American Literature: A Journey Through Imagination, Freedom, and Identity

Posted on Aug 4, 2024 in Religion

Main Ideas in Edgar Allan Poe’s “Sonnet—To Science”

Science vs. Poetry

This sonnet explores the perceived conflict between science and imagination, portraying science as a restrictive force that limits the poet’s ability to find wonder and beauty in the world.

Science as a Vulture: Science is compared to a vulture, its penetrating gaze dissecting and altering the mysteries of nature, leaving behind dull realities.
The Poet as a Bird: In contrast, the poet is depicted as another kind of bird, one that soars above the mundane, seeking treasures in the”jeweled skie” of imagination.
Science and Mythology: The poem alludes to Greek and Roman mythology, suggesting that science, in its quest for explanation, destroys the magic and wonder of these ancient stories.
Dream vs. Reality: The concluding lines emphasize the contrast between the dreamlike realm of poetry and the harsh realities revealed by science. The”drea” represents freedom, imagination, and a deep connection with nature, all threatened by the encroachment of scientific inquiry.

Analysis of Edgar Allan Poe’s Short Stories

MS. Found in a Bottle

Unreliable Narrator: The story introduces a characteristic element of Poe’s writing: the unreliable narrator. The narrator’s incredible tale and questionable mental state create dramatic ambiguity, forcing the reader to question the veracity of his account.
The Journey Motif: The sea voyage becomes a metaphor for a journey into the unknown, representing both freedom and the potential for madness and death. The destruction of the first ship symbolizes the rejection of realism, while the indescribable nature of the second ship highlights Poe’s fascination with the mysterious and the sublime.
Ambiguity and Transcendence: As a Romantic writer, Poe embraces ambiguity over clarity, emphasizing the power of the imagination and the allure of the extraordinary.

The Fall of the House of Usher

Gothic Elements: The story embodies classic Gothic tropes, including a crumbling mansion, a desolate landscape, a mysterious illness, and a sense of impending doom.
Enclosure and Isolation: The Usher mansion, isolated and decaying, reflects the mental state of its inhabitants, Roderick and Madeline. The theme of enclosure underscores the characters’ detachment from the outside world and their descent into madness.
Duality and the Double: The story explores themes of duality and the double, with Roderick and Madeline representing two sides of a single psyche. The narrator’s presence further emphasizes this duality, highlighting the struggle between reason and irrationality.
The Power of the Imagination: Roderick’s artistic creations, fueled by his heightened sensitivity and tortured imagination, ultimately contribute to his downfall, suggesting the destructive potential of unchecked creativity.

The Masque of the Red Death

Symbolism and Allegory: The story is rich in symbolism, with the Red Death representing the inevitability of death and Prince Prospero’s masked ball symbolizing humanity’s futile attempts to escape mortality.
Time and Mortality: The recurring motif of the clock emphasizes the passage of time and the ever-present threat of death. The masked figure’s appearance at the stroke of midnight underscores the futility of trying to outrun time’s inevitable embrace.
Social Commentary: While the story operates on a symbolic level, it also offers a subtle critique of social inequality. Prince Prospero’s attempt to isolate himself and his courtiers from the Red Death highlights the arrogance of the privileged class and the ultimately futile nature of such attempts to escape shared human experiences.

William Wilson

The Double and Internal Conflict: The story centers on the theme of the double, with William Wilson’s namesake representing his repressed conscience and moral better half. The protagonist’s hatred for his double reflects his internal struggle with guilt and his desire to escape the consequences of his actions.
Mobility and Inevitability: Despite William Wilson’s attempts to flee from his double, their connection proves inescapable. The protagonist’s travels across various locations and stages of life emphasize the futility of trying to outrun one’s true nature.
The Perils of Self-Deception: The story serves as a cautionary tale about the dangers of self-deception and the destructive consequences of denying one’s shadow self. By attempting to destroy the part of himself he despises, William Wilson ultimately destroys himself.

The Tell-Tale Heart

, the old man says ‘evil eye’; in this story, the importance is given to hearing. Therefor that saying would become: ‘evil I’. Will-I-am, Will’s son.What makes this story different from other Poe stories is the mobility the character goes though; the change in environment. The main function of this is to show that, even though the protagonist persistently wants to leave William Wilson, no matter where he goes or where he is, his double will follow. He can try to escape, but he can’t flee from himself. Conclusion of the final scene: identification has been building gradually and it becomes complete towards the end. This is the main function of the mirrors: to show that it is a story of the double self. When you destroy and kill the part of yourself you don’t want to live with, you succeed in destroying yourself.

Heart: There are stories of the double so the protagonist is killing something that bothers him, some part of himself. If this happens they die because they kill a part of themselves that they need seeing that there’s a lack of balance. The destruction of the other is a self-destruction. The narrator is trying to make you believe that he is not mad and that he is completely sane but this is story is characterized by nervousness. The truth about the narrator is revealed in a very subtle and artful way between the lines. He says that we should believe his story but he is very nervous. This is called dramatic irony: the narrator says that he is not mad but he should not be trusted because the more he says that, the more we suspect he is actually mad. We are able to see that the situation is different from what we are reading. Just one eye of the man annoys the narrator because it has to be one single eye. The evil eye is a word game. “Eye” is pronounced exactly the same as “I”, therefore there’s no evil eye, but evil I. This means, it is the evil part of the protagonist. The function of the eye is that the narrator is afraid of being observed. God is usually related to the one who observes everything but people does not like to be observed. This narrator does not want to be judged and his secrets to be discovered. At the end of the story the beating of the heart becomes more intense. He kills the old man but he keeps hearing the beating. The police come and he confesses because he has this tendency of self-destruction. The beating of the heart is just his own beating because of his nervousness. The title “Tell-Tale Heart” can be interpreted as the heart of narrator being what tells the story. One of the characteristic of this character is that he projects himself on others. He projects his own fears in the old man and his victim becomes a projection of his fears. The narrator wants to destroy himself and this is related to the theme of time. He uses many images of time such as the clock, death or watches. The function of the police is the expression of something in the narrator: the compulsion of the narrator to destroy himself. All this is unconsciously motivated. It tells us that you cannot escape from the beating of your heart which tells you about the passage of time. The narrator has the tendency of creating plots where he is caught. He plots the murder and the capture. He gets caught by the police but also by the reader/listener of his story. The reader becomes aware of the perversity of the madness, the self-destruction of the narrator.

ScLet: In the introduction of this book Hawthorne mixes reality and fiction. He had a very-well-paying job at the custom house. He was a surveyor. He got this job due to a political friend and when this man lost it, Nathaniel lost it as well. Hawthorne was obsessed by the nature of sin, by human imperfection. He is very fond of the psychological knowledge and is interested on the effects of hidden sins on the human mind. He is also obsessed with the lack of balance and, for him, when the balance is not achieved, the result is tragic. This is the only part of the novel that deals with the present. Hawthorne wants to tell us about the importance of the past so he does this to compare it with the present. “Having this type of job kills the writer in me” and this idea is what Hawthorne wants to express: the frustration of a writer that cannot express his art. The house functions as a bridge between the present and the past. This is one of the few instances in which Hawthorne gives realistic descriptions. Everything in the time of the Scarlet Letter is different. The places are not so realistic, they are as the ones made by the Romantics. This past is both real and imagined. A ghost appears in the story but it is not real. This can be interpreted somehow in a way that Nathaniel Hawthorne as a writer listened to the ghostly voices of the past and he translate those messages to his contemporaries. The ghostly voice wants people to know the importance of the past. Hawthorne was a man who wanted to be in the middle, never in the extremes. He had an obsession with a right balance between the past and the present, between the real and the imaginary. There is a parallel between the Custom House writer and Arthur Dimesdale. Conflict between art and money. The writer finds himself working as a surveyor and this job is just about materialistic concerns. This is not compatible with his desire to be a writer. Working at his job takes his strength away. This controversy is the opposition between material vs. spiritual. . The Scarlet Letter is an A, which means Adultery, but the symbol acquires very different meanings. One is Art or Artist. The Letter becomes a work of art because it is beautifully embroidered, with which Hester defeats the Puritans. We can say the same about Hawthorne, who, with this novel, that is a work of art, attacks the Puritans. With this book he returns to write literature, fact thatisbadforthePuritans.

The prison Door. In this chapter the people of the village is looking at Hester in a scaffold wearing the letter A. Hester looks at the letter from her point of view: that she does not share the traditions, opinions of the rest of the people. The letter made her life change completely because she has a new way of looking at things. At the end of the novel she has made her neighbors to look at the letter in a different way. Arthur Dimesdale is anxiously looking for the meaning of his life in connection with the letter. He does not see its meaning as an expression of artistic creativity and of human passion that should be allowed. Roger Chillingworth searches for the letter. He realizes very soon about Arthur guilt. In fact he lives with him. Despite of all, they needed one another. Through this strategy he manages to postpone confession and tries to look for the word in Arthur. The novel is a symbolic drama in which each one plays its role guided by the letter A. The meaning of the letter changes depending on who is contemplating it. The same goes with the novel. Not all the readers read it equally.The Prison Door is a description of atmospheres and of mood. There is a wide range of connoted details. The title itself is as the “door” to the novel in which the prison of civilization is going to defeat nature. The rose-bush is wild but at the same time delicate. This is a strategy to place the reader on the side of the criminal.The bush is related with Hester (wild and delicate). The contrast between the rose-bush and the prison is the same as the conflict of Hester with the Puritans and the same as the conflict between nature and civilization. He wants to exclude the dichotomy of the Puritans because for Hawthorne that is not that simple. We should not choose one side. He wants to exclude the dichotomy of the Puritans because for Hawthorne that is not that simple. We should not choose one side. In the very first scene Hester is exposed in the scaffold without consideration of her privacy, in a cruel way. This scene represents the conflict between the society (the Puritans) and the alienated hero (Hester).This scene represents the conflict between the society (the Puritans) and the alienated hero (Hester). This scene represents the conflict between the society (the Puritans) and the alienated hero (Hester). When Arthur dies some of the people refuse to believe what they have seen and thisisduetotheirPuritanbehavior.

TAOHF: There is a huge conflict in the novel: to help or not to help Jim. Huck is the young white uneducated boy (or not well-educated) and Jim is the “runaway nigger”. The whole novel is about Huck and Jim and the search for freedom. Huck escapes from a civilized, hostile society, where his father, a representative of instability, imprisons him and he has to suffer her physical and psychological violence. He also escapes from ignorance. Jim escapes from slavery. Twain knew everything about slavery through the eyes of three slaves. Jim does not only escapes from slavery. It is the cruel behavior within slavery that separates families, so he escapes also from the alienation from his family. The two quests for freedom become interrelated and the attitude Huck adopts in relation to Jim’s running away (not to denounce hum, but free him) contributes to Huck’s spiritual and moral freedom. The goal is not the same, Huck runs from what Jim desires. But real freedom is a question of perspective. Jim becomes a free man but the society would not think that – he is not actually free. One cannot stay a point for freedom / slavery – they are combined. This novel has some characteristic of the picaresque novel: written by a teenager, so the experiences are told by a teenage prospective. The misfortunes are at the end overcome but only after a long effort. The author has chosen to reflect a first person narrator in the person of Huck Finn, to reflect the language that he would speak. Huck’s innocence is often reflected through the explanations he gives of what he sees, therefore incidence from everyday reality become interesting because they are the kind of things that Huck would do or not do.Huck’s innocence is often reflected through the explanations he gives of what he sees, therefore incidence from everyday reality become interesting because they are the kind of things that Huck would do or not do. Huck Finn as a character vs. Huck Finn as a narrator: we need to differentiate it because of the voice. There is the instance in which we have, in the one hand, a teenager, and in the other hand, a mature man who revises his narrative telling the story.What the narrator tells us might be the truth but might not be the exact description of the truth. Telling the truth is intimately related with the moral dilemma.

If he reveals the truth about something, for example Jim, he can die. If he lies, he says that he will go to hell. Somebody’s freedom and life is more important than telling the whole truth. If he reveals the truth about something, for example Jim, he can die. If he lies, he says that he will go to hell. Somebody’s freedom and life is more important than telling the whole truth. If he reveals the truth about something, for example Jim, he can die. If he lies, he says that he will go to hell. Somebody’s freedom and life is more important than telling the whole truth. If he reveals the truth about something, for example Jim, he can die. If he lies, he says that he will go to hell. Somebody’s freedom and life is more important than telling the whole truth. If he reveals the truth about something, for example Jim, he can die. If he lies, he says that he will go to hell. Somebody’s freedom and life is more important than telling the whole truth. This book is full of boyish adventures, but it does not seem to be much room for girls or women in the novel.These adventures take place in an adult world (major difference with TS) and the journey on the raft is a journey through the variety of America.River vs shore: The journey is mainly down the river. We have the contrast between the river and the shore, the ideal vs. the real world. In order to escape, Huck and Jim give themselves to the river and make it into a God where they could always go back to in search for a renewal. The river stands for the God of freedom in the eyes of these two men. The river seems to be endless and infinite and represents an eternal life force, different from the rigid order of society, of the shore. While the river moves, the society, the shore, is static. But the river also gives negative things like death and fear. The river vs. the shore can imply the opposition between the individual vs. the society. Society does not “like” free individuals who do not conform to the rules and, thus, society pursues them even on the river. The journey is of essential relevance in this book. It is a journey between freedom and slavery (south vs north). It is also a journey of knowledge. The journey contributes to Huck’s development. The journey is made up of different episodes so we have an episodic plot, something that is not as important as in other novels. The title of the novel itself supports the episodic view of the books structure.

The awakening: What we find here is that the last decade of the 19th century signifies a change in the EEUU society because we find a new figure: the “new woman”. This “new woman” is compared with the “true woman”. The change was brought about by education, industrial revolution, a new political arrangement and “the woman question”. “women are restricted, more domestic than social, more sedentary than nomadic, more constrained than free, more private than public”. The home was considered the place of stability and the sanctuary of repose and renewal, while the work outside represented competition. The domestic sphere was the only one suitable for women and this has to do with the belief in the moral and spiritual superiority of women. They considered that women should not be “harmed” by the outside spheres. Moreover, passion was associated with men, not women. Edna: She is a 28-year-old American woman whose father had a plantation. She appears mostly as a sad woman, unhappy with her marriage. She is not a “true woman”, not even a “mother-woman”. She is different from the crowd that surrounds her and she looks more noble, beauty and severe. She also fells this; what surrounds her is antagonistic (even her children). She is in favor of individual preference over familiar responsibility. Her marriage with Leonce Pontellier was an accident. This is the reality but she had another dreams, and other lovers. Because of this, she is very dreamer, capricious and stubborn sometimes.Edna wishes to keep all her possibilities open, not just for pleasure and passion, but also for pain and anguish. Edna does not know exactly what she wants to do/be or how far she wants to go but she does know that she does not want to be defined as a mother and a wife who lives only for others. Edna wishes to keep all her possibilities open, not just for pleasure and passion, but also for pain and anguish. Edna does not know exactly what she wants to do/be or how far she wants to go but she does know that she does not want to be defined as a mother and a wife who lives only for others. Parag. 1 à Passage full of sensuality. Significant coincidence between this episode and the sensation of freedom Edna has while her husband and sons are outside and she is alone in the house in New Orleans. (p.180).

P.2. à Edna’s return to New Orleans after the awakening she has experienced at Grand Isle. Edna feels oppressed by the monotony and by the typical obligations of her role as wife-mother. Her behavior expresses her desire to break out the limitations, the barriers to forbid the access to the new self she is looking for (because Edna has not yet discovered her own self). As consequence she abandons her Tuesdays (reception) and her social duties. P.3. The generosity of Mr. Pontellier is not true generosity because he expects a lot from his wife. He is incapable of realizing that his wife, Edna, needs spiritual satisfaction rather the money and social relations that oppress her. P.4. His possessions (his wife is one more) are for him reminders of his success. Materialism à is his religion; material possessions are his gods. He takes pleasure in the fact that the owns all these things, not in the things themselves and their meaning artistically speaking. She learns to swim without the help of male figures, she explores her body alone. She is searching for new exterior open spaces. P5. She lives in 3 houses, but she visits other houses which represents different alternatives she is exploring, different family arrangements, different political positions, different kinds of life. P.6. Description of the Ratignoles’ house. She admires the domestic harmony of this family, and their hospitality. She feels attracted for the maternal figure of Adele Ratignole. Some critics understood any hint of lesbianism in this relationship. P.7. Edna is looking at life through romantic life: She wants the Happiness and passion, but also the anguish. The Ratignole’s life is monotonous, and she wants to live different possibilities and not only the security and tranquility of a monotonous family. P.8. Reisz has a tendency to isolate herself. Apart from Edna and Robert everybody hates her. She has the life of an sceptic personality, a life of privation and poverty. Windows express the light and life Finally Edna moves to the “pigeon house”: Edna settles into this place that she creates, she designes… and that means her autonomy far from Leonce’s oppression. P9. Lirical passage: Suggestion and echoes of other literary characters. She is looking atlife through other literary characters. The fewer material possessions, the more space there is for the expansion of the individual.

Whitman: Song of Myself: He talks about himself but what he really intended was to talk about the experiences and thoughts of everyone. He was interested in the common people because they are the best who express the energy and the genius of the human beings. He thought that the U.S could be the new world for the spirit. He invented the free verse and believed in freedom from the tyranny of the traditional metrics. He was constantly experimenting with rhymes and rhythm. For him, the experimentation and the innovation were very important. He also wanted to write the most inclusive poetry that were comprehensive and long. This is the opposite of what Dickinson does: she writes short, condensate poems. The name of this poem changed its tittle. It was titled Walt Whitman or Whitman before. He was interested in the self, the relation between human and nature. He wanted to celebrate his own self, which has both individual and universal dimension. S1: It begins in the present tense but the present in Whitman represents both the past and the present. The beginning sounds very egocentric and it is pretty rare. In the third line the self becomes identical with all the other selves, regardless of time and place. This is the paradox of identity. He is equal to everybody else. apparition of the grass for the first time and it is preeminent and permanent in the poem. It represents life. perfect health, despite being old. The self here represents past generations and nature. He was very enthusiastic with the theory of evolution.: “Creeds and schools” represents human knowledge, philosophy, and religion. he permits is the nature to speak. He wants to go to the root, but if you want that, you are considered a radical person.S2: perfumes and they represent the civilization in the modern life. For Whitman, this is good but we have to leave it. “Distillate” is a metaphor of distilling knowledge. Line 24- these are incredible achievements (rational thought, language…): the meaning of poems. But there is something better. Notice the difference he establishes between the meaning of poems and the origin of all poems. If we get in close contact with nature, we can get to the origin of all poems. Line 33- ‘eyes of the dead’ refers to the authors of the books.

S5: This is a description of a sexual intercourse. The participants are the body and the soul. Traditionally they are considered to be enemies, opposites. He tries to abolish the difference. There were many debates of the body and the soul. The soul is considered to be the good and the body is the evil. Whitman reconciles them and brings them into an actual sexual intercourse. Through very erotic imagery he expresses the union of the body and the soul. Whitman makes these opposites, equals. What happens here is a mystical experience because the result is that after this it comes a very special awareness. He becomes aware of the relationship between the self and the god, and also other human beings. S6 Grass is going to provide messages of life and death. The idea is that death existed only before life, as if humanity had eternal life. He is very optimist at the very end of this section. The grass represents the unity of all the things and people. “Kanuck…” is a uniform hieroglyph. This marks the union of the opposites together. S8 This is about the identity of the poet, which is out and also present in everywhere of the poem. The first lines have a novelistic quality. Whitman was realistic. Here we see the cycle of life: the little one in the cradle, the girl and boy about to have sex and the death. S11: Isolation and sexual desire. In the two previous sections we have been presenting isolated characters, usually males. In this section sexual desire. Makes love. S44: Whitman saying he’s the result, the product of this long line of evolution. It seems to have been a preparation for him. He’s basing the idea of human individuality not in religion or human philosophy, but in the scientific theory of evolution. The images he uses here demythologizes what science had demythologized of the human being and nature. Whitman uses scientific images presenting the idea that our individual nature is a product of the past. Idea of individuality not based in religious belief. He mythologizes the theory of evolution because science has demythologized the religious ideas of the creation. The clock indicates the moment. S31: We find the grass in other occasions. Something common, insignificant. He reconciling the common and the miraculous, the know and the unknown, the familiar and non-familiar (union of opposites). he can see the extraordinary in the ordinary.

E.D: Dickinson was extremely private and only few of her poems appeared (and anonymously). The poems of Emily are very short and illusive: she leaves out much more than she includes. Her poetry Ambiguous, Without titles, No date, No order, Did not leave us a comprehension discussion of her conception of poetry, We do not have any concern of her life that could influence her poetry, Syntax compressed, Conciseness, Experimental language, Meaning is difficult for the reader to know, Concreteness: she specifies the abstract things that she talks about, Imagists: always acknowledged to Emily Dickinson belonging to their movement (revolt against traditional poetry, sentimentality, imprecision), Death metaphors, Sentimental worship of nature, Poetry express her fascination with “magical” words, an stylistic innovation,Fragility of life. 49: God: figure, metaphor for the grave. She loved persons she lost. Relationships between God and human individual simple.the angels are the messengers of God. After the loss of her dear persons God sent her a compensation.Inversion of the biblical passage “The lord gives and the lord takes away” Accusation but also prayer à She accuses of gives thanks. 185: This poem has to do with Dickinson’s refusal to become a Christian. In those days, there was a discussion/tensions in America between the microscope (science) and faith (religion). It is a marvelous example of the compression of her poetry, because the whole problem of science vs. religion is compressed into four lines: example of her very telegraphic poetry. She’s expressing her refusal to follow conventions and her right to be skeptical: she’s playing on the idea of what faith is. 280: There is a metaphor throughout, describing the protestant funeral service.Something has died in her and that is what she’s describing: her brain is the church where the funeral is held (line 1). Mourners= repetitive ideas or thoughts. Treading= indicates the compulsive repetition of these thoughts, but also oppression. 328: The bird rejects the poet and flies away à no connection with the speaker. No possible connection with nature. Formal feeling à contradiction. There is no feeling at all. After so much pain, the subject is incapable of feeling. Journey through different parts of the body. The nerves are active. Imagery of the protestant funerals.

448: Attar= Perfume. Metaphor of distillation of perfumes.From ordinary the poet shows the extraordinary for all of us to see; the same he does with the familiar. Now we can see everything clear once the poet shows it to us, and we wonder how we could have missed that. à Intimacy with ordinary realities when we compare ourselves with the poet we discover we are very poor, because the poet has an immense richness of expression If we rob him a portion we wouldn’t harm him. The fortune is described as being exterior to time. The poet’s talent transcends time.510: She’s trying to find words to describe something unable to describe. It is not death, but it is some kind of death. It’s a reality like death but also like many other things. Midnight: moment of transition between one day and the next, and also moment when something ends. The frost is an enemy of life. Things are so bad that are beyond despair, not even despair is possible since hope is neither possible, if there’s no hope there’s no despair. 712: Description of the journey from life to the afterlife, from life in this world to eternal life. Death is a “he”, something important in a poem written by a woman. God is a male figure of domination. Metaphor: There is the respectable young lady and the young men in the carriage, but the chaperon is needed in order to make them behave in this carriage. Immortality guarantees that this ride is respectable. They pass the different stages of life. The settings is approaching death. 1136:

Description of the journey from life to the afterlife, from life in this world to eternal life.

Death is a “he”, something important in a poem written by a woman.

God is a male figure of domination.

Metaphor: There is the respectable young lady and the young men in the carriage, but the chaperon is needed in order to make them behave in this carriage.

Immortality guarantees that this ride is respectable. They pass the different stages of life. The settings is approaching death.