Short Story Interpretation
Read/review the following resources for this activity:
Textbook (Foster): Chapter 1, 11
Textbook (Charters):
Nathaniel Hawthorne – “Young Goodman Brown”
Edgar Allan Poe – “Cask of Amontillado”; “Tell-Tale Heart”; “The Importance of the Single Effect in a Prose Tale”
Lecture
Introduction to the Course
Foster’s First Themes
Edgar Allan Poe & Nathaniel Hawthorne
Link (website): Purdue Owl (All work must be submitted in proper format). This course stipulates APA.
Minimum of 3 outside resources (Resources may include .edu or .org website and/or peer-reviewed journal articles from the TU library.)
Activity Instructions
Please select one of the two essay topics below. Please use cited examples and quotes from the stories. If you are applying concepts from Foster, please be sure to cite examples and quotes, as well.
As mentioned in the Poe lecture, one of the reasons Poe makes such enormous use of sound in his stories is that he began his creative writing career as a poet and had a great ear for language. But he is not simply using the sound of language in his stories; he focuses a great deal of attention on sound and hearing.
What are the effects of Poe’s focusing on sound in his stories?
Is there something about sound that lends itself more readily to horror and mystery stories?
Find a scene from a horror movie you find to be particularly scary. As an after note to your paper, talk about the role sound played in creating a more terrifying scene.
Now that you have read Poe and written this paper, what role do you think sound plays in horror that has stayed true from Poe’s time to our own?
Young Goodman Brown becomes a distrustful and cynical man after his night in the woods.
Can a human being regain a positive outlook of the world after such an experience?
Does Hawthorne put Young Goodman Brown through too much or are there parts of the modern world where the metaphorical “party in the woods” is taking place each night while people claim to be pure?
As part of your paper, find a news article that speaks to your point of view when it comes to the “party in the woods.”
