This premise presents itself in the short story by Richard Connell. ... All three short stories presented are excellent examples of man's inhumanity to man. ... The school children in the short story by Ray Bradbury treat Margot very cruelly. ... In Edgar Allen Poe's short story, Montresor locks Fortunato in the basement to die. "Cruelty is a part of nature, at least of human nature, but it is the one thing that seems unnatural to us"- Robinson Jeffers. ...

• Word Count: 510
• Approx Pages: 2
• Grade Level: High School

During the Romantic period writers shared common themes which they used in their stories and poems. ... In William Cullen Bryant's poem, "To a Waterfowl," he illustrated how life's path is nature's path and some higher "Power" is the power of the human itself. ... In the short story, "The Big Bear of Arkansas," many themes are explored. ... It also goes back to the idea that nature is big and beautiful. ... From the aforementioned examples the themes of Romanticism and how they are illustrated in some short stories and poems become more visible. ...

• Word Count: 376
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• Grade Level: High School

Above all of these devices centers Poe's use of diction throughout the short story. ... The House and the Ushers One of the central themes underlying the short story, The Fall of the House of Usher, is that of the nature of the house. ... Another central theme about this story is the nature of the people that live in the house. ... I agree, in this short story a man comes to visit his friend Roderick. ... In conclusion I feel Edgar uses both characteristics, human perversity and ratiocination in the short story, "The Fall of the House of Usher ...

• Word Count: 1744
• Approx Pages: 7
• Grade Level: High School

In Angela Carters 'The Bloody Chamber' death appears in most of the short stories, but in different ways both actually and metaphorically. ... As the short story progresses, the narrator discovers more and more victims of the Marquis's murders. ... This event of graphic necrophilia is considered the most graphic image in the collection of short stories which explicitly portrays the Count's obsession with death again bringing the story to life. ... This quotation again shows that the death of the girl's human nature does not faze her as she turns into a beast herself. ...

• Word Count: 1039
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

Such works include, Herman Melville's Moby-Dick, Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass, Henry David Thoreau's Walden, the essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Edgar Allan Poe's short stories (Hurley 13, 15). ... Examining questions of human identity, imagination, and intuition, these writers turned inward for a source of truth. The instability of American society also inspired the Romantic faith in nature. Nature was a place of beauty, simplicity, and truth for American Romantics. They looked to nature as a metaphor for the human e...

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Poe's works teach us so much about human nature and the complexity of that nature. Perhaps the most poignant of his tales, at least when looking at the dual-nature of humanity, is his short story "The Cask of Amontillado". ... Finally, now that these questions have been answered (or, at least, have been attempted to be answered) the reader can begin to look at what this story can tell the individual about human nature. Personally, this story taught me a valuable lesson about the dual-nature of humanity. ... Poe pushes his readers to the brink of all that is sane while main...

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This short story, The Fall of the House of Usher, has a very dark mood which will be exposed as the audience is gradually sucked into the plot. ... Authors have been known to use archetypals symbols in their writings to focus more closely on the universal patterns of human nature and to give more emphasis on any point he/she is trying to prove. ... Poe uses contextual symbols in this story to create the depressing mood that this specific short story is notorious for. ... Through the use of imagery Poe was capable of establishing the depressing mood of the short story since he was typically f...

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He is probably most famous for his short stories that delve into obsession, madness, and the destruction of the human mind. ... These stories are intensely similar in many ways. ... Poe uses alcoholism to rationalize a break down in human decency in this story. ... He himself describes a change in nature from good to evil, "My original soul seemed, at once, to take its flight from my body; and a more fiendish malevolence, gin-nurtured, thrilled every fibre of my frame... It is easy to see why Poe is still a celebrated master in the area of the workings of the human mind. ...

• Word Count: 650
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• Grade Level: High School

A Story such as "The Fall of the House of Usher," is a great example of his imagination. ... With Poe's writing skills the gloomy atmosphere plays as much a role in the story as the warped characters. ... Poe wrote stories purely for economic reasons, by choice he was a poet. ... His unique plot construction contributed to the creation of the short story. ... His works romanticize darkness and the boundaries of the human mind; they probe the depths of human nature to the extent of chaos. ...

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Some of the most striking similarities can be found between "The Black Cat" and "The Tell-Tale Heart", two short stories that divulge the inner workings of a perverse mind. First, The plot of these stories is similar in many ways. ... Perverseness, he believes, is "...one of the primitive impulses of the human heart." ... Suffering from intemperance of alcohol and the same obsessive disorder, the man from "The Black Cat" was otherwise good-natured. ... As in most Poe stories, biting and mutilation appear in both. ...

• Word Count: 932
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: High School

Arising from these new techniques came the Romantic approach to the development of Gothic novels, and short stories. ... Particularly in the works of Poe, the Gothic took on a new edge toward the psychological exploration of the human mind. In Edgar Allan Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher", the author depicts the workings of a human mind on the verge of insanity through the use of an allegory of which all characters and events of the story symbolize the human mind's transition into madness, universally conveying the terror that overwhelms and finally destroys the fragile mind of ...

• Word Count: 1147
• Approx Pages: 5
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

Edgar Allen Poe is best known for the dark and gothic nature of his writings. ... The once friendly and loving narrator describes his decline into a wretched and hurtful human being, all due to alcohol abuse. " Unlike many of Poe's stories, "The Fall of the House of Usher " does not use the typical first person point of view where the protagonist tells a personal account of a crime that he has committed. ... Twice near the end of the story, Roderick calls the narrator "Madman! ... After this the rest of the story is told in flashbacks. Both of these short stories remain popular and unfo...

• Word Count: 948
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• Grade Level: High School

This idea is clearly portrayed throughout the poem "The Raven" and short story "The Tell-Tale Heart". ... The student asks the bird questions because of the human tendency for self torture even though he knows the response of the bird in advance (May 1650). ... Things that that killer obsesses about are brought up several times in the short story. ... Poe incorporates himself into his short stories with his dark, poetic writing style as means of representing the evil in him as well as the evil in society. ... In the short story "The Tell-Tell Heart" and poem "The Raven", Poe has deeply influ...

• Word Count: 1485
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• Grade Level: High School

For romantics, the imagination, spontaneity, individual feelings, and nature were of greater value than reason, logic, planning, and cultivation. ... The transcendentalists, writers of this period, optimistically believed in human perfectibility. ... Transcendentalism influenced writers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, who is responsible for the writing of NATURE and SELF-RELIANCE. ... Realistic novelists often relied on the emerging sciences of human and animal behavior-biology, psychology, and sociology-as well as on their own insights and observations. The most well-known writer of this tim...

• Word Count: 774
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

In fact, there were a number of stories circulating which focused upon sexually transgressive clergymen, and this may have been an influence on Hawthorne's portrayal of Arthur Dimmesdale. ... Although romanticism was not a clearly conceived system, it does tend to present certain characteristics: there is often a tendency toward primitivism, an interest in nature and the natural world, a pressuring of the past, and a foregrounding of the concerns of individualism. ... The political influences on American romanticism include 18th century notions about human perfectability, the ideals of ...

• Word Count: 917
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

"The Cask of Amontillado" Edgar Allan Poe Edgar Allan Poe's short stories have long been regarded as groundbreaking stories, including his contributions of both his tales of mystery and his tales of the macabre. ... Another case of irony in this story is the choice of names by Poe. ... More symbolism comes in the form of Montresor's family crest: "a huge human foot d"or, in a field of azure; the foot crushes a serpent rampant whose fangs imbedded in the heel" (Poe 343). ... Another element used in this story is the mystery Poe leaves in this story. ... This story appears to be tol...

• Word Count: 1547
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• Grade Level: High School

However in the short story "The Cask of Amontillado," Edgar Allan Poe writes in the first person point of view from the perspective of Montresor, the diabolic narrator of this tale, who vowed revenge against Fortunato and has developed the perfect plan for retribution, only lacking the cooperation of Fortunato. ... The devil playing in "The Cask of Amontillado" is the narrator of this story. ... And Montresor replies, "A huge human foot d"or, in a field azure; the foot crushes a serpent rampant whose fangs are imbedded in the heel" (1317). ... Moreover, Montresor points out, "My friend, no...

• Word Count: 2414
• Approx Pages: 10
• Grade Level: High School