Short stories, poems, essays, literary periods, literary terms

“Of Plymouth Plantation” by William Bradford

- excerpt from Bradford’s account on the Puritan experience in the New World
- reflects Puritan belief of divine intervention to solve all things (Squanto was “god-given” for the sole purpose of helping the
Puritans)
- reflects European scorn of Indian “savages” - their “God-given” brutality to conquer was glorified, but Indian brutality was
scornful; heathen = evil, forest = evil
- lack of literary devices - Bradford was not a writer

“Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” by Jonathan Edwards

- reflects Puritan belief of predestination (you’re all going to hell) - superficial “purity”
- contains vivid descriptions of mankind as a spider hanging by a thread above the fires (cauldron) of Hell  inspires fear
among those listening; heathen = evil

“To My Dear and Loving Husband” by Anne Bradstreet

- dramatic love poem to her husband - she uses elaborate conceits (love more than all the riches of the East, etc.)
- uses plenty of repetition
- women = subordinate (she will do anything, etc.) death won’t keep them apart
“Upon the Burning of Our House” by Anne Bradstreet
- the speaker is commenting on the burning of her house - she regards it as a blessing
- reflects a Puritan reverence and fear of God - she believes God has done this to remind her that there is more to life than
worldly possessions, and that her real treasure is in heaven - she does miss the memories w/ family and friends, though.
- Uses nice rhyme scheme and diction to express theme
- worldly possessions = evil; God burned down her house to save her from sin

“The Devil and Tom Walker” by Washington Irving

- the story of a common man who makes a pact with the devil, becomes a very rich usurer, tries to avoid the consequences, but
ends up being taken anyway
- Irving uses allusions and imagery to create vivid descriptions of the bizarre aspects of his story - it is also an archetype of
Romantic-period work
- characters: Tom Walker, the devil; conflict: Tom is not successful (?); resolution: he is taken by the devil; setting: Puritan
Mass.; theme: money is the root of all evil
- views of death: whisked away by a gruff horseman (sudden); women - nagging; evil - black man (the Devil) also Tom
himself (greedy usurers and people in general)
- karma! (greed = evil); women = negative, nagging, selfish, demanding, avaricious; death = inevitable and sudden

“Because I Could Not Stop for Death” by Emily Dickinson

- Reveals Dickinson’s melancholy, yet welcoming and accepting attitude towards death
- Personifies Death as a polite carriage driver, and the carriage ride itself - uses imagery to say how death is unexpected - “only
Gossamer, my Gown...” = maybe rejection of material possessions
- Uses repetition to say how life passes a person by - School = childhood; fields = working, adulthood; setting sun = glories of
old age and death
- house = grave; ring = boundary; evil = their lives are so busy; death is natural (the house is a swelling from the ground)

“Speech in the Virginia Convention” by Patrick Henry

- speech by Henry arguing for more drastic action to rise up against the British - the Revolution
- uses persuasive techniques (pathos, passion, knowing audience, rhetorical questions, conciseness, manipulation, concession
to the opposition) - also uses God
- also has Enlightenment characteristics (logos - emphasis on logic and reason) in his reasons: truth = debate, British are
oppressive - military build-up, the Americans can win with alliances, numbers and passion
- the British, oppressors, anti-freedom of speech = evil

“The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe

- poem by Poe telling story of grief-stricken lover who is visited by a raven, often associated w/ gloom and darkness, who
perches on a bust of Athena and answers “Nevermore” to all his queries about his lost Lenore (who is dead)
- the raven may represent the darker side of the speaker’s thoughts - his grief, pessimism, and gloom; at the conclusion, the
raven (grief) remains (shall be lifted - Nevermore)
 - the poem is essentially about the death of a beautiful woman, has an obvious melancholy tone; the speaker is a student - the
raven clouds his rational thought (the bust of Athena)
- uses alliteration and assonance a lot, the mood is often dark and creepy
- the speaker is depressed, he soon believes the raven is either from Heaven or Hell
- Poe uses Biblical allusions (balm of Gilead = relief from suffering)  nevermore
- Ravens are normally non-reasoning animals, thus grief and sadness is w/o reason
- Raven - to remind him of fact and truth; women = beautiful; raven = grief = natural

“The Masque of the Red Death” by Edgar Allan Poe

- short story allegory which tells the tale of Prince Prospero and opulent nobles who try to avoid the plague (Red Death) by
shutting themselves up in his abbey
- he throws a masquerade, there are seven rooms (perhaps symbolizing the phases of life) - six w/ equally colored panes and
decorations, 7th - black w/ blood-red colored panes + ominous clock (perhaps a symbol for the limited time until death) =
death; the rooms - show Prospero’s bizarre and ostentatious opulence and unnecessary decorations
- the guests are afraid of the clock, the 7th room  they are afraid of death, but continue celebrating despite the suffering
outside the abbey, until a mysterious masked figure appears  the guests and Prospero try to kill him, but he is actually
masked “death” itself
- possible morals: material possessions will not save one from death, being afraid of death is unnecessary because everything
dies, the rich should not ignore the suffering of the rest
- view of death: a necessary and unavoidable part of life; period - Romantic period
- literary devices: imagery, irony (they build an abbey to avoid death, but get killed anyway), allusions, allegory, symbolism
(the Red Death + the room)
- colors of rooms = stages of life??; people who run away from problems = evil; materialism = evil

“The Philosophy of Composition” by Edgar Allan Poe

- essay written by Poe to demonstrate the “proper” way to write - awareness of denouement, methodical, consideration of
effect, proper length and tone, and reveals how he wrote “The Raven”
- Beauty excites the soul to tears = sadness = melancholy (manifested in death of a beautiful woman - most poetical); raven =
non-reasoning, etc., etc.
- writing is analytical, not spontaneous; denouement must be meaningful

“Young Goodman Brown” by Nathaniel Hawthorne

- Brown, a Puritan young man leaves his young wife to go on an errand  meets w/ the devil, who has also met w/ many other
respectable Puritans, incl. Goody Cloyse and Deacon Gookin, and eventually when he loses “Faith” his wife as well as his
own faith, he is forced to convert to devil-worship, but is unsure whether all of this actually happened. Thus he can no longer
trust anyone, he has lost his faith.
- Is an allegory, possible morals: don’t abandon faith, or assume that all people are whom you think they are.
- Symbolism: devil’s staff = converting to devil-worship, also allusion to pagan Egyptian Magi staff; Faith the woman =
Brown’s personal faith; the wilderness = sin
- Exposé of Puritan hypocrisy - all humans are subject to temptation, Puritans aren’t exempt, also an indication that the Devil
has controlled them to persecute others
- Uses plenty of imagery, emphasis on the bizarre and other Romantic characteristics
- View of evil: the devil, the Puritans and hypocrisy; women: faith, vulnerable, subordinate; nature/land: good
“The Hollow Men” by T.S. Eliot
- a pessimistic poem commenting on the “hollowness” of 1920s American society, specifically, the materialism, conformity,
which equals emptiness
- Eliot uses various metaphors/symbolism to convey this: scarecrows behaving as the wind behaves, head filled w/ straw,
death’s other kingdom, cactus (lives on nothing)
- Also uses many allusions: Dante’s Inferno, Guy Fawkes, Mistah Kurtz - conveys hollow sense; they have no emotion, which
is worse than passionate sin = boring
- evil: materialism + conformity; etc.

“Bartleby the Scrivener” by Herman Melville

- see sheet; laziness/materialism = evil
Puritan characteristics:
- God created the universe and is the head of all things (including state).
- Mankind is inherently evil and must be saved
 - Bible-centered and a theocratic government
- Impassive solemnity - hypocritically so

Enlightenment characteristics:
- inevitability of progress
- perfectibility of man and his instructions
- focus on reason, structure, and uniformity
- existence of God, but not the center of all things
- perfection of nature
- derived from Greco/Roman ideals

Romanticism characteristics:
- emphasis on common man
- emphasis on self-reliance
- emotions are more important than logic
- characters are often youthful
- harmony between man and nature
- emphasis on the bizarre and/or the remote
- God is not above, but within human beings
Literary Terms:
theme - the general idea or insight that the writer wishes to express
plot - (conflict) - the struggle found in fiction, can be internal or external - man vs. man; man vs. nature; man vs. society; man vs. self
foreshadow - use of hints or clues to suggest what will happen later in the work
flashback - action that interrupts to show an event that happened at an earlier time which is necessary to better understanding - can be
through memory or dialogue
exposition - the introductory material which gives the setting, creates the tone, presents the characters, and presents other facts
necessary to understanding the story.
rising action - a series of events that builds from the conflict
climax - the high point in the conflict, point of highest excitement, etc.
resolution (denouement) - rounds out and concludes the action.
character - (ization) - method used by writer to develop a character - physical description, actions, dialogue, inner thoughts
protagonist - the main character in the story
antagonist - character/force that opposes the main character
character foil - character that contrasts with the protagonist
setting - determines time and place in fiction
mood - climate of feeling in a literary work (mysterious, while the tone may be humorous)
point of view - the way a story gets told and who tells it - can be first-person (narrator is a character), third-person limited (one
person’s thoughts) or third-person omniscient (all knowing)
irony - contrast between what is expected or what appears to be and what actually is (verbal, situational, and dramatic)
satire - a literary tone used to ridicule or make fun of human vice or weakness, often with the intent of correcting, or changing, the
subject of the satiric attack
parody - imitates the serious manner and characteristic features of a particular literary work in order to make fun of those same
features
paradox - reveals a kind of truth which at first seems contradictory- two opposing ideas
metaphor - comparison of two unlike things without using “like” or “as”
simile - comparison of two unlike things using “like” or “as”
symbol - object or action that means more than its literal meaning
personification - giving human qualities to animals or objects
alliteration - repetition of initial consonant sounds in neighboring words
assonance - repetition of vowel sounds within words in neighboring words
onomatopoeia - word that imitates the sound it represents
rhyme - pattern of words that contain similar sounds
repetition - repeating things
connotation - implied meaning of a word
denotation - literal, dictionary definition of a word
allusion - brief reference to person, event or place, real or fictitious, historical figures, Biblical figures, or a work of art, etc.
imagery - language that evokes one or all of the five senses

Other notes so far:

Crucible - hypocrisy = evil; death is honorable if you are falsely indicted (better to die than lie)
Scarlet Letter - women stronger than men, but also inferior (in society’s standards)
Babbitt - conformity, society, materialism, making everything a business = evil