Author: Clive Rogers

Analyzing the Text

“The Minister’s Black Veil” is set in a village as stated by the line, “The old people of the village” (2). The story also takes place in a church/meetinghouse, as demonstrated by the line “A rumor of some unaccountable phenomenon had preceded Mr. Hooper into the meetinghouse” (47-8). The setting of this story relates to the ideas of the writer as they characterize the small town mentality as well as the religious fears of sins. “The Pit and Pendulum” takes place predominantly in a Toledo dungeon as demonstrated by the lines 131-5. The dungeon setting emphasizes the terror of the story.

We discover the character of Poe’s narrator through his reaction to the things happening to him. This technique of slow discovery helps maintain the mystery of the story. Hawthorne uses a similar technique. We discover Mr. Hooper’s personality through his interactions with other people, slowly throughout the story. This uncertainty and slow development sustains the mystery of the Veil. However, Poe’s use of perspective gives us a one sided glimpse at the narrator while Hawthorne’s perspective allows the reader to see Mr. Hooper through the eyes of other people.

“Pit and Pendulum:” (p>“Minister’s Black Veil:” (passage 456-462), the dark and ominous tone is evident in the great fear of the characters present, “in mutual affright” (456). The reader is invited into this fear with the vivid description of Father Hooper’s corpse. The “faint smile” (457-8) is alarming and terrifying because it is paradoxical. The repetition of ‘veiled’ throughout the passage enhances the dark mood, as the secrecy around the veil drastically increases. The passage (and the short story) ends on this word, thereby demonstrating its significance.

Hawthorne uses ambiguity in the ending of the short story, when Mr. Hooper is saying his last words, “On every visage a Black Veil” (455). Yet again, Mr. Hooper discusses the Veil but refuses to directly identify what it is. In such, the story ends with this residual ambiguity which increases the horrified, but curious, feeling of the reader. Poe uses ambiguity to enhance interest in the beginning of his story when the narrator cannot remember what happened to him (64-80). This passage engages the reader, as the narrator’s lack of memory enables the reader’s imagination to take over (helped of course by Poe). It also increases the sense of horror.

Critical Vocabulary

Antonyms

Synonyms

Synonyms

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Synonyms

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Antonyms

Antonyms

Analyzing the Text

The story is meant to incite terror at gratuitous violence. The beginning shows this as even the awaiting of the sentence is full of unnecessary terror (foreshadowing what is to come later). The narrator finds terror in the visual aspects of things: the “black-robbed judges” (17), the whiteness of their faces (17) and their grotesque thinness (18). We are warned against relying on our senses when the narrator swoons while waiting, and “the figures of the judges vanishes, as if magically,” (36-7). All this builds into a fear of what can be seen and the horror of unnecessary terror.

The uncertainty suggests that the narrator has been drugged (222) but it also tells us that he is greatly frightened and confused by what is happening to him.

We know he is a sensible person because he thinks to count and trace the distance of his cage (168-9). We also know he is sensible in the appropriate fear and acknowledgment of his fear, “now I was the veriest of cowards” (215-6). We know he can read (217). We see further proof of his intelligence (which helps him survive his ordeal) when he thinks of plan to get out of the surcingle (407-435).

Oppression: “The intensity of the darkness seemed to oppress and stifle me”(103-4); “They pressed — they swarmed upon me in ever accumulating heaps… I was half stifled by their thronging pressure” (428-30); “could I withstand its pressure?” (505); “the closing walls pressed me resistlessly onward” (509). The strong feeling of oppression enhances the terror felt by both the character and the reader. All these moments of oppression make the story feel claustrophobic and uncomfortable. It enhances the sensation of freedom when he is pulled out of the room, like a breath of fresh air. This feeling of oppression is important to the story’s central idea of visual perception, as the oppression felt by the narrator is a visual oppression that translates into the physical.

Critical Vocabulary

The painting evoked pathos in the viewer because it showed a dead child.

The obstinacy of her response was made clear by her stubborn tone.

The runner treasured his race number as an emblem of victory.

The ostentatious display of wealth made visitors uncomfortable because it they were used to elegance, not vulgarity.

Proponents of the new law sought to mitigate opposition by compromising on certain policies.

The plausibility of her statement was supported by the evidence she offered.

Analyzing the Text

Line 83, 161, 281. The ambiguity makes the meaning unclear. Just as the characters within the story do not truly know what the Black Veil means, the reader is not allowed to know completely either. In such, the Black Veil comes to mean what the reader feels, and so takes on various meanings.

Their conversation tells us that Mr. Hooper is a somber/solemn man. His lack of fear about the possibility of scandal tells us he is a confident man, certain in his action, “gentle but unconquerable obstinacy”( 282). But he is also frightened, as shown by his outburst when Elizabeth gets up to leave.

The veil symbolizes the secret sin, the ones you do not speak out loud. This is first mentioned in the sermon Mr. Hooper gives, “those sad mysteries which we hide from our nearest and dearest” (83-4). All people have these as Mr Hooper suggests when he says, “If I cover it for secret sin, what mortal might not do the same?” (280-1). The discomfort his veil gives all of his congregation indicates that they in some way know this and are forced, through his wearing of the veil, to face their own flaws.

His last words suggest that all people wear a Black Veil upon their face, hiding their sins beneath a facade. It suggests that people believe openness to be true if they can see it, but that this is not so. We see this in the line “the mystery… has made this piece of crape so awful” (450). As Mr. Hooper covered his face in mystery, others are unable to read it and so distrust it — but he argues that everyone has a Black Veil which hides their identity and sins. The final image, of his face decomposing beneath the Black Veil, suggests that even in Death, we cannot know everything about a person.

Critical Vocabulary

I have wanted autonomy in setting my own bedtime because I believe that I know how much sleep I need.

The Emancipation Proclamation has resonance because it is filled with meaning and still has an impact on all f our lives.

I see leaves falling to the ground as a harbinger of winter.

So that I would not let my team down, I played the entire set of volleyball even though I had broken my wrist during the first play.

I evidently enjoy learning new things and spending time alone based on my love of reading.

When my mother asked if I left the gate open, I pointed out that I had mowed the lawn and walked the dog and was very tired.

Analyzing the Text

The list characterizes nature as uncaring, unsentimental, ascribed meaning only by man (9). The degree of man’s influence on the portrait of nature grows according to the development of the list. The list structures the argument because it is a point by point path of how her argument will develop in the essay.

Oates uses this narrative to introduce the topic and to take the reader, along with the narrator, “out of time” (26). She therefore opens up the text for an analysis of nature.

She realizes that the earth is “hard, emphatic…a genuine force”(48-9) and that the sky is “blank…empty” (70-71) and infinite (75). Together, these two forces make the narrator feel very small and insignificant.

The idea is that Thoreau attempts to depersonalize himself by depersonalizing Nature. He finds the beauty in the impersonal death/violence of Nature but then is incredibly human himself through the death of his brother. Oates’ tone, which is aggressive and to the point, echoes the highly personal note — proving her argument that men are not impersonal, unlike nature which is “coolly detached” (199-200).

Writers and artists perpetuate “nature-as-experience” rather than “nature-as-itself” by filtering nature “through our optical nerves…our fiercely romantic expectations. Nature that pleases us because it mirrors our souls” (141-3). Poets and writers glamorize, “exaggerate the significance of anything we focus the white heat of our creativity upon” (150-1). This helps them feel more important.

The ants represent words about nature, or the tools for Oates to write her poem about Spring. It bookends the narrative at the beginning by putting the narrator back in time, instead of out of time — and so bringing the reader back to the present reality, after having engaged in abstracted thought brought on by the first narrative.

It is effective as literary criticism because it pulls in examples from other recognized literary authorities to both prove and disprove her argument about nature. She shows, through the use of literary sources, how poets/writers talk about nature in a self-reflecting way. The structure follows the list placed in the beginning (in a type of road-map) and the two narratives open and close the philosophical discussion of the middle with some real experiences in nature.

Critical Vocabulary

It is deep because unfathomed means we don’t know where it ends. If it was shallow, we would know how deep it was easily.

It makes them upset because it tells them of many negative and upsetting events.

He was content because he did not see solitude as a bad thing or his enemy.

It was always there. Being perennial, it was of a long duration.

He would criticize the position. It doesn’t make sense to ascribe morality to nature.

They are more likely to party too hard. They tend to be extravagant and wasteful.

Analyzing the Text

He moves into the woods because he wants to live deliberately, purposefully, so much so that when he dies, he will have felt that he has lived fully. It relates to his purpose in writing Walden, as he abandons the unnecessary and “spend[s] one day as deliberately as Nature” (94). Walden is how Thoreau will help the reader, and himself, do this.

Metaphor: “In the midst of this chopping sea of civilized life,” which means that civilized life is full of unnecessary things and concerns. This nautical metaphor is repeated in the Conclusion, when Thoreau says “I did not wish to take a cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world” (209-211).

He is exaggerating man’s feeling of consequence, “as if the rest of mankind had stood his sentinels” (81). The purpose of this is to ridicule the feelings of importance felt by men in relation to their impact on mankind.

Thoreau argues that you are never really alone, “what sort of space is that which separates a man from his fellows and makes him solitary” (137-8). Solitude is not the distance between people as shown in line 139, but rather oneness with nature. His observations of nature develop these ideas as, “I go and come with a strange liberty in Nature, a part of herself”(114-5). Nature is full of animals, life and sound, as his observations make clear, so solitude is not lonely.

“The pond in Winter” compares the pond and the surrounding winter to “Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads” (155). “Spring” compares nature, or the impression that nature gives, to “universal innocence” (195-6). In both of these Thoreau is giving a divine quality to the nature surrounding him, alluding to the bible. However, where “The Pond in Winter” is heavenly and above reproach (godly), “Spring” is animalistic but innocent (human).

Thoreau thinks that living honestly is important, that those who live simply, live best and that appreciating the small things is key. Quotes: “We will not be shipwrecked on a vain reality” (232), “Receive without misgiving” (246), “It is life near the bone where it is the sweetest” (267-8).

Thoreau’s goal was to go outside the normality of civilized life, and so when his life at Walden Pond became “tradition and conformity” (209), he needed to leave. He was able to appreciate the small things, to live his life, however mean (236). The ideas in the Conclusion connect to the introduction because they show how Thoreau “live[d] deliberately,… front[ed] only the essential facts of life” (26-7).

His style is effective because it is descriptive and reflective, allowing the reader to picture Walden pool and therefore reach the same conclusions. Thoreau wanted to show how one could live simply with nature, and his natural focus demonstrates this. His honesty in saying why he left the woods makes him a reliable narrator/trustworthy.

Analyzing the Text

The dashes make the reader pause and reflect on the words preceding the dash. In such they emphasize certain words and help clarify what is important in the poem. For example in “The Soul selects her own Society,” the dashes first help create a reflective and authoritative tone, it is impossible to read this poem quickly. Second, the repeated dashes after “unmoved” in lines 5 and 7, emphasize the steadiness and purpose of the Soul.

Death’s character is ironic because he “kindly stopped”(2) for the speaker even though the speaker is headed towards him. The point of view of the speaker allows the reader to see a kind and civilized Death, which courts his living victims even though they are all headed “toward Eternity” (24). This is ironic because Death does not need to court or stop for anyone.

The speaker in “Because I could not stop for Death” is along for the ride: the repetition of “we passed” demonstrates this. The speaker in this poem is not in charge of her destiny or her company. In comparison, the speaker in “The Soul selects her own Society” is incredibly active. As the title states, she chooses her company and instead of riding in the carriage, “unmoved”(5) she “notes the Chariots” (5) outside.

The majority in “The Soul selects her own Society” refers to the Soul’s royal or selective power in choosing who surrounds her. The majority in “Much Madness is divinest Sense” refers to the external Majority (Society) which determines what is sane and what is dangerous. We can infer from this that the poet thinks somewhat poorly of the Majority, as the Majority is selective, elitist and subjective.

They indicate that the individual is educated and knows legal terminology (as both of these words have legal connotations.) They could also indicate that the individual is a woman, as demur is a word specifically used by courtly women.

The paradox in “Tell all the truth but tell it slant” is that the speaker wants the entire truth to be told, but indirectly. This is a paradox because telling the truth indirectly is not telling all of it. The paradox in “Much Madness is divinest Sense” is that madness and sense(sanity) are not so different, when in fact they mean exact opposites. Both of these truths convey the inherent subjectivity of truth and reality — the subjectivity of life.

The poet uses this term because it refers to the internal character/personality of a person. It goes beyond the physical/material choice of a person and into the spiritual decisions of souls. Both this poem and “Because I could not stop for Death” personify the soul and reflect the activity of internal life.

Metaphors: “the Setting Sun,” “Fields of Gazing Grain,” “Dews drew quivering and chill.” These metaphors express the natural and inevitability of death. She pairs these metaphors with the kindly, courtly Death so as to show that Death is a friend, a way into Immortality.

Analyzing the Text

The narrator means to tell the truth in a circular way, to get at the truth in an indirect way, through the “Circuit” (2).

The narrator compares this with “as Lightning to the Children eased”(5). The comparison works because the narrator wants the Truth to “dazzle gradually” (7), or for the bright light of the truth to take place slowly and softly (to ease into place).

Analyzing the Text

The main criteria for madness and sense is the Majority, which decides what is mad and what is sane, “’Tis the Majority/In this, as All, prevail.” The speaker is also saying that madness is sanity and vice versa.

Paraphrase: If you agree, you are sane, but if you disagree you will be considered mad and dangerous, perhaps locked away. The diction makes the theme of a majority consensus clear here, as all those that would disagree may find themselves, “handled with a Chain” (8).

Analyzing the Text

These places are a reminder of time passing, a child grows into an adult and heads to death, grain grows and then is picked and dies. These are places where Death is active.

The speaker’s attitude in the first three stanzas is rather light-hearted, a friendly trip with Death, as shown by the use of words like “kindly” (2) and “Civility” (8). This changes in stanza four when the speaker realizes she is seeing her own eventual demise (the death of all things in the end). The transition is evident with the diction and line, “He passed Us” (13) and “chill” (14).

Analyzing the Text

Dickinson means that the Soul closes the door to anyone she does not chose, “selects her own Society” (1). It changes the tone because it give the Soul selective power/authority.

The Soul is unmoved. The repetition creates rhythm and emphasizes the unfazed nature of the Soul.

Critical Vocabulary

When almost all of the neighbors on the block had small children, many of them continually asked me to babysit. Requests for my services abounded.

At my mother”s college graduation, the ceremon was opened with an invocation.

I showed timidity when I met President Barack Obama beause he is such an influential and intelligent world leader, I was awestruck.

I used subtlety when I asked my dad for a raise because I wanted him to see for himself that it was a good idea.