journal - 23

Journal #23: think about scary stories you have read and scary movies you have seen - what techniques make them scary? Use examples from scary stories and movies to demonstrate your thoughts.

journal - 25

fear.

"The Pit and the Pendulum"

"The Pit and the Pendulum" is a short story written by Edgar Allan Poe. It is written in the writing style of Dark Romanticism. Like Romanticism writing, Dark Romanticism writing values emotion over logic and reason (Dark Romanticism). Dark Romanticism embraces illogical elements, and acknowledges the evil of man and the horrors of evil (Dark Romanticism). "The Pit and the Pendulum" most definitely qualifies as a short story of the Dark Romanticism Era. The story takes place during the Spanish Inquisition, with a soldier who is on a death sentence of being literally thrown into a pit (The Pit). This story portrays gruesome horror after horror for this poor narrator of the story. This story has a very evil background to it, and most readily acknowledges the evil of man and the horror of evil. Poe embraces illogical elements illogical elements within the story "The Pit and the Pendulum".

The story begins with the narrator of the story telling of what he remembers of his trial, which is very vague and includes the recollection of him receiving a death sentence (Poe). The story picks up with the narrator gaining consciousness and he recalls upon what he was thinking of.

"Then entire forgetfulness of all that followed; of all that a later day and much earnestness of endeavor have enabled me vaguely to recall (Poe 265).

As the man realizes he does not remember how or where he got to be where he is, he just as soon realizes that he does not know where he has been (Poe). This is the immediate moment where the psychological torture inflicted by the Spanish Inquisition begin to set in. The man becomes utterly afraid to open his eyes, and when he does, he finds to his utter dismay and horror what he had hoped would not be; complete darkness. Although weary and already worn out, the man begins to explore his new surrounding and discovers that he is in a pit. This seems to put the man into almost a sort of panic, when he realizes that all of the tales of the dreaded Spanish pit that he had once heard, were inevitably coming true in his life all at once. The psychological stress on this poor man is suddenly so intense it even seems to cause the reader of the story to go mad, just like the narrator himself (Poe).

From here on out in the story, the narrator is under extreme psychological and physical duress (Poe). He finds himself in a pit, knowing that he is facing death. The death is not what the man is under duress about, it is the torture that he knows is to come that daunts the man into his inner being. The man is shaken up and his nerves are unbound to such an extent that the pressure of the man can be felt by the reader of the story. After the man discovers a deep well of death, the man is struck with fear and shrinks to a corner of his cell. He knows that he is going to be tortured, but has no courage to kill himself by jumping into the pit (Poe).

"In other conditions of mind I might have had courage to end my misery at once by a plunge into one of these abysses; but now I was the veriest of cowards" (Poe 267).

The psychological state of the narrator is altered much by the constant conscientiousness of the torture that will soon be inflicted upon him. In fact, the psychological duress is more straining on the man than is the physical duress of what actually happens to him (Poe). This story is gruesome and twisted and is a fine example of Dark Romanticism writing.

Poe, Edgar Allan. "The Pit and the Pendulum." Comp. Jeffrey D. Wilhelm, Ph.D. and Douglas Fisher, Ph.D. Glencoe Literature. American Literature ed. Columbus: McGraw-Hill Companies, 2009. 263-273. Print.

"Dark Romanticism." Romanticism. Oracle. Web. 20 Jan. 2012. .

"The Pit and the Pendulum Novel Summary, Literary Analysis, Review." Novel Summaries Analysis. Web. 20 Jan. 2012. .

journal - 22

In the winter we like to go sledding

An escape from school, which we are dreading

The mountain of snow is a perfect scene

Of the white winter that is so serene

The boys and the girls all young in their hearts

Run to the sledding hill when the snow starts

So innocent and pure is their laughter

The fun of the sledding is seen soon after

zooming down the hill the at the speed of light

The children do rejoice when they take flight

And CRASH go their sleds into a big tree

The children spring back up shouting with glee

When they get tired they plop to the ground

Forming angels in the snow, without sound

Way up and down the big hill they do trek

Waiting for their turn to have their sled wreck

Up the immense hill, the children must climb

It seems to get bigger every time

Jumping and wading in the fluffy snow

Back home is not where they do want to go

But when it gets dark and they go back home

Hot cocoa is there to sip off the foam

Dragging and moping off into their beds

The thoughts of sledding repeats in their heads

Sleep comes quickly, as their mothers assumed

Rest they must get for the sledding presumed

journal - 21

From the pale sky was fluttering beautiful white crystals, falling like feathers. These crystals were as delicate as could be and would melt away to a small pool of water at the first touch. The crystals multiplying in the sky, and gathering on the ground, made a swift crunch and squeal underfoot. However, there were few feet that had traveled here on this barren land before us, and the ones that had were the naked feet of the natives. The crystals were as white as ever and cool to the touch. Around the trees there gathered lumps of the white beauty, as though it was pleading the sleeping trees to come out of their slumber, and come out to play. The crystals whirled about in an enticing way, not only to the trees. It reached into the soul of every child and placed within him a desire to dance and to frolic in the white mist. The white all around encasing the world with a blinding whiteness, held such a beauty, a pure beauty. The beauty was that of a bride in a white dress on the day of her wedding. Her knees trembling, her hands quaking, her mind racing because of the joy welling up inside her. The beauty of the blinding whiteness was so pure and so innocent that the thought of ruining the perfectly glazed whiteness by stepping onto it, seemed such a pity. To break the purity that had been so wonderfully crafted seemed such a tragedy...but wait. The tragedy is gone, now is excitement! The feeling of being the only one, the lone soul to be in existence in this white wonderland was such a remarkable feeling! The glorious feeling of doing whatever you please in the dream of this fluffy white goodness was such a freeing one. The whiteness so white, yet not over bearing was a marvelous thing in the open field dusted with the white crystals from above.

journal- Nature in life cycle

Personally, I do not see much correlation between nature and the life cycle. This is most likely because I am a Christian. I believe my life cycle has little to do with nature, and much to do with God. One key component to the life cycle is death. Although death is a natural thing, it does not have much to do with nature other than that it is human nature for us to die, and that after we die we are buried in the ground, where we turn to dust. There is not much nature involved in dying. Although dying is a physical thing, it is very much so more than that. Dying is a spiritual thing. I say that because your soul is involved. Even though you are buried, lifeless in the ground when you are dead, your soul has to go somewhere. I believe that the somewhere that your soul goes is either Heaven of Hell. Many people may disagree with that opinion, but really, you have to believe that your soul goes somewhere. If you think about it, nobody believes that after you die, that is the end of things. It is almost unfathomable to think that when you die you are done forever. That is was thousands upon thousands of generations of people have debated and discussed life after death. Nobody can possibly imagine your soul not living elsewhere once we are dead. That belief is not something of human nature. I also believe that nature has little to do with being born and with life after birth and until death. Yes, it exists, but it seems of little importance to me.

I think that the people who must rely on nature as the answer to life's daunting questions are the ones who have nothing else to believe in. If you have a strong belief, then nature just exists, and hardly seems relevant. To someone who is a Christian, in the grand scheme of things, nature is utterly unimportant. But to someone who doesn't know what they believe, nature is one thing that is solid and constant for them to rely upon.

journal- communication tools

For our project, we have to collaborate with students from other classes, and even from another school. The students from the other school are from Farmington, which is too far away to actually have contact with these students. Therefore means of technology will be very imperative in the completion of this project. Luckily, we live in an age where there are many technological options available. One option would be writing letters, but that would be silly because there are quicker routes of communication. A few other quicker routes of communication that I can think of are e-mail, online chatting, Facebook, Twitter, text-messaging, and maybe even talking on the phone. Those options seem to be the easier, quicker, and more efficient choice over writing letters.

Online chatting is a good option of communication. For example "www.todaysmeet.com" could be used as a form of online chatting. It is an efficient way to communicate with others. It could definitely work as a way for all of us to have discussions together without actually physically being together. This could be a good source of communication, especially for the preliminaries of the project. After we have the big picture of the project figured out, we may need to use a form of communication that can help us be more detail oriented.

E-mail could be a huge help in the completion of this project. By using e-mail instead of some form of online chatting, we all have records of what the others said. That can be useful so we can go back and look to make sure we know what our assignment is, as well as being able to hold others to their duties. E-mail will probably be the most efficient way of communicating for this project. A problem may arise however, if some students don't check their email very often.

This is where Facebook and Twitter come in. We could use them to contact some of the students more readily than we would be able to contact them by email. In this case, social networking sites may actually come in handy, however, they may also be a distraction. It is probably not a good idea to mix school work with a social networking site. This could cause students to get distracted and not follow through on their project on schedule. Therefore, text-messaging or calling each other may also be useful.