Skeletons-Personal Narrative

In “The Pit and the Pendulum”, the atmosphere is dark and unsettling. In addition to the setting and characters, there are various other factors that give the story a creepy feel to it. Furthermore, the narrator’s thoughts and descriptions add to the ominous mood of the story. For example, the tale states, “By long suffering my nerves had been unstrung, until I trembled at the sound of my own voice, and had become in every respect a fitting subject for the species of torture which awaited me” (Poe 5). At this point in the story, the narrator, falling into his torturers’ trap, tips on the verge of insanity and begins to lose hope. The reader can easily picture the narrator, cowering against the wall, eyes wide, flinching at the slightest of sounds. Therefore, along with the horrifying aspects of the torture chamber, the unstable narrator and his thoughts create a foreboding and macabre feeling characteristic to gothic

I had not expected to feel, after an unknown amount of time, the gentle sensation of a small creature slobbering all over my face. In fact, I had not expected to feel anything. My resignation to the dark caverns of the hallowed Hades and the ghostly Persephone was fabricated out of the sheer desperation and weakness of my mortal body. After all these years, my spirit still clung onto the possibility of seeing those comforting peaks of Ithaca before I slipped the coin to the pocket of the ferryman.

These tunnels below the city of Arras were a bizarre no-man's-land, "Rosy gloom" being not only an oxymoron, but a state of mind. Rosy is defined as the color of hope. Gloom is defined as a state despair and darkness. Used together the reader gains a sense a soldier’s state of mind. Forever in optimism, yet rooted in anguish. Once again the poet thrusts the reader back into the war. The tunnel has become so confusing to the soldier’s state of mind that he has stumbled over something directly underfoot. He thinks it is a sleeping soldier, whom he believes is alive for now our mislaid warrior speaks. There is no answer. The combatant yells at the man, his frustration of the high strung pressure he is under, bursting forth. An exclamation of annoyance and the declaration "for days he'd had no sleep" explain the soldier's robust edginess and resentment of the sleeping man. "Stinking place" reminds us that he is still in a dark lonely hole with corrupted air and only tinned goods and a strange man for company. "Savage" is the first description we get that our soldier is losing his mind and maybe his humanity. The "sleeping" man becomes a "heap," and now we know the man laying upon the earth is dead. As the

this! With a shriek, I rushed from the margin and buried my face in my hands -weeping bitterly,”

A succession of loud and shrill screams, bursting suddenly from the throat of the chained form, seemed to thrust me violently back. For a brief moment I hesitated, I trembled. Unsheathing my rapier, I began to grope with it about the recess; but the thought of an instant reassured me. I placed my hand upon the solid fabric of the catacombs, and felt satisfied. I reapproached the wall. I replied to the yells of him who clamoured. I re-echoed — I aided — I surpassed them in volume and in strength. I did this, and the clamourer grew

the screams of pain, the pangs of hunger, and merciless evil. The novel recounts the

As Montresor and Fortunato venture the abyss of the catacombs, an eerie theme and scene linger. Montresor defines the catacombs as “a long and winding staircase” accompanied with “damp grounds … encrusted with nitre”, a poisonous compound laden along the walls (Poe). The nitre sickens Fortunato, and the use of onomatopoeia allows the reader to conceptualize the cacophony

I used to be proud of who I was. I used to be free, but I’ve fallen, slowly stripped bare of all I was and could have been. I resent them, those who gruesomely ripped me from my haven and shackled me beneath their feet. I resent the world for abandoning me in this hell, leaving me to suffer. I resent who I have become, a puppet, used only for their entertainment. The devil only grows within me, plaguing my mind during the sleepless nights. Feeding images into my mind. Images of their blood splattered across the walls of their beloved blue and red (tent). My teeth sinking into the fatty flesh of their neck. The horror painted on their faces as I gleefully avenge the loss of my sanity. And I detest myself. I loathe the satisfaction that I feel fantasising about their murder. I fear myself, and what I have become under their control. I yearn for the days I spent in my

I am a murderer. Perhaps the crime was not committed by my hands, but it was intended by my mind. It was my will that worked through Macbeth when he drew the treacherous blade and plunged it into the heart of the unsuspecting king. I, his other half, his soul mate, the love of his life, taunted him of being a coward, questioning his reputable manliness, and like a puppet he moved as I pulled the strings.

Even though Mr. Malter knew Reuven would want to know about Danny. He kept this unspoken promise to Danny.

My name was announced. The silence in the room allowed me to hear the judges’ pens scratch through my concise, four- letter name. With my baggy blue button- down, and all black dress- pants on, I proceeded down the auditorium aisle and onto the stage. Even though the crowd consisted of only around 30 uninterested students who purposefully displayed their lack of care, I still felt a pressing audience. Turning to my public- speaking teacher, I acknowledged the “you-may-begin” nod and turned back to the crowd, realizing what I had gotten myself into.

The human mind possesses a vivid and limitless imagination. When confronted with tragedy, the mind can distort reality by making instances look appear worse. In the poem Persephone Writes a Letter to Her Mother by A.E. Stallings, the author discusses Persephone’s dreadful and solitary life in the underground world. The repressive lifestyle she is subjected to deforms her mind because of the negative attitudes caused by her surroundings. As a result, Persephone writes a letter to her mother, Demeter, in an effort to explain the horrors of the underworld. She describes the underworld as horrendous by stating “ the dead breed like the bulbs of daffodils- without sex or seed-all underground- Yet no race has such increase. Worse than insect.”

I am a murderer. Perhaps the crime was not committed by my hands, but it was intended by my mind. It was my will that worked through Macbeth when he drew the treacherous blade and plunged it into the heart of the unsuspecting king. I, his other half, his soul mate, the love of his life, taunted him of being a coward, questioning his reputable manliness, and like a puppet he moved as I pulled the strings.

Their liminal nature, the quality which makes them monstrous, is reflected in the spaces they occupy within the landscape of the poem. These monsters are constructed by and inextricable from the landscapes which they inhabit. The landscape gives these monsters meaning. These monsters are not so much living breathing creatures, but a manifestation of Old English elemental fears in the dream like configuration of the narrative. Whether its Heorot, the sea, Grendel’s mere or the Dragon’s lair; these landscapes help define entities in this poem. In this presentation I will be looking at the symbolic value of these landscapes, how they build on the understanding of the world in an Old English context and how they interact with one another during the progression of the narrative to justify Elements of God, the supernatural and Nature in their

Scuttling innocently through the twisting corridors I bore the same expression; head down, shoulders hunched, avoiding any eye contact - my desperate attempts to deter the despot for one day at least. Despite my efforts, there was no escape, as seemingly within the second of having that naively optimistic thought, a cruel, callous voice demanded I surrender my broach. Fear spiked, as it always did, but with it came something else, an alien emotion ... Looking back now, I see that it must have been the cumulative effect of months of torment that brought me to the realisation that at this point I had reached the nadir of my life. Deriding cackles pierced my ears and this time I recognised the emotion, fury. It burned through my veins, along with the memories of the past to form a feeling of overwhelming power. I met the daggers that would usually invoke terror, and calmly, I said “No.”