good and loyal to his wife Faith and his faith in Christianity. This story can be linked to the infamous witch trials of Salem. As Goodman had abandoned the path shown by the devil and listened to him, the author would want to send a message to people that it is not always the best to follow others like the ones who followed others in those witch trials. There are many gothic elements like the mysterious guy who looks like how devil would look like, a staff that became a serpent and various other images that incite aghast. Here human nature is shown to be flawed but the flaw can be fixed by listening to self rather than others. Here the author has shown that goodness of a person can always overcome the evil nature. This is a very important point the author is trying to make. The tone of the story is simple and easy to understand. The imagery used by the author might make more sense to people who know more about the Christian belief system and other stories about Christianity.

The legend of Sleepy Hollow---never lose a head!!

The setting of the legend of sleepy hollow is the period of early settlers. The early settlers were very fond of listening to stories and particularly that were supernatural. As there were exploring the unexplored, the supernatural phenomenon was a very popular topic of discussion among the settlers. The small town of Sleepy Hollow had growing fear of the unexplained and particularly a Horseman without a head. The introduction of the protagonist Ichabod Crane as a school teacher would be perfect thing to do as a school teacher ideally relies on scientific inquiry rather than believe on heresy. Ironically he tells stories of Ghosts and goblins himself to the women of the town to impress them. He is not the best candidate to be a teacher as he has many personality flaws. One of the women he falls for uses him as a bait to attract Brom Bones who is stronger and more appealing than him. This makes him leave a place of social gathering while all the thoughts of the ghastly stories come up to his mind. On a horse named Daredevil he rides back with his head full of tales of horror. Daredevil is a good name of the horse as it represents the irony of situation Crane is in. He is scared for his life as he finds the Headless horseman chasing him. I would suspect that this was the fragment of his imagination as he was very willing to believe the stories that told and it became real when he was most vulnerable, having a broken heart. This story is an allegory as we can say that anyone who stops to think will lose their heads. Here the school master was a victim of situation that he created in his head and eventually he lost it. It was a short story but certainly a classic. It was a good read.

Midterm Ends ----ૐ

Short stories after midterm

"The Immortal Mortal" vs "Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde"

The two short stories we read were quite interesting. The Immortal Mortal was written by Mary Shelley and it is about a protagonist who lives through the pain of not dying soon enough. The alchemist Cornelius who wishes to perfect the potion that would make man immortal had taken Winzy as his apprentice. Winzy loved Bertha very much but his love was weakened by his poverty and the matriarch who would not approve of their marriage. He believed Cornelius was trying to make a potion to cure love. So he drinks the potion but soon finds out that there was no such thing. This is the Irony of situation as he discovers that instead he gets the curse of being immortal. In this story humanity is believed to be weak which relies on death, the mysterious friend, to help free everyone form the perils of aging. Winzy finds out that he was not immortal but he was aging slower. This is an irony as he soon finds out living a long life has its own disadvantages as he finds out his beloved Bertha becoming older and dying and he had been the same all those years. I found that cure of love is death and immortality makes it even worse. If a person can grow older with the loved one that is the best cure for love. The theme of this story is that humans may appear weak with death but they are miserable without it. Death is portrayed as an essential part of life as it would end all the misery of being old and helpless.

Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is a story written by Robert Stevenson. In this story Dr. Jekyll creates a substance that makes him able to transform into a short stumpy and deformed Mr. Hyde. The scientist creates doppelganger of himself to enable him to escape morality. Transformation makes Dr Jekyll be this character which does not have conscience. Mr. Hyde does not worry about the consequences of his actions as he does not care about how others feeling or even the authority. This gives him more freedom to do things without Dr Jekyll getting the blame even though they are the same people. The story is a satire to the Victorian society which pretends to be flawless from the outside but is very unforgiving in the inside. The dual nature of man kind of hints us to the fact that there is a good side and a bad side of everything. There is a reference of Dr Jekyll going to church and trying to gather his acts to be a better Christian while Hyde was acting beyond his conscience.

In both of the stories human nature is portrayed as being imperfect. So they need to create a magical potion to transform into this being which would ideally be free from the imperfections. In the first one imperfection is death or mortality while in the second story it is the morality of humans. We can draw parallels to these stories as we find that there is the use of alchemy or science to make humans able to cheat death or transform into an anomaly that is not confined within the social norms, as we discover in some way Winzy and Hyde defy social norms in their own ways.