Book Report: 'The Bad Beginning' by Lemony Snicket

Which of course causes a buildup of anger, and takes it out on his family. Then, the family becomes so desperate that they force Teta, Nikolajus, and Vilimas to get jobs to support their family at the young aged of 10 and 11.

Most times, anything abnormal or odd tend to be pushed under the rug. Edgar Allan Poe subtly brings attention to topics the are typically ignored. E. A. Poe had far from a perfect childhood. His father left when he was young and his mother died when he was three. Poe also seemed to have a lonely childhood after his parents were gone. He was separated from his relatives and didn’t appear to have many friends. He attended the army and after went into West Point. His academics there were well but he was eventually kicked out because of poor handlings of his duties. Before Poe died, he struggled with depression and a drinking problem. Some believe Poe’s tragic lifetime was the inspiration for some of his stories. Such as, “The Fall of the House of Usher”. A possible theory about this story is that Roderick and the Narrator were one in the same. This essay will discuss the possibility of them being the same through plot, characterization, and personification.

Roderick and Madeline demonstrate tell-tale signs of madness--anxiety, nervousness, depression. In this story they are impacted by their gloomy surroundings of the estate that has been passed down through the long but struggling line of Ushers and is now given only to the final two, Madeline and her twin brother Roderick. The house takes in a diseased and sinister appearance, dark and peculiar surrounded by fallen trees and murky ponds. The main reason why the Usher bloodline dwindled down so quickly was due to the evil house intoxicating their minds and making them lose their senses, or in Madeleine's case a incurable sickness of the body and not mind. The twins symbolize conscious and unconscious, they showcase a sense of balance and use each other as

Poe uses the theme of isolation in the short story to show one of the reasons why the house collapses. Roderick and Madeline suffer from mental illness such as depression, anxiety and many other symptoms. Roderick and

No matter how ugly, mean, pitiful one can be, the family is always meant to support, raise, guide, nurture and be a means of inspiration in anyone’s life. In the novel, this isn’t the case for Pecola, which is why she gets mentally unstable as she couldn’t bear the torture of ugliness of not having blue eyes. Blue eyes are the one and only reason she could blame as per to her ability and thought process. In fact, she doesn’t get the real ugliness of how her father rapes her, the ugliness of how the mother choose the white girl over her, the ugliness of the fights between her parents is coming from their unpleasant past. After all, she doesn’t have that mentor in her life to explain what was happening. Everybody in her family is occupied with their own mindset. She is very young to understand and analyze on her own. The narrator Claudia even gets to compare between her and Pecola and starts accepting life and feel blessed for having a supportive family, which she doesn’t feel until Pecola enters in her life. So, this shows how young kids psychology is totally built upon the type of family environment she/he gets. There is a saying that young kids are like a raw clay ready to be shaped into the different form of objects by the potter. Undoubtedly, it stands so true. Indeed, kids shape themselves according to the type of environment they grow up with. By all means, Pecola’s family is the

When Roderick finally discovers that he prematurely buried his sister Madeline, his condition reaches it’s peak , destroys him mentally, and causes the narrator to leave the house in absolute terror.

From bad to worse, or from bad to cursed? I always love a good play on words, which is what made this book catch my eye. From Bad to Cursed, by Katie Alender, is the second book in her three part series that is one of my favorites to read. From Bad to Cursed is the continuation of the first book, Bad Girls Don’t Die. It shares the bizarre life Lexi and her sister, Kasey, have gotten themselves into. Kasey, once again, goes ballistic when she makes an unbelievable decision to basically become sired to a possessed book with a group of girls. They call it, “The Sunshine Club.” This book has to be my number one choice out of the three, and you are about to find out exactly why. The main aspect that will be focused on relates to what we have been learning in class, archetypes; I found three in this book that I particularly want to drill on which are the outcast or rebel, sidekick, and the innocent.

The narrator comes to the House to aid his dying friend, Roderick Usher. As he arrives at the House he comes upon an “aura of vacancy and decay… creating a pathologically depressive mood” (Cook). The state of the House is daunting to the narrator – he describes it with such features as “bleak walls”, “eye-like windows”, “rank sedges”, “decayed trees”, and “an utter depression of the soul”. These images foreshadow a less than pleasant future for the narrator and his dear friend Roderick. Poe continues to foreshadow the narrators turn of events with a description of the House’s “dark” and “comfortless” furniture. The House becomes a living hell for the narrator as he watches Roderick’s condition evolve and struggles to understand the mystery tying unfortunate events together. However, as the narrator gradually becomes more enveloped in Roderick and the House’s malady, he seems to develop a malady of his own. While the narrator’s illness is less prominent than that of Roderick and his sister Lady Madeline, the sicknesses are one in the same.

This routine breaks when his twin sister Madeline “dies” and Roderick and the narrator entomb her within the house. The death of his sister causes Roderick to descend deeper into his own madness. He spends most of his time roaming “from chamber to chamber with hurried, unequal, and objectless step” and began neglecting the daily activities shared between him and the narrator (Poe).

Throughout the life of esteemed author Edgar Allan Poe, there have been many time that this extraordinary man’s life has been turned upside down with grief. His first encounter with this wretched demon was when he was no older than three years of age. The mother who birthed him dies and his father abandons them before her death (“Edgar Allan Poe”). He then is separated from his brother and sister, William and Rosalie, and place with a family who is not his own (“Edgar Allan Poe”). He had grown quite an attachment to his foster mother only for her to die when he was around age 20. He had tried desperately to

The movies pans over into each child's room and paints a picture of how each sibling have been affected in the past and how they'll be like in the future. Chas for instance is businesslike but ingenious and joyous on the inside. So it would make sense that he would breed a bunch of mice and sell them to make money. Margot is clever yet is a victim of emotional abuse it can demonstrated with her taste for stage plays and ballet. Richie is unaware of the distress of his family as he is light hearted and shows his love for collection of cars, drum kits, and sports. We also get a close up of each character's morning routine in current time. Such as Chas’ obsession with fitness at the gym and how Richie still held onto his collection of his toy cars in the background as he gets ready in the morning. As the story goes on we get a deeper understanding of how the characters truly feel. Chas feels like he has to be a man in charge because he isn't over the death of his wife. Richie has had a crush on his adopted sister Margot, but she’s secretly been with his best friend Eli(Owen Wilson). She had always been secretive since she was young and it was her thing. Robert Ebert also acknowledges it by saying “ Nobody else in the family cares, and when they discover her deception they hardly notice. Her secrecy was part of her own strategy to stand outside the family, to have something that was her own.” The

Violet, Klaus and Sunny do their best to warn Uncle Monty of the true identity of Stephano, but their warning comes too late. Uncle Monty is found dead in the Reptile Room, an apparent victim of snakebite. Stephano tries to whisk the children off to Peru, but he crashes into Mr. Poe's car before leaving Uncle Monty's house. The children are delighted to see Mr. Poe, but unfortunately, they cannot convince him that Stephano is really Count

Incest is an issue throughout the story and Poe constantly used symbolism in the story to relate back to incest. Poe uses symbolism to expose character traits throughout the story, from the

Before discussing the topic proper, the reader must understand the writing style of Edgar Allan Poe. His father abandons the family leaving his mother to raise 3 children on her own. Both of the parents die leaving the children, at very young ages, homeless. A man named John Allan takes in Poe and raises him. However, after Allan’s firm fails he refuses to financially support Poe. Edgar Allan Poe begins to drink and fall into deep debt. His resolution is to gamble, but he ends up losing even more money. He loses around “$2000, around $30,000 in current value” (Baym 629). Being forced to drop out of his first year in college, he

The chapters 1 and 2 of the novel To Kill a Mockingbird, the story begins at the beginning of summer, with the introduction of Scout and Jem two kids trying to enjoy to dog-days of summer in the plain and simple town of Maycomb. Their summer stays this way until they meet a boy by the name of Dill; Dill, Scout, and Jim play together by reenacting scenes from famous movies like Dracula. But when Dill hears about the legend of the Radley’s and there abandon estate, he becomes entranced with the Radley’s and wants to find out what really happened to Boo Radley. His interest in the Radley’s goes to such an extent that he dares Jem to get Boo Radley to leave his house by going on his property. After the deed was done summer winds down to an end as Dill leaves for Meridian, bored with nothing to look forward in summer Scout realizes that school is going to start. Jem starts to distance himself from Scout saying “Jem was careful to explain that during the school hour I was not to bother him”. Scouts starts to realize that school is different as she is punished for speaking out of turn and trying to explain why Walter cannot accept money from Miss Caroline. She takes this as an insult against Walter and punishes her, as it turns out school is a lot different than home.