Poe and

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AMERICAN L

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English

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Nov 24, 2024

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Surname 1 Student Name Professor Name Course Date Discussion Post: Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart" and Danticat's "Between the Pool and the Gardenias" Poe 1. What makes this story as chilling as it is? How does Poe achieve this mood? Poe's expertise in the Gothic style is evident in his ability to create an eerie mood. Through the careful setting, Poe establishes an atmosphere that evokes a sense of unease. The mood, which refers to the overall feeling or atmosphere in a literary work, is skillfully crafted by Poe through his use of distinctive language and sentence structure to depict the narrator's situation and mental state, resulting in a haunting tone. A specific example from the text that exemplifies this is the phrase, " But anything was better than this agony! Anything was more tolerable than this derision! I could bear those hypocritical smiles no longer! I felt that I must scream or die! " (Poe 96). The words "derision," "scream," and "agony" immediately establish a fearful tone. 2. Explain why the narrator's acute sense of hearing, mentioned in the first paragraph, is an example of foreshadowing. Poe sets the story's mood right from the beginning by employing precise imagery to describe the ominous and unsettling atmosphere of the Usher's house. The house is depicted as having eerie decorations, darkness, and, most notably, a significant crack resulting from the deteriorating condition of the Usher family. This dilapidated and fragile state of the house

Surname 2 serves as foreshadowing, symbolizing the impending collapse and decline of the Usher family. The flaws and decay of the house reflect the weakness and instability of the Usher family itself. Danticat 3. What do we know about the narrator's past? How does having this knowledge affect our feelings about her? The narrator, Suzette, presents a narrative that explores a conflicting sense of identity. The story revolves around Suzette's mother, who immigrates from Haiti to America. Suzette notices that her mother struggles to reconcile her identity between the two countries. In America, her mother appears out of place in terms of her attire compared to the American people, giving the impression that she feels lost or isolated. 4. Do you think the story's mood would be different if it had been narrated by the man who cleans the pool? Explain. The book portrays suffering and brutality endured by individuals in Haiti's history, particularly during the reign of President Duvalier and his military police. The author vividly depicts how the people of Haiti during that era were haunted by loss, trauma, and profound pain. A significant character in the story is the pool cleaner, who happens to be Dominican. Until this point, non-Haitians are only briefly mentioned at the beginning of the book, with Dominicans being portrayed as the perpetrators of a large-scale massacre of Haitian people. Including the pool cleaner as a character marks the first instance of someone from a different nationality playing a significant role in the story's plot. The somewhat strained and intricate

Surname 3 relationship between the pool cleaner and Marie suggests that little has changed between Haiti and the Dominican Republic since 1937. Despite their past involvement, the pool cleaner readily betrays Marie to authorities, claiming not to know her. His refusal to listen to Marie's side of the story leads me to believe that if the story were narrated from the pool cleaner's perspective, the outcome and interpretation of the plot would be entirely different.

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Poe and

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