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(2015
midterm assignment) Sample Student Midterm Answers 2015 #3: Web Highlights |
LITR 4328 |
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Rachel Morris
Why We read the Dark and Foreboding
Excerpts:
Melissa King
Correspondence can also be used to project one’s own
emotions onto nature. Instead of one stepping into nature and embodying the
emotions present, one can step into nature and view it based on how they are
feeling that day. If I was to take a test and fail it, and on the way out of the
school I notice it is raining, I might say “It is raining and gloomy because I
failed my test.” In this case, I am taking my emotions and seeing the way I feel
in nature. […] Through correspondence there is a direct agreement with one’s
mood and their environment, whether it is the environment that changes to fit
the mood, or the mood that changes to fit the environment.
Brittany Fletcher
Although,
I fortunately did not disappear like Ichabod Crane from my friend's “headless
canine,” the fear had been born inside my thoughts first. The story of Sleepy
Hollow becomes addicting because of the rich everlasting language that evokes
the fear we all have in one form or another. We love the thought of being scared
until we are actually consumed by fear so badly that it becomes regrettable.
These stories, like The
Legend of Sleepy Hollow,
portray our ways of vicariously being a part of that fear without having to
actually endure it ourselves; we just feel it through memories or fantasies. I
connected with the passage because I enjoyed the gothic elements and the classic
feel the story gave.
Valerie Mead
. . . Gothic, as it is portrayed in American Renaissance literature, is
sensational and almost larger than life. The works that include gothic elements
within them are sometimes so downright dramatic and over the top that it makes
it hard to stop reading. If this idea of what the gothic was were personified,
it would be your moody younger cousin that wears black lipstick and cannot stop
listening to Depeche Mode; to her, her problems are so enormous and troublesome
that everyone must know about them, but it has to be inferred as it cannot be
spoken from those sullen lips. I appreciate this because I used to be somewhat
gothic (I have photographic evidence!) myself in the past, and while it is
entrancing and fun for a while, I like that I can now access those feelings I
once had without physically living them out; all I have to do is read the work,
look over it as long as I like, and close it when I’m done. . . .
Highlight:
In reading through several short essays
I found a common theme I thought connected nicely through three of them- the
gothic and why we read it. Why people keep returning to the gothic always
puzzled me, as I am not particularly drawn to it. The short essays I examined
answered my inquiry.
In her short essay, Melissa King
outlines how authors tie human emotion to the gothic through correspondence
(Correspondence being the alignment of a characters mood and the setting, or
vice versa). She explains that authors such as Irving use gothic settings to
create a tone or atmosphere to enhance the thoughts and emotions of their
protagonist, like how Ichabod, on the gloomy path begins thinking of ghosts;
somber settings influencing sober thoughts influencing somber settings, and so
on. I was intrigued by this new definition for a familiar term, and began
thinking why we as readers purposefully read stories like
Sleepy Hollow when the gothic paints
such a depressing picture.
In Brittany Fletcher’s short essay she
approaches The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
with the background of being a bit of a thrill seeker when it comes to fear.
She compares the gothic, Ichabod Crane’s encounter with the Headless Horseman,
to a frightening childhood encounter with a friend’s dog. In the excerpt, she
explains that “We love the
thought of being scared until we are actually consumed by fear so badly that it
becomes regrettable. These stories, like The
Legend of Sleepy Hollow, portray our ways
of vicariously being a part of that fear without having to actually endure it
ourselves…” According to Fletcher, we read the gothic so we can experience it
through the character and its correspondence to the gothic setting.
In Valerie Mead’s
short essay, she also examines the draw of the gothic. She explains gothic as
being desirable because of its sensationalism. She believes that we read the
gothic to relive the kind of dark emotions it evokes. However, where she goes
farther in the explanation is that she then shares that the reader can close the
book and escape from it. Mead
references her own experience with being a gothic as an example, “while
it is entrancing and fun for a while, I like that I can now access those
feelings I once had without physically living them out; all I have to do is read
the work, look over it as long as I like, and close it when I’m done. . . .”
What draws readers to the gothic is the chance to experience the darkness and
the emotions it conjures from the safety and comfort of our own homes, with the
added benefit of being able to close the door on those emotions when they become
unpleasant or unwanted.
