Author: Melanie Alvarado

A story that I really liked was “the veld” because it is a story that shows us what could happen if technology continues to advance. Another thing that I liked was the end of the story, it left me with a lot of intrigue about what happened to the parents and the children, did the parents die? disappeared? What happened in itself with everything, it left me with many doubts. This story shows me the consequences of wanting to have an easy life in which everything is done by someone else or, as in the story, the house. the house brushed teeth, dressed and made food for everyone. people practically didn’t have to do anything. The children did not do anything for themselves and for me that is very bad, and an example is when the parents decide to turn off the nursery, the children became hysterical, they shouted not to turn it off and worse they got when the parents said they had to leave on vacation to a place where they themselves will have to do everything. 

I think that the main characters in the story are basically the parents, since most of the story is the parents talking about the nursery. Two important scenes for me are when the father decides to turn off the nursery forever and when they decide that it is better that they go on vacation to get away from so much technology. I think these scenes are important because the problem at the end of the story originates from these decisions. The ethics that the parent follow I think is Utilitarian ethics because they look like people that got that house for they self-interest since the house do everything, the mother don’t have to clean or cook, the father don’t have to play with the kids or get dressed. And I think they created that nursery just to avoid having to be with the children without think in the future consequences.

Melanie Alvarado

Midterm Essay, English 2001

Oct 19, 2020

Reading “the black cat” and “a rose for Emily” we discover that they are two Gothic stories that have much in common. First, we will talk about what the stories are about to better understand the plot. After knowing the stories, we are going to explore two characters that have a lot in common and how the Gothic elements help their development.

              “The black cat” by Edgar Allan Poe is about a man who loved animals, he married a woman who loved them too. They have many animals roaming around it, they were both thrilled and very in love with their animals. Throughout history, the man gave himself up to drink and while doing that he neglected the animals, he also yelled at his wife, but he never mistreated the cat, the man still loved his cat. But after a while the black cat receives the same consequences as the other animals and the man’s wife. Another day the man returned home drunk and hatred ran through his body when he saw the cat who looked at him with fear. So, he grabbed a rope and the cat, to hang it on the branch of a tree in a house where he hanged it. They moved, but in their new neighborhood, there was a one-eyed cat with a white spot around its neck. With fear running through his blood, he grabs the ax to kill the cat. His wife, in defense of the creature, claims him, telling him not to kill this new animal; The man, as he saw that she would not let him out, killed her. The police arrived, and in search of the wife’s body, they broke down the wall. In which there was a black cat with fire coming out of one eye and a white spot that surrounded its neck, on the corpse of the wife. 

“A rose for Emily” by William Faulkner is about a woman called Emily who loses her dad and start to have strange behavior. People in the neighborhood found out she was going to get married. However, she did not get to marry since Homer her fiancé disappeared. From that moment coming and going. A very strong smell was felt, and the neighbors complained about the smell, but one day that smell disappears. At 74 she dies at home, and the neighbors go to her funeral and discover a room that no one had entered there forty years ago. When they entered the room, they found some men’s objects on the dresser and a suit. On the bed lay a man, and next to it was a pillow that had the marking of a head and gray hair.

Both stories have two characters in common, the unnamed narrator who tells the story in “the black cat” and Emily from “a rose for Emily.” These two characters are similar. In both stories, we can see the “spirit of perverseness” is was makes people do things they know will be bad for themselves and others. “Spirit of perverseness” is used to explain and show why they both behave like this. In “The black cat” the narrator shows that has a violent and aggressive emotional behavior and that he does not feel any remorse or guilt for his actions when he kills the cat he feel nothing and he knew that he doing something wrong but he kills it anyway. In “A rose for Emily” she buys the poison knowing it is dangerous and with the idea of killing her fiancé, she knew she was doing wrong, but she did it anyway so he would never leave her. This shows how the spirit of perverseness works in both stories. We can also see in both stories many gothic elements like the black cat and the Emily’s house to represent the death. The strand of hair like reminder of love and the perverse thing that a person could do to find the happiness.

In the stories “The house of Asterion” and “A very old man with enormous wings” we can see that have gothic elements. The first is the characters, in “the house of Asterion” the main character is a mystery man, he can leave his house, he is not a prisoner but he prefers not to go out since once he tried and people get scared and wanted to hurt him. In all story we think that this man is weird an we don’t the reasons until the end where we discovered that is a minotaur. In “A very old man with enormous wings” appeared a mystery and weird man with wings in the yard of a family, people think that os an angel, the family locked him in the chicken coop.

 The second is the plot point, in the “The house of Asterion” we see a dream, we think that the story is about a mystery man that people fear because he never leaves his house, a lonely man, but as we continue the story we discover that those people fear him because he is a minotaur, and those people that he thought he played were not, they are people who wanted to go to  see him to die. In “a very old man with enormous wings” we see a return to normalcy in the story. We see that the family can no longer bear to see the angel wandering around their house, they think there are too many angles so when the mysterious man finally manages to fly, he was no longer a hindrance in the life of the family, but an imaginary point on the horizon of the sea.

The third is the settings, in the “the House of Asterion” the story happen in a maze, the story never say that is a maze but it is easy to suppose since the story is telling us the story of the minotaur and how Teseo kill it, is a a mythological story. In the “a very old man with enormous wings” the story happens in an old house and the man spends most of the time in the henhouse that is a place dark and dirty.