The Death of the Author Ronald Barthes The death of the author is an essay by Ronald Barthes, a French literary critic. Roland Barthes, in his essay puts forth the concept and various aspects of author, the work, the readers and the originality of the text and to whom the text belongs to. He commences his essay by citing a sentence from Balzac’s novella, Sarrasine- “It was Woman, with her sudden fears, her irrational whims, her instinctive fears, her unprovoked bravado, her daring and her delicious delicacy of feeling” (The Death of the Author 2). By quoting this he raises some question such as whose voice can it be behind this sentence? The story’s hero who has decided to ignore and pay no heed to the castrato hidden beneath the woman?
While writing my story titled “Aiden”, I replicated the significance of literary features in those three stories such as flashback, dialogue, and foreshadowing. Like in “The Tell-Tale Heart”, one of the literary devices that I used as my introduction in my short story was a flashback. A flashback is a scene in a story or film that is set in a time earlier than the main story. Edgar Allan Poe started his story with a flashback to hook the reader’s attention, “TRUE! - nervous - very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad?
French designer Philippe Starck once claims: “I like to open the doors to people’s brain.” Nathaniel Hawthorne 's short story “The Minister’s Black Veil” reflects this principle in which the author advertently creates ambiguities and opens the possibilities of interpretation to the readers. Nathaniel Hawthorne employs commonplace symbols to present the ambiguity of sin and secrecy through a psychological lens in “The Minister’s Black Veil”. This short story also reflected the principle of Puritanism as well, such as the idea of manifest destiny represented by Mr. Hooper in the story. Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in Salem, Massachusetts. It is also worth to notice that John Hawthorne, one of the Salem Witch Trial Judges, was his great grandfather (Concise Dictionary of American Literary Biography).
It usually becomes a causal explanation for some analysis of the literary work and thus influence the story. The extrinsic elements are the elements giving the influence on intrinsic or basic construction of fairy tale. Based on this, the extrinsic elements that connects with the novel are the three theories developed by experts which are Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, and Erik Erikson. 2.2.1 Freud’s Psychoanalytic Criticism Sigmund Freud was a neurologist and is considered to be the father of psychoanalysis, a method for treating psychopathology through dialogue between a patient and a psychoanalyst. He was born on May 6, 1856 in Moravia, the Austrian Empire.
Loss of narrative identity. A dichotomous interpretation of the duality motif in Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” The purpose of this essay is to contrast the multiple double stances present in the novella “The Fall of the House of Usher” and to show that this duality motif isn’t presenting the double as an exact mirror image, but rather as a doppelgänger with the meaning of ‘evil twin’. By the end of this essay I will demonstrate that even the narrator becomes a dual image of himself, culminating with the loss of the narrative’s identity, which also subdues itself to the laws of duplicity. My demonstration is proved both by my personal insight and by arguments formed on the basis of relevant secondary sources. The argumentative part of this essay will be divided into three paragraphs, each of them disputing the duality of different aspects: the house in contrast with its surroundings and the Usher family, the opposition of Roderick and Madeline, the narrator in the beginning versus the narrator as a double of Roderick towards the end of the novella and the narrator as part of the general dichotomous scenery and action.
"The Tell Tale Heart" is written by Edger Allan Poe, "The Scarlet Ibis" is written by James Hurst and "Thank You Ma 'am" is written by Langston Hughes and these short stories will be presented in this dissertation in order to understand the consequences of personation in regarding the presentation of the rest of the story 's factors which are storyteller opinion, incidents, concerns and collusion. In "The Tell Tale Heart", Edger 's story, personalities are explicit and virtuous through the junctures of the story. The opinion in this story came from the storyteller himself, so his opinion was highly impacted by his confused personality which made the outcome of his dementia explicit. Uncertainty prevails in this story. The scene impacted by the dementia of the storyteller.
This story brings along the imagination, and those qualities of the conscious and unconscious mind, along with the soul, are shown through the characters Poe has created. Written down, these attributes seem to fit in their own categories, but in the story the conscious mind meshes with the unconscious, showing you the digression of the character as he is thrown into the abyss. The soul of the dwelling. Now, the house of Usher is most certainly not a living human, although, it is talked upon as though it breathes in oxygen. However, the house is most definitely a character in this story and that is represented by the first few paragraphs as the narrator sees the house for the first time, he says “with the first glimpse
Considered a precursor of modern psychoanalytical fiction as he carefully depicts the inner workings of the human mind - trapped in the grotesque nightmares of the irrational - Edgar Allan Poe masterfully combines literary elements and techniques such as diction, point of view, symbolism, allegory and personification adding also a series of gothic and macabre themes - death, decay, premature burial and incestuous relationships - in order to create memorable settings and imagery full of suspense, mystery and an overwhelming sense of darkness and despair. Written in 1893, Poe’s best-known fantastic novella “The Fall of the House of Usher” provides a vision upon a “world gone barren “. A tale of sickness, incestuous love between siblings,
Sometimes being alone can be beneficial for some in small doses, however constant loneliness can annihilate a person. Edgar Allen Poe explores how isolation strengthens internal fear which leads to the metal break through “The Fall of the house of Usher.” The narrator's experiences are explained in great detail along with Poe dropping hints at what is to come throughout the story. He explains the extreme isolation of the Usher’s in order to convey the impact has on the body and mind. Poe uses the reader’s five senses and multiple connections in the short story “The Fall of the House of Usher” to manifest how social confinement bolsters internal fear which leads to the psychological break down on a person. Poe uses imagery to explain the atmosphere of fear and the continuous breaking of Usher.
This first essay that I read helped me understand the psychological struggle and symbolic meaning of the story. Kachur claims that vital information from the narrator is omitted because it seems not important to readers, but that same information is the one that describes the motives and the challenges presented by the author. This essay really caught my attention in ways that I would never imagine. Kachur argues that the narrator obsession is based in “father-on-son incest”. He supports his idea with three possible hypothesis: first, the narrator was a victimized child that resulted with some psychotic symptoms; second, the narrator is re-enacting his abuse to make the old man feel what he suffered; and for last, the old man is a victim of the narrator´s threat of incest.