Poe Show -- Please note

Those of you who are attending the Poe Show at the CSC, just a reminder: please show up in the lobby before 7:15, especially if I have your ticket. The doors of the theater close at 7:30, which mean we should be in the theater and seated before then.

Here are some rules of etiquette and tips for watching the play -- from the CSC:

It’s a great idea to brush up on theater etiquette to help everyone enjoy the experience. The following guidelines offer tips on what is expected of audience members.

Before the performance:

Buy your tickets in advance: In order to see a live performance, you first will need to buy a ticket. Your ticket will be for a specific date and show and is not refundable. You can, however, change the date for a small surcharge. Your tickets can be picked up at will call or purchased at the box office.

Dress comfortably: We want you to enjoy the live theater you’re about to see. Please dress comfortably, whatever that may be to you. Dress up or dress down; just be ready to see some great live theater!

Arrive a little early: Because you are attending a live performance, audience members may not be admitted if they arrive late. This avoids disturbing the performance for the actors and other audience members. Plan to arrive about 15 minutes early.

Take care of personal needs: Try to use the restroom before the show begins. Otherwise, if you leave your seat before intermission, you’ll most likely disturb other audience members and the performers.

Find your assigned seat: An usher will greet you before you enter the theater and ask for your ticket with its assigned seat number. When you sit in your assigned seat, you’ll help prevent confusion for other audience members. Once you’re settled, turn off your mobile phone so it does not disturb the performance or those seated around you if it rings.

Check out the program: The usher will give you a printed program. By arriving early, you’ll have enough time to read it and have an idea of what to expect in the show. You’ll also find names and information about people who are performing and helping to produce the show. It’s an enjoyable read—and sometimes surprising!

During the performance:

Listen closely: You will hear actors perform live for you, and careful listening will help keep you from missing important elements of the performance. Try to avoid talking or fidgeting during the performance. You'll be able to hear better and also avoid disturbing those around you.

Respond readily: During the live performance, feel free to let the actors know you appreciate the show. Laugh at funny parts, cheer when it’s called for, applaud when you like something, and even shriek when you’re frightened. We always appreciate a respectful, appropriate response.

After the performance:

Applaud enthusiastically: Show your appreciation by applauding for the performers. Occasionally, you might hear people applaud or cheer during the performance; that’s fine once in a while. But most often the audience holds its applause until after the performance has ended.

Remain seated for the curtain call: At the end of the performance there is usually a curtain call. This is when the actors come on stage to accept your appreciation. Wait to leave until the curtain call is over and exit with the rest of the audience.

Stand and applaud: Actors are thrilled when they receive what’s called a “standing ovation.” If you really liked the show and want to reward the performers with the highest praise, you’re welcome to stand and applaud.

Doppelgängers in literature

Doppelganger in "William Wilson"

A Doppelganger ("double goer" in German) is a double or second-self. In literature, dream analysis, or archetypal symbolism, the Doppelganger is often figured as a twin, shadow, or mirror-image of the protagonist. The Doppelganger characteristically appears as identical to (or closely resembling) the protagonist; sometimes the protagonist and Doppelganger have the same name. Prominent literary examples of Doppelgangers include Poe's "William Wilson," Joseph Conrad's The Secret Sharer, Fyodor Dostoyevsky's The Double, Al-Tayyib Salih's Season of Migration to the North, and Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man.

In its simplest incarnation, mistaken identity is a classic trope used in literature, from Twelfth Night (as Jennifer & Larry will recall) to A Tale of Two Cities. But in these cases, the characters look similar for perfectly normal reasons, such as being siblings or simple coincidence. These are NOT doppelgangers.

Other stories offer supernatural explanations for doubles. These doppelgängers are typically, but not always, dark or evil in some way. The double will often impersonate the victim and go about ruining them, for instance through committing crimes or insulting the victim's friends (like in Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde). Sometimes, the double even tries to kill the original. The torment is occasionally earned; for instance, in Edgar Allan Poe's short story William Wilson, the protagonist of questionable morality is dogged by his doppelgänger most tenaciously when his morals fail.

When doppelgängers are used as harbingers of impending destruction, they are almost always supernaturally based. Doppelgängers are sometimes the evil copies of the player in games. They are usually meant as 'the final test', conquering yourself. Another variant, usually seen in science fiction, involves clones, which creates a genetically identical new being without the memories and experiences of the original. Some futuristic variants in fiction duplicate living beings in their entirety, albeit sometimes with modified memories and motives.

Doubles are also seen in fiction involving time travel and parallel universes, as in The Time Traveller's Wife. In this case, the doppelgänger really "is" the doubled person, but from a different timeline or different version of the universe.

Trivia: Did you know that Abraham Lincoln was convinced he had a doppelganger? Carl Sandburg's biography contains the following:

A dream or illusion had haunted Lincoln at times through the winter. On the evening of his election he had thrown himself on one of the haircloth sofas at home, just after the first telegrams of November 6 had told him he was elected President, and looking into a bureau mirror across the room he saw himself full length, but with two faceIt bothered him; he got up; the illusion vanished; but when he lay down again there in the glass again were two faces, one paler than the other. He got up again, mixed in the election excitement, forgot about it; but it came back, and haunted him. He told his wife about it; she worried too. A few days later he tried it once more and the illusion of the two faces again registered to his eyes. But that was the last; the ghost since then wouldn't come back, he told his wife, who said it was a sign he would be elected to a second term, and the death pallor of one face meant he wouldn't live through his second term.

Adaptation of "The Masque of the Red Death"

Here is an interesting interpretation/adaptation of "The Masque of the Red Death." It's a highly abridged version, but the animator renders the masquerade quite nicely -- worthy of a look:

View: Masque of the Red Death animation

Masquerade Masks & Plague Masks

Masques for the Venetian carnevale festivities

Re "The Masque of the Red Death": The following is a brief summary of the most common masquerade mask types used during the plague years of the Renaissance in Italy.

• Check out the masquerade masks video here.

Masks are an essential feature of il Carnevale di Venezia. Venice's Carnival began in the 11th century, and the wearing of masks and costumes was well established by 1436, when mask makers or mascereri were officially recognized with their own guild.

The practice of wearing masks for disguise reached its peak in the 18th century when Venetians of different social classes used Carnevale as an excuse to mingle among different classes of people without fear of recognition or retribution. The mask was always worn over a black hood with a black tricorn hat, along with a long black cape to give the maximum degree of disguise.

The volto masque

The volto mask completely hides the face. The moretta was a common type of volto -- an all black velvet mask made for women held in place by their teeth, which was supposed to add to their mysterious air. (The woman was supposed to charm the man without necessarily "talking.")

The bauta masque (spoon mask)

The traditional bauta mask allows the masquerader to eat and drink without removing it as it jets out from the face by several inches. It's also known as a "spoon mask" -- never mind a mouth on the mask. Worn all year round by the Venetian upper classes, the Bauta was the most popular of disguises during Carnevale.

The plague doctor masque

The plague doctor masque was said to protect the doctor from various diseases -- like Bubonic Plague -- since its very long nose doesn't exactly let you get too close to anyone's face.

Gallery of masques:

Snapshot: Novels with Unreliable Narrators

If any of you are particularly attracted to the literary idea of the unreliable narrator, some splendid American novels make use of one. Here are three:

One Flew Over a Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
"Chief" Bromden, a patient at a mental hospital, suffers from schizophrenia, and his telling of the events often includes things such as people growing or shrinking, walls oozing with slime, or the orderlies kidnapping and "curing" Santa Claus.

Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
Charlie Gordon, the narrator in Daniel Keyes' epistolary novel, Flowers for Algernon is mentally retarded at the start of the novel but develops greater intelligence and understanding as the novel progresses.

The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
Henry James' novella The Turn of the Screw, in which a young woman experiences ghostly hauntings summoned by supernaturally-powered children, can be interpreted as a novel of unreliable narration, but whether or not the narrator is actually delusional is left ambiguous. The young woman, a governess, tells stories of children being "threatened by the ghost of Quint," with the possible goal of misleading the reader into becoming a "victim of the governess's unreliable narration."

The Unreliable Narrator

The unreliable narrator is a distinct and important aspect of some of Poe's writings -- both his short stories and his poetry. Here's a good description from poewar.com:

An unreliable narrator is a first-person narrator that for some reason has a compromised point-of-view. In all stories with a first-person narrator, the narrator serves as a filter for the events. What the narrator does not know or observe cannot be explained to the reader. Usually, however, the reader trusts that the narrator is knowledgeable and truthful enough to give them an accurate representation of the story. In the case of an unreliable narrator (sometimes called a fallible narrator), the reader has reason not to trust what the narrator is saying.

The narrator may be unreliable for many reasons. Some of the typical scenarios are:

• The narrator may be of a dramatically different age than the people in the story, such as a child attempting to explain adult actions
• The narrator may have prejudices about race, class or gender
• The narrator may have low intelligence
• The narrator may suffer from hallucinations or dementia
• The narrator may have a personality flaw such as pathological lying or narcissism
• The narrator may be trying to make a point that is contrary to the actions of the story or be attempting to libel one of the characters due to a grudge

Whatever flaw the narrator has, at some point the reader will realize that the narrator’s interpretation of the events cannot be fully trusted and will begin to form their own opinions about the events and motivations within the story. Some readers will be put off by this approach. Stories depend on the willing suspension of disbelief, and readers can be pulled out of the story when they realize the narrator cannot be trusted. This is why telling a tale from this viewpoint can be problematic. There is a fine line between distrusting the narrator and distrusting the writer.

When done badly, a story written from this point-of-view can be viewed as manipulative, misleading, confusing and pretentious. When successful, however, the results can be powerful and fascinating.

Tell-Tale Heart -- Animation

Here's an animated version of "The Tell-tale Heart" from 1953 with James Mason narrating. You'll notice it's been shortened a bit -- the more graphic parts have been expurgated; unfortunately, one of the most important phrases (used twice in the story) has also been removed: "...a low, dull, quick sound, such as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton."

View the 7-minute animation

An Exploration of Poe Stories

Here's a highly recommended research website devoted to the works of Edgar Allan Poe.

Poestories.com

This site contains short stories and poems by Edgar Allan Poe, story summaries, quotes, and linked vocabulary words and definitions for educational reading. It also includes a short biography, a timeline of Poe's life, and links to other Poe sites.

Most people recognize Poe by his famous poem, "The Raven". Others may have read one of his more popular dark and creepy tales like, "The Fall of the House of Usher" or "The Tell-tale Heart". Poe wrote quite a few gothic stories about murder, revenge, torture, the plague, being buried alive, and insanity. Many modern books and movies have "borrowed" ideas from Poe. Some of Poe's stories were not well accepted in his day because people were just not ready for them- they were too scary.

Poe Show -- Update

I purchased tickets to the Poe show for everyone who gave me ticket money. We've got seats in Rows D and E. If anyone else is interested in going, you can still buy your own tickets. As of last Friday there were still seats available contiguous to our seats. Call the box office at 381-BARD.

Again, the show begins at 7:30 p.m. next Sunday, November 1st. The house lobby opens at 6:30 and the theater opens at 7:00. If you are not going with me, please meet us in the lobby of the theater between 7:00 and 7:15. If you need directions, please consult the CSC website.

M. Night Shyamalan & the Raven

For those who enjoyed The Village, you may be interested in checking out the director's official website. It is instructive to note that the icon/symbol M. Night Shyamalan uses on his website is the raven -- taken from Edgar Allan Poe's famous poem "The Raven" (Once upon a midnight dreary...)

Not coincidentally, the first work we'll be reading from Poe next week is "The Raven."

The Village -- A Review

Now that you've seen the movie and had a bit of time to consider its themes, here's a balanced review from The National Review from 2004, at the time The Village was released in theaters. An excerpt:

The Village's greatest strength is a moral core that never devolves into moralistic propaganda.

Shyamalan poses questions about the human response to evil and loss then allows the audience to come its own conclusions. His themes are incredibly relevant to the dilemmas we face today: Should we confront the things that threaten us and try to defeat them, or should we retreat, sacrificing even truth if it is necessary to enjoy a precious, if tenuous, peace? Should we ignore real menaces we can't control in favor of imagined ones we can?

Shyamalan doesn't paint his villagers motivations as right or wrong, and his reticence to make an allegory of his tale may leave some viewers frustrated. But it will also leave them thinking more deeply about the issues than if they were force-fed a lesson. Already, critics are reviewing The Village through their own political lenses, and it is to Shyamalan's credit that both the left and right could make credible arguments that the film falls in their favor. [ read whole review ]

Your thoughts on the movie, its relevance to The Crucible and Irving's stories?

Crucible Test -- Key

For a limited time, I'm making available the answer key for the multiple choice section of the Crucible test in PDF form, so you can check your answers and see which ones you missed (if any).

That PDF is available by clicking here.
[Update: The answer key is now offline.]

At the same time, for something a bit offbeat (and silly), but still related, have a look at this:
The Crucible 3-Minute Cartoon

Or if you'd like to see Giles Correy say, "More weight!"
Giles Corey Death Scene

Tickets for Poe Show -- Sunday, November 1

We'll be having the high-school night out to see the new one-man Poe show at the Cincinnati Shakespeare Company on Race St. downtown on Sunday, November 1 at 7:30 p.m. Student tickets are $15 -- a great price! Adult tickets are $20.

You have two options to purchase tickets:

Option One: If you give me your ticket money by this Friday at 11:00 a.m. I'll buy them for you at the Box Office on Friday afternoon.

Option Two: You can purchase your tickets directly by phoning 513.381.BARD or online from the Cincinnati Shakespeare Company's website [here]

So, you want to know: What is a one-man Poe show. Actor Vincent Price was famous for his one-man Poe show presentations. Here are a few links to Price's renditions of Poe's works:

• The Tell-Tale Heart
• The Raven
• The Cask of Amontillado

If you have any questions, you may leave them in the comments box!

The One-Man Poe Show

After we finish The Crucible unit this week -- the end of the first quarter -- we will be taking a break from the Puritanism of 17th century Salem and turning to the American Gothic works of Edgar Allan Poe before we dive into The Scarlet Letter (also set in 17th century Salem). Late October seems to be a suitable time to study the "master of horror and suspense."

In order to supplement the Poe unit I'm going to organize a high-school night out to see the new one-man Poe show at the Cincinnati Shakespeare Company on Race St. downtown. I'm looking at Friday, October 30 and Sunday, November 1 as possible dates. The shows are at 7:30 on both days. Student tickets are $15 -- a great price!

Stay tuned for further information on how to obtain tickets. We're inquiring into getting a block of tickets for one of these nights; so, please let me know ASAP if any of you see any obvious scheduling conflicts for one night or the other.

Usage Tip: Hark Back or Hearken Back?

Hark means to listen attentively, as in "Hark, the herald angels sing..."

Hark back is a related idiom, meaning "to return to a previous point, as in a narrative." (Myself, I prefer the synonymous idiom "givelendan ear," also written as "givelendone's ear.")

Hearken is nearly synonymous to hark, meaning "to make an effort to hear something." However, the idiom above does not synonymously translate into hearken back, though many mistakenly use "hearken back" rather than "hark back."

So, hark back -- or givelendone's ear!

Crucible -- Character Sketches

Here's an excellent resource that I highly recommend: The "Deeper Roots Project" provides helpful character sketches of Abigail, Reverend Hale, and Reverend Parris, using The Crucible movie for visual illustration. Having a look through these would be helpful for preparing for next week's test as well as for producing the play.

Abigail Williams -- part 1

Abigail Williams -- part 2

Reverend Hale -- part 1

Reverend Hale -- part 2

Reverend Samuel Parris

You may be able to find a few other episodes from the Deeper Roots Project.

Snapshots: American War Novels

A number of American novels dealing with the general theme of war would be suitable for the Three-Books Project. In addition to Heller's Catch 22 (already featured here), these three provide a unique look at Americans at war, the aftermath of war, and the sometimes-absurdity of war. You'll notice that each was written in a different decade in the 20th century.

Slaughterhouse Five (1969) by Kurt Vonnegut
Chaplain's Assistant Billy Pilgrim, an ill-trained American soldier, is captured by the Germans during the Battle of the Bulge and taken to a prison in Dresden. The Germans put Billy and his fellow prisoners in a disused slaughterhouse, known as "Slaughterhouse number 5." The POW's and German guards alike hide in a deep cellar; because of their safe hiding place, they are some of the few survivors of the city-destroying firestorm during the Bombing of Dresden in World War II. Billy has come "unstuck in time" and experiences past and future events out of sequence and repetitively. He is kidnapped by extraterrestrial aliens from the planet Tralfamadore. They exhibit him in a zoo with B-movie starlet Montana Wildhack as his mate. The Tralfamadorians, who can see in four dimensions, have already seen every instant of their lives. They believe in predestination. They say they cannot choose to change anything about their fates, but can choose to concentrate upon any moment in their lives, and Billy becomes convinced of the correctness of their theories. [ review ]

Johnny Got His Gun (1939) by Dalton Trumbo
Joe Bonham, a young American soldier, is hit by a mortar shell on the last day of World War I. He lies in a hospital bed in a fate worse than death --- a quadruple amputee who has lost his arms, legs, eyes, ears, mouth and nose. He remains conscious and able to think, thereby reliving his life through strange dreams and memories, unable to distinguish whether he is awake or dreaming. He remains frustrated by his situation, until one day when Joe discovers a unique way to communicate with his caregivers -- by banging his head on his pillow in Morse code. His wish is that he may be put in a glass box and tour the country, to show people the true horrors of war. As he drifts between reality and fantasy, he remembers his old life with his family and girlfriend, and reflects upon the myths and realities of war. He also forms a bond, of sorts, with a young nurse who senses his plight... [ review ]

The Caine Mutiny (1951) by Herman Wouk
Willie Keith, with a low opinion of the ways of the Navy, misses his ship when it leaves on a combat assignment, and rather than catch up with it, ducks his duties to play piano for an admiral who has taken a shine to him. But guilt-stricken by a last letter from his father, who has died of melanoma, he reports aboard the Caine. He immediately disapproves of its decaying condition and slovenly crew, which he attributes to a slackness of discipline by the ship's longtime captain, Lieutenant Commander William De Vriess. Willie's lackadaisical attitude toward what he considers menial and repetitive duties brings about a humiliating clash with De Vriess when Willie neglects a communications message. While Willie is still pouting over his punishment, De Vriess is relieved by Lieutenant Commander Philip Francis Queeg... [ review ]

Word of the Day: Somnambulism

Somnambulism: a condition that is characterized by walking while asleep or in a hypnotic trance; also known as: hypnobatia, noctambulism

If you're looking for an interesting and curious story to read in preparation for All Hallow's Eve, you might want to read "Somnambulism: A Fragment" by Charles Brockton Brown (1771-1810), a pioneer of the American novel.

Here's an excerpt from a review (explication) of the story:

Benjamin Franklin Made Me Do It!
In "Somnambulism: A Fragment" Charles Brockden Brown uses the gothic style to convey an unharnessed terror in a single vision: Young Althorpe, while sleepwalking in a forest, murders the woman he desires. But the story is more than a ludicrous curiosity, to read it thus would miss its elegantly stated manifesto against the dangers of Benjamin Franklin's megalomaniacal ideals of industry and pragmatism. The story exploits Franklin's example of the studious, dutiful, useful young man and turns him into a monster. Browns' mode of style is strategic, subversive, infiltrating the reader and earnest student of the eighteenth century by mixing the ordinary with the grotesque, the intelligent with the very wrong.

"Somnambulism scares because it is surrounded with the normal, because its central character, its killer, is not the usual deviant monster, but a sharp, educated young man, not very far removed from the ideals of Franklin himself. As a cue of his hunger to learn, his desire for accurate information, Althorpe uses an elevated language (example: "The family retired to sleep. My mind had been too powerfully excited to permit me to imitate their example.")...

read entire article...

Snapshot (+Reminder): Franny & Zooey by J.D. Salinger

Reminder: Please keep in mind that now, while your reading load is very light, you should be exploring potential books for your Three-Book Term project. You will need to have determined which books you will be reading and writing about by mid-second quarter. This research paper is a very significant part of the course.

In case you've forgotten, here's the intro sheet to the project:
Intro Sheet to Three-Books Project [ PDF ]

Meanwhile, I'll continue to present some snapshots of American works we won't be studying together during the year. This time on to J.D. Salinger's Franny and Zooey. Here's an excerpt from a seminal review in The New York Times by John Updike in 1961:

...and now "Franny" and "Zooey" have a book to themselves. These two stories--the first medium-short, the second novella- length--are contiguous in time, and have as their common subject Franny's spiritual crisis.

In the first story, she arrives by train from a Smith-like college to spend the week-end of the Yale game at what must be Princeton. She and her date, Lane Coutell, go to a restaurant where it develops that she is not only unenthusiastic but downright ill. She attempts to explain herself while her friend brags about a superbly obnoxious term paper and eats frogs' legs. Finally, she faints, and is last seen lying in the manager's office silently praying at the ceiling.

In the second story, Franny has returned to her home, a large apartment in the East Seventies. It is the Monday following her unhappy Saturday. Only Franny's mother, Bessie, and her youngest brother, Zooey, are home. While Franny lies sleeplessly on the living-room sofa, her mother communicates, in an interminably rendered conversation, her concern and affection to Zooey, who then, after an even longer conversation with Franny, manages to gather from the haunted atmosphere of the apartment the crucial word of consolation. Franny, "as if all of what little or much wisdom there is in the world were suddenly hers," smiles at the ceiling and falls asleep.

read the entire review...

Puritan Poetry -- No Kidding!

Anne Bradstreet is one of America's first female writers. Her work is simple and accessible and this particular piece very illustrative of Puritan values and beliefs.

ON THE BURNING OF OUR HOUSE
by Anne Bradstreet (1612-1672)

In silent night when rest I took
For sorrow near I did not look,
I wakened--'twas with thundering noise--
And piteous shrieks of dreadful voice.
The fearful sound of fire and fire
Let no man know is my Desire.
I started up, the light did spy
And to my God my heart did cry
To strengthen me in my distress
And not to leave me succorless.
Then coming out beheld a space
The flame consume my dwelling place,
And when I could no longer look
I blessed His Name who gave and took,
That laid my goods now in the dust
Yea so it was, and so 'twas just.
It was his own it was not mine
Far be it yet I should repine,
He might of All justly bereft,
But yet sufficient for us left.
When by the Ruines oft I pass
My sorrowing eyes aside did cast
And here and there the places spy
Where oft I sat and long did lie,
Here stood that trunk, and there that chest
There lay that store I counted best
My pleasant things in ashes lie
And them behold no more shall I.
Under thy roof no guest shall sit,
Nor at thy table eat a bit.
No pleasant tale shall 'ere be told
Nor things recounted done of old.
No candle 'ere shall shine in thee
Nor bridegroom's voice 'ere heard shall be.
In silence ever shalt thou lie
Adieu, adieu, all's vanity.
Then straight I 'gin my heart to chide,
And did thy wealth on Earth abide,
Didst fix thy hope on mouldering dust,
The arm of flesh didst make thy trust?
Raise up thy thoughts above the sky
That dunghill mists away may fly.
Thou hast a house on high erect,
Framed by that mighty Architect,
With glory richly furnished
Stands permanent though this be fled.
It's purchased and paid for, too
By Him who hath Enough to do.
A prize so vast as is unknown
Yet by his Gift is made thine own.
There's wealth enough--I need no more,
Farewell my pelf, farewell my store.
The world no longer let me love
My hope, my treasure, lies above.