Blog Set 10

The Fall of  the House of Usher

Poe like always started the story in a spooky setting by saying  "During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year.” This really does remind me of our typical haunted house that had windows that looked like eyes and a spooky vibe. The character is riding his horse on his way to a friend’s house that sent him a letter about him being sick.  He hasn’t seen his childhood friend in the longest, and when he does, he barley recognizes him. He plans at saying at Usher’s house more weeks. Usher starts to talk about his illness and says it’s a family illness. It heightens all of his senses so that light hurts his eyes, he can only eat bland foods and only wear certain clothes, and most sounds make him miserable. It makes it seem like he is a vampire of some sort. He also tells him that he hasn’t left his house for many years and blames it on the house. Usher also has a twin sister who is the only living relative he has left but she is very sick also.  The whole time the narrator is there, he try’s to get his friend out of his depression. In the process, his sister ends up “dying” and Usher wanted to put her under the mansion because he didn’t want her to be experimented on. After that the Usher started acting weird and the narrator noticed. The narrator reads a story and the sound that happens in the story happens in real life. Madeline appears all bloody and bruised up and she basically tackles her brother down. The narrator runs out of the mansion from fear and watches the house fall apart in half.

 Afterwards

Mary is in her library thinking about the events that led up to her husband’s disappearance.  She didn’t know much about her husband’s work, all she knows is that he worked in a mine. There was a young man who appeared at the house twice that Mary did not know. His name was Robert Elwell and he was Ned’s business partner. Mary finds a letter from Elwell treating Ned about money that he lost. Parvis comes to Mary’s house and shows her a picture of Elwell and tells her about his death. Mary put the puzzle pieces together and realizes that Elwell came to the house as a ghost. She replays the moment where her cousin tells her that there’s ghost but she would not know about them till long afterwards. It is American gothic because he didn't have all the spooky elements like every other scary stores. It only had a house that was claimed to have ghosts. It also had a ghost who kept coming till it got what it wanted. The sense of guilt was in it because Ned knew exactly who that young man was and felt some type of way towards him.
Update: The language of the house of usher being a haunted house was dull, dark, and a soundless day. There were bleak walls and vacant eye-like windows. White trunks of decayed trees and a depression of soul. The haunted palace described how the house used to be before evil corrupted the house. It was said that the house was a beautiful place but it became filled with evil beings which destroyed the house. I think since the house always had one owner it turned evil. The twins kind of broke the tradition because there was two of them. That also lead me to the conclusion that that’s why the house had a crack in the middle. Since there’s two people the house was split into a half. I also thought it was weird how Usher buried her sister as if he knew that she was going to come back to life. Also when he heard all the noises he says “she’s alive” before he even saw her. How did he predict that it was her making all the noise coming out from the coffin? The narrator literally left without helping his “friend” and watched the house split into two with both of them inside.

Blog Set 9

The Raven by Edgar Allen Poe is all about a man who is going through depression on a dark December night. Poe jumps right to the point in the beginning, he is giving us that dark type of atmosphere. It reminds me of those nights where you're tired and maybe a little depressed, but you can't go to sleep at all? You start over thinking everything in your life and you just end up feeling worse? Or even if you’re reading a scary book or just finished watching a horror movie and the world just seems to get dark? That's exactly where Poe wants to put us and how he wants us to feel. He is basically half awake and starts to hear a noise which he refers to it as a “visitor”. He even starts to see things when his fire is going out and the “Dying embers” are making shadows that looks like ghosts on the floor. He is depressed because his loved one Lenore has passed away. He shouldn’t be home up late and reading books because then he will be setting himself up for depression. If his loved one passed, he should be trying to get his mind off of things even though it’s really hard too. Poe goes to the door for the “visitor” and there’s nothing there. This reminds me of a scary movie scene where the character hears something at the door and when she opens it, nothing is there. He starts to go insane when he starts asking the bird more and more questions but all the bird says is “Nevermore”. The bird is sitting on a bust of Pallas which is another name for the Greek goddess Athena, She is the goddess of wisdom. Maybe he wants us to think that the bird is wise? Pluto is also said, he rules the underworld. Poe gets angry because all the bird says is nevermore and he tells the bird to go back to where he came from but he ends up not moving.

Annabel Lee has many similarities from The Raven. The character is still depressed about losing a loved one but Annabel Lee starts differently. Poe talks about heaven and angels which was also mentioned in The Raven. It actually starts off as some type of fairy tale about how he fell in love with her and they were both children. He made it seem like they weren’t even teenagers and they were younger than that. He expresses that that even if they were children their love was very strong, stronger than people who were older than them. Even though she dies, the speaker says that their love is still there and will always be. At the end it says that he actually lays down next to her dead body in the tomb which is kind of creepy.

Update: I finally understand why Poe wrote so depressing and dark in most of his stories. He had a very hard life that I wouldn't even know how to handle myself if I was him. He really did have his reasons for being the way he was. When he was born, both of his parents died. Then he was adopted and both of his foster parents ended up dying also.  His foster mother was the only mother figure he had ever had and she ends up dying of tuberculosis. Shortly after his foster father ends up remarrying which makes Poe very angry. Most of the women in his life died of tuberculosis. Everyone he ever loved basically just died and he ended up being an alcoholic and using drugs. He writes The Raven while his wife is dying so we could see where the depressing story came from. In the raven, when the bird says “Nevermore” it means that people never get their lost ones back. Annabel Lee was written after his wife dies to show their undying love. The Raven was written to forget about everything while Annabel Lee was written for him to remember. Both Lenore and Annabel are angelic. His death was the most mystery thing ever and I really wish I could find out how it happened. Its crazy how he was found dead in someone else’s clothes at a bar.

Blog Set 8

The Culling 

After being left off my seat from the ending of part one where Lucian’s family member Cassius sentenced him on stage and basically humiliated him I finally got to read how things turned out. A new character comes in which is their trainer named Slade, off the back she is an evil person. She hurts poor Ophelia the first day of training just to show the others that in the actual trails no one will help you. She also made it so that she could see who were in an alliance together. The five of them spent a lot of time together in the pre-trials, which were the three phases they did. They got to know more of each other and a lot of things that I thought wouldn’t happen actually happened. At the beginning I kind have hated Cypress but then I actually got to know why she is the way she is. My favorite part in part II of this book is when they are all around a campfire eating all telling scary stories. That’s when I started to get to know Cypress more. The Fallen Five was about five recruits that just disappeared and was nowhere to be found. Cypress made sure that everyone knew that they were real and not just some kind of myth. Everyone else didn’t agree but Cypress seemed like she knew what she was talking about. Then later on when I found out that she was one of the Fallen Five’s incentives I was shocked. It all made sense now and Lucian figured it out. When Cypress left them on the first trial with the raft I hated her because everyone else was all about teamwork but her. Now she’s one of my favorite characters, I guess we should never judge a person on how they are before you know their backstory. Her story was just so horrible, how he brother was part of the Fallen Five and disappeared. They ended up splitting the adults and children when all five recruits disappeared. Cypress never saw her mother again and hated her brother. I also like this part because this was when everyone opened up and actually bonded. Now Ophelia has such an amazing personality, she’s in the worse situation right now and she still has the ability to think positive and laugh all the time. One thing that Digory said caught me eye, he said, “Once you think something is impossible then I will become impossible”. Its actually try because you already started with a negative mindset and see yourself failing so now in your head you have the failing mindset. Having to get to know everyone of the recruits is probably one of the worse parts I say. If you all didn’t have to actually sleep, eat, and train together then you wouldn’t feel so attached to them. Now if they didn’t see each other till the trials then it would be way easier because you would barley know them and you wouldn’t care much about their loved ones and see each and every one of them fight for the people they care the most. Digory and Lucian got way closer but Lucian cut it off and they didn’t talk for weeks till the next phase. Now what I wasn’t expecting was that there’s another conflict rather than the trails and the establishment. “The Fleshers” which are creatures who also survived after the Ash War other than the establishment. These monsters even had Slade scared, which was shocking because she is so tough. When they reached land they had to find evidence to prove that the patrol group was either dead or alive.  Something in the bones grabbed Lucian and it was an old recruit named Orestes which was part of the Fallen Five aka CYRPESS’S BROTHER! Now the part where they were on the ladder, what happened to Orestes? I know he dies but how? I didn’t understand that part. The most horrible part was when Cassius came on Graduation day. He just loves hurting Lucian, which isn’t fair at all. First he didn’t even get to see Cole, he finds out Mrs. Bledsoe is dead and he also sees that Digory has a husband. Now that Digory and Lucian don’t have one other incentive they are now each other’s. Next… the trials begin.

Day Million

I love the tone and organization of the author on how he tells the story. He first introduces both of the main characters and the environment they live in. He predicts what happens in the future.

The future back home where she loves to be.

consists of people who live over hundred just like Don who is a hundred and eighty-seven years old. Also, people from other places besides earth like Dora who is from Day million who looks like a girl but is actually a boy genetically.  Dora was a dancer as good as the black swan. Don worked and traveled in interstellar spaceships. A line that stuck out to me was when the author referred to Don’s job as something that gives purpose and meaning to his life and to keep him from going off his nuts with boredom. The author really speaks for us readers like when he says, “But you guys don’t care about that, lets talk about what you really want to know”. Dora and Don are an example of love at first site. They got married after meeting each other and their relationship blossomed but Dora ended up going back to Day Million.

When It Changed

In the beginning the main character talks about his wife, but when I read it I felt the compassion he had for her because he knows her inside and out. They live in a place called whileaway where men haven’t existed in six hundred years. They finally meet some and Katy doesn’t trust them at all and tries to kill one of them. Later on we learn that Janet is a women and not a man since we find out no man lives there. Janet stopped Katy but she regrets it later because Katy’s instincts might have been right after all and the men are actually trying to control their world. I think it’s amazing how an all women society learned how to survive and reproduce without men.

Update: There were many different opinions and views that I didn’t notice when I read Day Million. When I read about Dora being a dancer I had more of a ballerina in mind. Others thought she could have been an exotic dancer. Since Dora has gills it also shows that many things might have changed in the world. People might have evolved and grew gills to be able to breath under water. Also Don was over a hundred years old, which isn’t even possible for humans to be that old. He also has body parts that were attached to him. It was like some type of robot who you just keep putting in different parts into to replace the old ones. Their love story was not a typical love story that we all have in mind. We have an automatic idea of an love story, they usually fall in love and blossom then they get married, have kids, and stay together forever. This love story is very different, Dora goes back home and when they miss each other, they just watch clips or holograms of one and other. Most people usually go see the person they miss in person rather than seeing nonrealistic things of that person. In when it changed the woman made it seem like the men were aliens. I think they saw the men like aliens because they have never seem them before. They made it seem like the actually needed these men but in reality they didn’t. If something isn’t broken then why try to fix it? They survived without them for many centuries and to me that seems like they don’t need them at all. Things should stay the same way because when the men did come they didn’t like them at all because they were so demanding.

Blog Set 7

Could you imagine waking up and finding out everything you thought was real was really all a lie? What if you found out that your so called love of your life was trying to kill you? What if you didn’t even know the difference between what was real or what was fake? Doug went through all of this and I couldn’t even imagine going through that in real life. Having memories built inside of your brain isn’t a good thing. I think that the memories that you have now, is what makes you as a person. If in reality we could actually mess with our brains for memories just like people do with plastic surgery then we truly won’t be the person we are suppose to be. There would be many benefits for people who have memories that traumatized them and they don’t want to remember those moments. I think the casting decision was good because Arnold Schwarzenegger did a good job playing the part. He acted just like Douglas does in the book, he couldn’t even believe that he was actually on the bad guys team at the end. The adaption for the movie is that they added more things to it to add more suspense to the story. In the book it didn’t really show his “wife” actually working for cohaagen but that had us shocked when we did find out which is what a director wants an audience to feel. Most people say that the written version is way better but I think I liked the movie better because it actually explains more to me. They changed many things from the short in the movie. The wife in the short story name is Kristen and to me she sounds so mean when she talks to her husband but in the movie her name is Lori, she acts all nice in the beginning but ends up betraying Doug. I thought it was crazy when Doug found out that he wasn’t who he was. They wiped out his whole memory to input a new identity and personality. I bet it felt horrible to know that your whole life is a lie and the person that you really are is evil. In my opinion I think that your memories can never be fully erased. Just like when Doug kept having dreams and obsession over Mars and how Melina was in every dream. Those were signs of who he really was, so I think even though they erase your memory, you will always have some type of remains of what once was. I hated when I found out that the Taxi Driver was actually on the bad guys side also. I really didn’t expect that, he came off as a really good guy who just wanted to help but then he killed Kuoat and was trying to kill Doug and Melina. In the book it said that if Doug died then the aliens would come back on earth? I didn’t really understand that part. I really liked both of the stories, reading it had been interesting and watching it was an even better experience.