The Fall of House of Usher

Author: E. A. Poe

Genre: Gothic short story

Date of publication: 1839

Plot: The story begins with the unnamed narrator arriving at the house of his friend, Roderick Usher, having received a letter from him in a distant part of the country complaining of an illness and asking for his help. As he arrives, the narrator notes a thin crack extending from the roof, down the front of the building and into the adjacent lake.

Although Poe wrote this short story before the invention of modern psychological science, Roderick's condition can be described according to its terminology. It includes a form of sensory overload known as hyperesthesia (hypersensitivity to textures, light, sounds, smells and tastes), hypochondria (an excessive preoccupation or worry about having a serious illness) and acute anxiety. It is revealed that Roderick's twin sister, Madeline, is also ill and falls into cataleptic, deathlike trances. The narrator is impressed with Roderick's paintings, and attempts to cheer him by reading with him and listening to his improvised musical compositions on the guitar. Roderick sings "The Haunted Palace", then tells the narrator that he believes the house he lives in to be alive, and that this sentience arises from the arrangement of the masonry and vegetation surrounding it.

Roderick later informs the narrator that his sister has died and insists that she be entombed for two weeks in the family tomb located in the house before being permanently buried. The narrator helps Roderick put the body in the tomb, and he notes that Madeline has rosy cheeks, as some do after death. They inter her, but over the next week both Roderick and the narrator find themselves becoming increasingly agitated for no apparent reason. A storm begins. Roderick comes to the narrator's bedroom, which is situated directly above the vault, and throws open his window to the storm. He notices that the tarn surrounding the house seems to glow in the dark, as it glowed in Roderick Usher's paintings, although there is no lightning.

The narrator attempts to calm Roderick by reading aloud The Mad Tryst, a novel involving a knight named Ethelred who breaks into a hermit's dwelling in an attempt to escape an approaching storm, only to find a palace of gold guarded by a dragon. He also finds, hanging on the wall, a shield of shining brass on which is written a legend:

Who entereth herein, a conqueror hath bin;

Who slayeth the dragon, the shield he shall win;^[1]

With a stroke of his mace, Ethelred kills the dragon, who dies with a piercing shriek, and proceeds to take the shield, which falls to the floor with an unnerving clatter.

As the narrator reads of the knight's forcible entry into the dwelling, cracking and ripping sounds are heard somewhere in the house. When the dragon is described as shrieking as it dies, a shriek is heard, again within the house. As he relates the shield falling from off the wall, a reverberation, metallic and hollow, can be heard. Roderick becomes increasingly hysterical, and eventually exclaims that these sounds are being made by his sister, who was in fact alive when she was entombed. Additionally, Roderick somehow knew that she was alive. The bedroom door is then blown open to reveal Madeline standing there. She falls on her brother, and both land on the floor as corpses. The narrator then flees the house, and, as he does so, notices a flash of moonlight behind him which causes him to turn back, in time to see the moon shining through the suddenly widened crack. As he watches, the House of Usher splits in two and the fragments sink into the tarn.

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

BY ROBERT FROST

Whose woods these are I think I know.   

His house is in the village though;   

He will not see me stopping here   

To watch his woods fill up with snow.   

My little horse must think it queer   

To stop without a farmhouse near   

Between the woods and frozen lake   

The darkest evening of the year.   

He gives his harness bells a shake   

To ask if there is some mistake.   

The only other sound’s the sweep   

Of easy wind and downy flake.   

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,   

But I have promises to keep,   

And miles to go before I sleep,   

And miles to go before I sleep.

-         Robert Frost is nature poet. But unlike William Wordsworth and many other nature poets, he is pessimistic in his tone. His other poems like “DESIGN”, ‘FIRE & ICE” are examples for this. He was a farmer by profession. And that gets reflected in all his works.

Sense and Sensibility

Author: Jne Austen

Date of publication: 1811

Place: United Kingdom

Plot: Because of primogeniture, when Mr Henry Dashwood dies, his house, Norland Park, passes directly to his son John, the child of his first wife. His second wife, Mrs Dashwood, and their daughters, Elinor, Marianne and Margaret, inherit only a small income. On his deathbed, Mr Dashwood extracts a promise from his son, to take care of his half-sisters. John's greedy wife, Fanny, soon persuades him to renege on the promise. John and Fanny immediately move in as the new owners of Norland, while the Dashwood women are treated as unwelcome guests. Mrs Dashwood seeks somewhere else to live. In the meantime, Fanny's brother, Edward Ferrars visits Norland and soon forms an attachment with Elinor. Fanny disapproves of the match and offends Mrs Dashwood with the implication that Elinor is motivated by money.

Mrs Dashwood moves her family to Barton Cottage in Devonshire, near the home of her cousin, Sir John Middleton. Their new home is modest but they are warmly received by Sir John and welcomed into local society—meeting his wife, Lady Middleton, his mother-in-law, Mrs Jennings and his friend, Colonel Brandon. Colonel Brandon is attracted to Marianne, and Mrs Jennings teases them about it. Marianne is not pleased as she considers the thirty-five-year-old Colonel Brandon an old bachelor, incapable of falling in love or inspiring love in anyone else.

A 19th-century illustration by Hugh Thomson showing Willoughby cutting a lock of Marianne's hair

Marianne, out for a walk, gets caught in the rain, slips and sprains her ankle. The dashing John Willoughby sees the accident and assists her. Marianne quickly comes to admire his good looks and outspoken views on poetry, music, art and love. His attentions lead Elinor and Mrs Dashwood to suspect that the couple are secretly engaged. Elinor cautions Marianne against her unguarded conduct, but Marianne refuses to check her emotions. Abruptly, Mr Willoughby informs the Dashwoods that his aunt, upon whom he is financially dependent, is sending him to London on business, indefinitely. Marianne is distraught and abandons herself to her sorrow.

Edward Ferrars pays a short visit to Barton Cottage but seems unhappy. Elinor fears that he no longer has feelings for her, but will not show her heartache. After Edward departs, Anne and Lucy Steele, the vulgar cousins of Lady Middleton, come to stay at Barton Park. Lucy informs Elinor in confidence of her secret four-year engagement to Edward Ferrars that started when he was studying with her uncle, and she displays proof. Elinor realises that Lucy's visit and revelations are the result of Lucy's jealousy and cunning calculation, and understands Edward's recent behavior towards her. She acquits Edward of blame and pities him for being held to a loveless engagement by his sense of honour.

Elinor and Marianne accompany Mrs Jennings to London. On arriving, Marianne rashly writes several personal letters to Willoughby, which go unanswered. When they meet at a dance, Mr Willoughby greets Marianne reluctantly and coldly, to her extreme distress. Soon Marianne receives a curt letter enclosing their former correspondence and love tokens, including a lock of her hair and informing her of his engagement to a young lady with a large fortune. Marianne is devastated. After Elinor has read the letter, Marianne tells her that she and Willoughby were never engaged, but she loved him and thought that he loved her.

Colonel Brandon visits the sisters and reveals to Elinor that Willoughby's aunt disinherited him after she learned that he had seduced Brandon's fifteen-year-old ward, Miss Williams, then abandoned her when she became pregnant. This is why he chose to marry for money rather than love. Brandon was in love with Miss Williams' mother as a young man, when she was his father's ward, but she was forced into an unhappy marriage to Brandon's brother that ended in scandal and divorce; Marianne strongly reminds him of her.

The Steele sisters come to London as guests of Mrs Jennings and after a brief acquaintance they are asked to stay at John and Fanny Dashwood's London house. Lucy sees the invitation as a personal compliment, rather than what it is, a slight to Elinor and Marianne who should have received such invitation first. Too talkative, Anne Steele betrays Lucy's secret. As a result, the Misses Steele are turned out of the house, and Edward is ordered to break off the engagement on pain of disinheritance. Edward refuses to comply and is immediately disinherited in favour of his brother, gaining respect for his conduct, and sympathy from Elinor and Marianne. Colonel Brandon shows his admiration by offering Edward the living of Delaford parsonage.

Mrs Jennings takes Elinor and Marianne to the country to visit her second daughter. In her misery over Willoughby's marriage, Marianne becomes dangerously ill. Willoughby arrives to repent and reveals to Elinor that his love for Marianne was genuine. He elicits Elinor's pity because his choice has made him unhappy, but she is disgusted by the callous way in which he talks of Miss Williams and of his own wife. He also reveals that his aunt forgave him after his marriage, meaning that if he had married Marianne he would have had both money and love.

When Marianne recovers, Elinor tells her of Willoughby's visit. Marianne realises that she could never have been happy with Willoughby's immoral and expansive nature. She values Elinor's conduct in her similar situation and resolves to model herself after Elinor's courage and good sense. Edward arrives and reveals that, after his disinheritance, Lucy jilted him in favour of his now wealthy brother, Robert. Edward and Elinor soon marry, and later Marianne marries Colonel Brandon, having gradually come to love him.

Paradise Lost

Author: Milton

Paradise Lost book 9

• Book 9 opens with Milton's final invocation; he says he must now change his "notes" (i.e., his poem) to "tragic."
• Milton says that his theme is more heroic than all the martial epics of Homer, Virgil, and Spenser that have preceded him. The themes of those poems are "Not that which justly gives heroic name/ To person or to poem" (9.40-41).
• The sun sets and night falls as Satan returns – "fearless" and "bent on man's destruction" – to the garden. He's been gone for about a week.
• There's a river (the Tigris) that flows underground and remerges as a fountain in Paradise; Satan uses this river to get back into the garden.
• He decides to become a serpent to execute his designs against Adam and Eve.
• Before that, though, he bursts out in complaint, saying the earth is really beautiful; "With what delight could I have walked thee round," he exclaims.
• It turns out, though, that Satan really can't enjoy it; the whole thing just makes him mad. He's not hoping to become happy because of what he's doing; he just wants to make others as miserable as he is.
• He searches throughout the night for the serpent. He finds him (the serpent), enters through his mouth, and waits until dawn.
• As the sun rises, Adam and Eve come forth. Eve suggests to Adam that they divide their labor; often, when working together, they don't get anything done.
• Adam responds by saying labor isn't such a big deal that they can't rest and take it easy. But, if
• Eve wants to get away for a while, that's OK with him because "Solitude sometimes is best society."
• Adam is uneasy though; he reminds Eve that they've been warned about Satan and that they're better off together.
• Eve isn't crazy about Adam's comment, so she says in return that she's upset that Adam has his doubts about her.
• Adam responds by saying that he doesn't doubt her ability to resist temptation; he just thinks it would be dishonorable for her to suffer temptation alone.
• Eve responds, saying that temptation in itself isn't a bad thing; it will only prove how strong she and Adam are, and how evil Satan is.
• Adam replies with some remarks about the importance of trial and concludes by telling Eve that he doesn't want to make her work with him against her will.
• Eve says she'll back by noon or so and that such a proud foe as Satan is wouldn't dare attempt to mess with the "weaker" sex because that would make his punishment all the more shameful.
• Satan is waiting in the bushes for Eve; he had been hoping to find her alone and lo and behold his wish has come true!
• Satan can't believe how gorgeous Eve is; seeing her is like being pent up in a disgusting city and then going out to the country for some fresh air. For a moment, Satan forgets his hate.
• Then he snaps out of it and tells himself not to forget about the hate and revenge that brought him here. He also makes some remark about how much easier this is going to be with just Eve.
• He moves towards Eve, except he moves in a sideways motion, almost as if he didn't want to interrupt her. Oh, and he's walking upright, not crawling on his belly.
• He approaches here, and makes some noise in an effort to get her attention; she doesn't notice because she's used to it, so he makes some bolder gestures. He even licks the ground she walks on!
• By the way, the first letter of each line from 510-514 spells "Satan." That's called an acrostic.
• Satan addresses Eve, telling her not to wonder. He tells her she's so beautiful that everybody should be able to gaze on her, not just Adam.
• Eve is surprised ("not unamazed"); she says she didn't think animals could talk and wants to know how it is that he can speak.
• Satan responds, again with flattery, by saying he used to be as dumb as the other animals. But then he saw a tree whose fruit looked soooooo good; he couldn't resist so he slithered up the trunk and took some.
• It was marvelous, he says, because then he could talk and think and reason.
• Eve is amazed. She asks the Satan (disguised as a serpent) which tree it was and to lead her to it, which he gladly does.
• He's clearly deceiving her; he's kind of like a mirage or fire at night that distracts wandering travelers and leads them astray.
• He leads Eve to the "Tree/ Of prohibition." Eve tells Satan that she's not allowed to eat from it and makes a cute pun as well: it is "Fruitless…though fruit be here to excess," she says. Hehe.
• Satan can't believe it and realizes he will have to more persuasive. He starts moving around like some ancient orator in Greece or Rome.
• He tells Eve that the fruit won't kill her; just look at him! He ate from it, and he's fine! Besides, why shouldn't she be able to eat the same stuff as the beasts (i.e., the serpent)?
• What is more, he says, God will admire her boldness in eating what will make her smarter, despite God's threats of death!
• God wouldn't hurt Eve, he continues, because that wouldn't be just. The only reason he's forbidden her to eat is because he wants to "keep ye low and ignorant."
• If she eats the fruit, she'll become like the gods and possess a much clearer vision of things, just like the serpent.
• The only death that will result is that she will put off her human nature and assume a godlike one, he claims. So eat the fruit, he says to her.
• Eve is tricked by Satan; his words have "too easy entrance won" into her heart. It's near lunchtime, and she's hungry; that fruit looks so good, and she can't stop staring at it.
• Eve addresses the fruit, saying it is quite powerful (it gave the serpent the ability to speak) and the fact that it is forbidden makes it even more desirable.
• Why should mankind be denied knowledge, she asks? It has done wonders for the serpent so why shouldn't she be allowed to have it too? Was death made only for mankind?
• She eats the fruit; or rather, she stuffs her face with it until she's full. Nature shudders as Eve eats death.
• She addresses the fruit then as the most "precious" of all trees. She vows to sing to it everyday, and eat from it everyday until she grows wise.
• But what about Adam? Should she tell him? If he doesn't eat, and she dies because she ate it, Adam will get a new Eve. She decides to tell him.
• Meanwhile, Adam has been weaving a little garland for Eve's hair. Anxious, he goes looking for her and eventually bumps into her near the Tree of Knowledge.
• Eve runs up to him with a bunch of fruit and tells Adam that the tree isn't like what they've been told. It has not caused death but has rather opened her eyes. She wants Adam to eat some of the fruit too.
• Adam is shocked; his blood turns icy cold. He drops the pretty garland he has made for her and then speaks to himself.
• He says, "How art thou lost, how on a sudden lost" (9.900). He can't believe it; he's doomed too, he says, because he can't stand to be without Eve, or to watch her suffer.
• He then tells Eve that she's done a bold thing; however, it's clear that the fruit will cause them to become like gods.
• God won't kill his first-made creatures, says Adam; besides, he would have to un-create the world too, which was made for and is dependent on Adam and Eve.
• Adam loves Eve too much, and he will go down with her.
• Eve says everything she's thought about Adam has been confirmed. She encourages him to eat with similar language that Satan used with her: "Adam, freely taste."
• With that, Eve offers Adam a healthy portion of the fruit; he eats it, and the earth groans again. Thunder is heard, and some rain drops fall.
• They both feel like gods, and experience lust for the first time ("in lust they burn"). Adam gives Eve a look, she returns it, and then Adam says "now let us play."
• They have sex for a while in some thicket, fall asleep, and then wake up "as from unrest." The fruit is bad, almost a drug, and they're now waking up with a hangover.
• They now realize they are naked, and Adam tells Eve that the serpent lied and that they have lost their innocence.
• He suggests that they find something to cover up their private parts; they choose some fig leaves. They then sit down and cry while various passions like anger and hate tear up their insides.
• Adam tells Eve that if she had only stayed home that morning this wouldn't have happened; Eve responds by saying it could just as easily have happened because the serpent was so persuasive.

Once upon a Time

Poet: Gabriel Okara

Once Upon a Time
Once upon a time, son,
they used to laugh with their hearts
and laugh with their eyes:
but now they only laugh with their teeth,
while their ice-block-cold eyes
search behind my shadow.

There was a time indeed
they used to shake hands with their hearts:
but that’s gone, son.
Now they shake hands without hearts
while their left hands search
my empty pockets.

‘Feel at home!’ ‘Come again’:
they say, and when I come
again and feel
at home, once, twice,
there will be no thrice-
for then I find doors shut on me.

So I have learned many things, son.
I have learned to wear many faces
like dresses – homeface,
officeface, streetface, hostface,
cocktailface, with all their conforming smiles
like a fixed portrait smile.

And I have learned too
to laugh with only my teeth
and shake hands without my heart.
I have also learned to say,’Goodbye’,
when I mean ‘Good-riddance’:
to say ‘Glad to meet you’,
without being glad; and to say ‘It’s been
nice talking to you’, after being bored.

But believe me, son.
I want to be what I used to be
when I was like you. I want
to unlearn all these muting things.
Most of all, I want to relearn
how to laugh, for my laugh in the mirror
shows only my teeth like a snake’s bare fangs!

So show me, son,
how to laugh; show me how
I used to laugh and smile
once upon a time when I was like you.

-          Unlike general conception of “Generation Gape”, here poet talks about learning something from our younger generation. As we grow with our age, we loose out natural behavior and more we become artificial. Poet is now fade up with the double standards. And tells his son that he wants to be like him once again. Poet feels nostalgic about his childhood days and its innocence.

Oliver Twist

Author: Charles Dickens

Genre : Trag-comady (Novel)

Date of publication: 1838

Place: England

Plot: Oliver Twist, or The Parish Boy's Progress, is the second novel by English author Charles Dickens and was first published as a serial 1837–39. The story is of the orphan Oliver Twist, who starts his life in a workhouse and is then sold into apprenticeship with an undertaker. He escapes from there and travels to London, where he meets the Artful Dodger, a member of a gang of juvenile pickpockets led by the elderly criminal, Fagin.

Oliver Twist is notable for its unromantic portrayal by Dickens of criminals and their sordid lives, as well as for exposing the cruel treatment of the many orphans in London in the mid-19th century.^[1] The alternate title, The Parish Boy's Progress, alludes to Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress, as well as the 18th-century caricature series by William Hogarth, A Rake's Progress and A Harlot's Progress.^[2]

In this early example of the social novel, Dickens satirizes the hypocrisies of his time, including child labour, the recruitment of children as criminals, and the presence of street children. The novel may have been inspired by the story of Robert Blincoe, an orphan whose account of working as a child labourer in a cotton mill was widely read in the 1830s. It is likely that Dickens's own youthful experiences contributed as well.^[3]

Oliver Twist has been the subject of numerous adaptations for various media, including a highly successful musical play, Oliver!, and the multiple Academy Award-winning 1968 motion picture. Disney also put its spin on the novel with the movie called Oliver and Company in 1988.^[4]

Characters

·         Oliver Twist – an orphan

·         Fagin – criminal boss of a gang of young boys

·         Nancy – a prostitute

·         Rose Maylie – Oliver's maternal aunt

·         Mrs. Lindsay Maylie – Harry Maylie's mother. Rose Maylie's adoptive aunt

·         Mr. Brownlow – a kindly gentleman who takes Oliver in

·         Monks – a sickly criminal, a cohort of Fagin's, and long-lost half-brother of Oliver

·         Mr. Bumble – a beadle in the parish workhouse where Oliver was born

·         Bill Sikes – a professional burglar

·         Agnes Fleming – Oliver's mother

·         Mr. Leeford – Oliver's and Monks's father

·         Mr. Losberne – Mrs. Maylie's family doctor

·         Harry Maylie – Mrs. Maylie's son

·         The Artful Dodger – Fagin's most adept pickpocket

·         Charley Bates – a pickpocket

·         Old Sally – a nurse who attended Oliver's birth

·         Mrs. Corney – matron at Oliver's workhouse