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Frederick Douglass’ “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass” is prefaced by six pages of William Lloyd Garrison convincing the reader that the account is legitimate. I understand that this was a common practice — the “authentication” of slave narratives by white men — but I think it’s important to note that just as Douglass would have likely found difficulty making strides as a speaker and an abolitionist without the facilitation of the white man, without this preface, his narrative would have reached far fewer, if any, audiences. This probability, of course, is completely unrelated to Douglass’ own merit and, and is instead owed to the racism and white perception of black individuals, even among abolitionists. This is not to attack William Lloyd Garrison, as his “endorsement” likely contributed to opening a space for Douglass’ voice within the abolitionist movement; the issue extends beyond one man. However, even in the brief biography detailing Douglass’ life preceding the Narrative, it is clear that Douglass’ power was limited by Garrison in various ways: “Garrison attempted to bully him into shutting down his newspaper, the North Star…Douglass resettled in part to escape the influence of Garrison” (1161). Douglass, while aware of the dynamic in calling for African Americans to “be our own representatives and advocates,” also recognized the reality of the situation, locating this autonomy as “not distinct from, but in connection with out white friends” (1161). According to the biography, though “Garrison…wanted absolute loyalty and control of the movement;” we can only speculate that Douglass himself curated, to an extent, his own statements in order to sustain the necessary support from Garrison and other white abolitionists. In other words, Frederick Douglass could have a voice only on the white man’s terms. I think it’s especially important to recognize such a tension as Garrison assures the reader that Douglass’ success was made possible only by Garrison’s own power and volition, having “endeavored to instill hope and courage into his mind, in order that he might dare to engage in a vocation so anomalous and responsible for a person in his situation” (1165). The white savior narrative: Alive, well, and in perfect juxtaposition with the slave narrative.

 

 

 

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Douglass’ writing as a whole serves as an antidote to the whitewashing of the history of slavery. High school classes often comment on the period of slavery in economic terms and water down the atrocities done to real life humans. Douglass’ narrative tells the history of slavery from the least heard and valued perspective: the enslaved themselves. I remember reading his narrative early in my high school career, but as I read it now, I am sure that I did not understand the importance of it at the time. At the same time, I was taking “Global History”, and we studied the unit of chattel slavery for only a week, and did not even touch the “real” history. 

In particular, I was struck by Douglass’ reflection on the culture of singing and music within the enslaved community. He muses that in the north, people believe that singing and music was “evidence of  [the enslaved’s] contentment and happiness” rather than an evidence of their pain. It made me realize that in my early years of education, I was taught that music was seen as a creative escape from the abuse rather than evidence of the extent of the brutality itself. I am not surprised that the north circulated the idea that singing showed that slaves found “contentment and happiness” despite their enslavement because I know that media at the time created an idea that slaves were happy to serve their masters. I can imagine that people living in the north formed their own realities about chattel slavery since they had less upfront experience and made their own assumptions from the media they were being fed. I understand how Douglass felt “utterly astonished” when he realized there was an entire part of the country that did not understand the truly depth of the cruelty and dehumanization of slavery. Especially considering that our country today still covers up the worst of that period from the white public. 

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I have thoroughly enjoyed reading Douglass’ work thus far. Of course, the experiences that he writes about are very heavy, demonstrating the immense cruelty of slavery during the 1800s. The severity of the events Douglass has had to endure are barbaric and inhumane; nevertheless, I sincerely admire his courage and determination. Something that stood out to me the most was Douglass’ relationship with his mother, Harriet Bailey. In chapter 1, it is described that Douglass had been separated from his mother at birth, which was a common practice among slave owners. The purpose of this, Douglass suggests, was intended to break the natural connection between a mother and her child. Of course, this wasn’t a necessary detail, yet the slave owners still did it for the sole purpose of making Douglass’–and others’–experiences as miserable and unbearable as humanely possible. Douglass never would have even gotten the chance to see his mother if it wasn’t for her walking 12 miles every once in a while just to sleep beside him. Even though the slave owners tried to separate Douglass and his mother, their bond remained strong, allowing his mother to sneak out to see him at night, despite the risks of disobeying their owner’s rules. We soon learn that Douglass’ mother died when he was about 7. However, when he is finally told about her passing, he describes himself as having “much the same emotions I should have probably felt at the death of a stranger,” which really stood out to me. It’s honestly devastating that Douglass was stripped of a relationship with his mother. Despite her attempting to reinstate whatever connection she could, their bond was visibly affected by their intentional separation. So much so, that Douglass didn’t even feel much grief at her death. I know that if my mother were to pass suddenly, it would be the hardest time of my entire life–as you’d expect for everyone. Of course, without a solid maternal relationship, Douglass didn’t have to suffer with these feelings of loss, but the fact that he was never even given the opportunity to get to know his mother or spend time with her willingly is really tragic.

-Siena Rose

 

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I was astonished by how much information I learned about Fredrick Douglas’s life, as well as the lives of those around him in just the first part of this reading. While my education has made a clear point to teach me about the history of slavery, there is an aspect of reading a first-hand account that teaches me so much more.

I felt myself overwhelmed with emotion while I was reading Douglas’s writing. This was described to me in the forward, but I didn’t expect Douglas to be so blunt and upright with the facts. He didn’t hold anything back in terms of brutal details of whippings that he witnessed or the pains of starvation that he went through. While this was hard to read, because the thought of a human being treated like that makes me sick, it was important to hear the truth. Douglas did not try to sugar coat his experience at all and provided real and raw accounts of all his interactions.

One thing I was really impressed by was Douglas’s inability to give up. Even from a very young age, he had witnessed so much mistreatment. Yet continued to fight for something, even if he didn’t know what it was yet. When he learned that knowing how to read and write would be a great advantage in life, he went forward with the goal of achieving this. One line that stuck out to me in this sense was “The first step had been taken. Mistress, in teaching me the alphabet, had given me the inch, and no precaution could prevent me from taking the ell.” (1187). He realized the opportunity he was given from learning the A,B,C’s and he ran with it. He would not stop until he had the skills that he deserved and the life that he deserved. Reading Douglas’s personal account is so moving and so important in our country’s history.

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I’m starting see more in line with the idea Poe was not a madman as many thought he was as a result of the often disturbing nature of his writing. Aside from his discussed tactics for marketing as someone writing to earn a living, upon reading The Imp of the Perverse, I can further recognize that his work derives from ways of thinking that are certainly self-reflective and can be quite logical in their reasoning, to the point where it reveals some aspect of truth about human behavior as we know it modern day perspectives.

As Poe describes it, the “Imp” refers to the intrusive thought that comes from somewhere in the mind that pushes us to do things that brings us no benefit whatsoever – from acts of procrastination to directly negative and dangerous thoughts like self-harm, murder not with motive but simply an impulsive attraction to what shouldn’t be done. He’s basically providing a sensible explanation for intrusive thoughts.

Why do we do the things that have no real benefits for us, sometimes even compromising ourselves? Why is it when I’m walking down Martin’s way and the thought of jumping down from the bridge, for no reason whatsoever, crosses my mind? I wonder how it would it feel to fall at such a height? To feel my knees bashing against the ground? For no reason at all? Poe recognizes that there is an irrational, more instinctive component of the human mind. And even though it has been suggested that I should not take Poe’s work at face value, I think there is some truth to be derived from the words of The Imp of the Perverse.

Loading Likes... I found Poe’s description of creating The Raven in The Philosophy of Composition to be surprisingly entertaining. I thought it was interesting how he broke down the creative process, which is often placed on a pedestal, into something almost banal and routine. He almost describes it as creating a how-to manual. The format of the essay seeming more or less to instruct the reader was also interesting when considered with his emphasis on originality. It made me question if something (even a process) is copied by someone else, would it still be original? Furthermore, would his own stories be considered to have originality at the heart of them? As discussed in class, his short stories have several repeating elements, although each does have a certain amount of originality to it.

Overall I found it to be an interesting read, particularly after reading The Raven. I found it a refreshing break from the poets who describe their creative process as “sparked by the divine” or “unable to be contained”. Maybe that’s just because I spent the last semester reading poetry from the middle ages.

Loading Likes... While initially intrigued by the title of this story (why would people ever again use the term “stolen” when they could always say “purloined”), I was engaged throughout the story as I noticed tropes of detective stories originating from Poe’s work. I particularly enjoyed the image of the calm and collected Detective Dupin, claiming immediately of the ease of the case described by the rattled and rather arrogant Prefect. Particularly the quote involving the several “puffs” out of Dupin’s cigar, the image of a calculating and cunning detective with the parallel of the gullible and discombobulated police officer immediately struck me with familiarity. Such tropes are echoed in modern works such as Knives Out. Such structure of characters allowed Poe to effectively present his own voice through Dupin’s, distinguished by Dupin’s dialogue and the narrator’s interjections and reactions, furthering the story along.
Even with Dupin as the speaker, I wonder if Poe inserted his own voice, as the detective used obscure allusions to Latin as well as historic texts, up until the very end with a reference to Classical stories in his fac-simile. In addition, Dupin’s effusive praise of poets and their cunning nature seems a bit strange for a detective to elaborate upon, but characteristic of the author. Poe also managed to insert a characteristic interest in architecture with the exchange between Dupin and the Prefect about the hotel search. While potentially effective in using exhaustive description to present the exhaustive search undergone by the police, the cluttered and largely inconsequential imagery seemed very characteristic of Poe’s writing.
Propping open the answer to the “Who dunnit” in the first paragraphs, as well as revealing the knowledge of Dupin early in the story, created an effectively entertaining piece for Poe’s audience.

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I found “The Philosophy of Composition” extremely interesting to read, particularly after rereading “The Raven”. I felt like the beginning, where Poe tries to explain his motives for writing the essay, was most interesting. I had never quite thought of the fact that many great writers of the time (and frankly even now) have not explained or analyzed their creative process in any kind of thorough or public way. Particularly when it comes to poetry, I do agree with Poe that the process of creation and conception seems to be understood by many as a sort of esoteric, or even indescribable thing. Some describe inspiration or ideas as merely “coming to them” or arriving in their minds, which seems to me to imply some kind of exclusive or divine election, which makes the minds and souls of “poets” more apt than the average person to communicate important messages or convey powerful sentiments. I thought of Emerson and his essay on poets; it seems to me like his writing is in agreement with the aforementioned phenomena. He describes great poets as those who are gifted enough to transcend their time, with a rare awareness of the eternal. For Emerson, there is a need, even a duty, for those special poets (for whom he builds an incredible pedestal) to put the “right” words to life’s phenomena and share these articulations with the “less skilled”. From my reading, Poe’s work did quite the opposite. In a way that I really appreciated, he admitted (and seemed to prove) that it is in fact possible for great writers to boil their processes down to steps. Though this may take work, he reminds us that realistically, most writers do have methods to their madness, and usually ideas don’t just “appear”. In many ways, the way he demystifies things (particularly from a position of power as a very successful and influential writer of his time), was inspiring to read. I felt like it sent a message to readers that anyone who wants to write poems or express sentiments or ideas can do so, either by following a method similar to his, or creating their own. For these reasons and more, I can assume this essay had a positive affect on young or aspiring writers at the time.

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In the reading from Poe, The Raven, we see a poetic piece of writing. In our last discussion about Poe, we discussed his idolization of poets and how they connect material thoughts to the spiritual world. After reading The Raven, I googled the meaning of ravens and I found results such as ravens being prophetic whisperers offering insight, and the symbols of ravens intertwine with human imagination, loss, and omen. Most importantly, I found a result saying that a talking raven, in addition to prophecy, act as a connection from the material world to the spiritual world. Given our last discussion about Poe and claiming that they were God’s and offering a connection from material thoughts and the material world to spiritual thoughts in a more spiritual setting; bringing forward abstract ideas to make people think outside of their immediate material surroundings.

In this poem, the idea of the talking bird brought me to a place where I was questioning the symbolism of the bird, as talking birds is something we don’t see in our surrounding world. Finding the meaning of ravens to be prophets makes the connection to a spiritual world and the talking raven to be a symbolism/a voice of God. This raven, being a fictional being/idea, was bringing the connection between the material world and the narrator to the spiritual world of a God. It also makes me believe that Poe as a writer views himself as a poetic God, speaking to people to bring them to a spiritual world and acting as a prophet himself. 

These are sources I was looking at when looking at the symbolism of ravens:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_depictions_of_ravens#:~:text=Because%20of%20its%20black%20plumage,with%20the%20world%20of%20spirits
• https://a-z-animals.com/blog/raven-spirit-animal-symbolism-meaning/#:~:text=com%2FPiotr%20Krzeslak-,The%20raven%20symbolizes%20prophecy%2C%20insight%2C%20transformation%2C%20and%20intelligence.,and%20stillness%20over%20constant%20movement.
• https://www.thornandclaw.com/blogs/news/raven-meaning-symbolism#:~:text=Ravens%20often%20represent%20ancient%20wisdom,symbols%20intertwine%20with%20human%20imagination.

In another addition to this blog post, on page 679 it says “‘Not altogether a fool,’ said G — “but then he’s a poet, which I take to be only one remove from a fool.'” This part was so interesting to read given Poe’s past descriptions of poets as God’s and symbolizing them as prophets, and then includes a narrator that refers to poets as fools in another story. 

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After reading “The Philosophy of Composition,” I was taken back by how strong and clear Poe’s voice was. It was interesting to read what he thought the process of writing a good poem or good prose should be. While I had read “The Raven” before, it was exciting to see how Poe viewed his work and what he was trying to convey in his words. I noticed themes that Poe intended, like the idea of longing for a lost love. However, there were also things that Poe intended, that I didn’t originally pick up on, like the idea that melancholy is the most relatable human experience.

 After reading Poe’s explanation of his process in writing “The Raven,” I was reminded of Dupin in “The Purloined Letter.” His voice and narrative felt very similar to Poe’s. Dupin was very confident in explaining his process as to how he found the letter and had an answer to any question that the narrator thought of. This is very similar to how Poe had an explanation for every single stanza in the poem and how his process was very clearly thought out. Dupin was also adamant about thinking outside the box and not immediately coming to the first thought that comes to mind. This is how he was able to see that the letter was hiding right in front of his eyes. Poe also describes this with his process. He doesn’t immediately set the poem in a forest. Instead, he thinks of other settings to give off a better message. 

It is clear that Poe’s voice is strong and he is confident in how he writes. Many of the characters in his stories, reflect this about him. I find that this is a common thing for writers to have an influence on the characters that they create, because in the end, they are just expressions of themselves.

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The Raven is a beautifully crafted poem that reflects on the hardship of losing a loved one. However, Poe’s poem is unlike classic lyrical, artistic poems about emotions; instead, his poem describes a dark narrative (what else is new?) through a rhythmic, rhymed medium. As we have discussed in class, Poe tends to write about characters who suffer from mental illness, creating a glimpse into how humans would act if we all surrendered to spontaneity. The results are characters who are driven to insanity; characters who commit murder or suicide; but ultimately, characters that the reader sometimes cannot immediately detect as reliable or unreliable. Poe’s short story style is apparent in The Raven as well, as we are given a narrator who is heavily grieving the death of his late, beloved wife, but we are unsure whether or not this narrator is reliable. His reliability is questionable because in the majority of the poem, he is describing a frustrating conversation with a raven who has wandered into his home. However, as he tries to converse with the raven, the bird simply responds with nothing but “nevermore,” causing the narrator to ask increasingly desperate questions that the bird–likely–would not know the answer to. Even though the bird only replies with one word, the speaker’s frantic remarks suggest that he has interpreted the word in his own dark way. In this sense, just like the style of Poe’s other works, our narrator is officially unreliable because it is clear that his immense grief and guilt has overwhelmed him to the point of not functioning correctly. The dark, ominous raven can be associated with notions of death, not only reminding the narrator of the loss of his wife, but also the intense feelings surrounding it. Ultimately, it is not surprising that Poe has decided to portray a reality in which grief allowed the darkest recesses of the mind to take over, as it is completely on par with his other works.

I should have known when I heard we’d be reading one of Poe’s poems that it wouldn’t be a generic Shakespearean love confession or Wordsworth-ean ode to nature. Poe’s unique style seems to remain consistent throughout all of his work, no matter the stereotype of what the medium “should be.” Just how Emerson had implored in Self-Reliance, Poe has achieved the great endeavor of rejecting others’ opinions, fully allowing his thoughts to transcend the bounds of creative work. Even though I can’t ever envision myself writing the material that Poe did, I admire his individualism.

-Siena Rose

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One thing I really appreciate about Poe’s stories is the way his language is able to capture certain parts of the human condition. Though the intense and lengthy descriptions made a few of these stories a bit more difficult to read and caused the plot to drag, I felt a certain sentiment of manic obsession or almost paranoia was a common pattern in most of Poe’s work. The presence of opium and the way its effects seem to intensify these emotions/conditions is also a continuing theme. Certainly in “Ligeia”, the reader can practically feel the way the narrator’s heart yearns for this woman. The way this love and obsession is portrayed so beautifully, to me, is what made the loss so heartbreaking and palpable. Then, in the latter half when the second wife is dying, the kind of manic paranoia that we see the narrator go through, as he is experiencing such sinister dejavu, is written so well. The narrator describes the woman’s struggle, and the way she seemingly comes back to life repeatedly before really dying. To me, it was clear all along that the narrator was really just picturing Ligea in front of him once again, and whether or not the body was actually coming in and out of life (or if this was an illusion/hallucination), the obsessive paranoia and fear he felt watching the life leave this woman before him, and the way his mind kept bringing him back to visions of Ligeia, captured a very nuanced state of mania that was fascinating to read. Similarly, in “A Man of the Crowd”, the narrator is absolutely obsessed with keeping eyes on the man in the crowd, and is astute in their observations of his every expression and movement. There is this urgency in the tone that portrays the urgency to keep the man in view, and undertones of paranoia as the narrator relentlessly tracks the man and then expresses unsettling sentiments about the fact that among us there are always “criminals” or those with secrets to hide. Of course, in “The Fall of the House of Usher” the narrator has this nagging feeling that he must go into this house; he sees it and describes the fear and unsettling feelings associated with the house, and yet, there is still this relentless desire that leads to an blinding obsession with exploring the house and understanding what is going on inside, and even agreeing to the extremely strange idea of keeping Madeleines body in the walls, regardless of the absurdity and disturbance that is evident here. I could go on about how these haunting layers of mental spiral are unraveled in each of these tales, and how the opium at play is interwoven to intensify this. It certainly is impressive how Poe writes such complex mental states so impeccably, and it left me with a dark unsettledness which is likely exactly the impact he had hoped to have on readers. I also in many ways found myself empathizing with narrators/characters which were objectively mentally unstable or off kilter, and not really realizing because of the way I was enveloped in the story. In many ways, I suppose I then temporarily lived and exemplified some kind of mania, obsession, and paranoia in my own kind of way!

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“The Man of the Crowd” stood out to me as the black sheep of this selection of Poe’s work. We were tasked with looking for patterns, but I couldn’t help to feel that there was something “against” the pattern with this piece. Most notably, Poe removes the role of the macabre mansion or house. There is a post up (Cate’s) that talks of Poe’s use of architecture to affect the reader’s emotions – to feel certain emotions, like the characters of the stories. Yet “The Man of the Crowd” sets itself on “one of the principal thoroughfares of the city” and wide in the open-air (656). I saw the use of the house as a way for Poe to control his characters (or the variables of the story) – and thus, the mixture of fact and fiction. In the case of “The Fall of the House of Usher” and “The Masque of the Red Death”, this is especially true because isolation guarantees that only the narrative survives through a limited point of view (see the many posts on the unreliability of Poe’s narrators). 

Except the busy streets of London are very real. So how does Poe keep the same sense of foreboding? The setting of night-time, fog, falling rain, street-lamp lighting, the anonymity of a crowd, and this strange, older man, acts in a similar fashion in framing the story as the house/mansion. 

The narrator’s fascination with the man binds the setting to only where the man goes in a few hours. The man’s face as having “within my mind [brought] the ideas of vast mental power, of caution, of penuriousness, of avarice, of coolness, of malice, of blood-thirstiness, of triumph, of merriment […] of supreme despair” (659). Furthermore, the start of night and the street-lamp illumination of the man’s face starts the “chase”, but the nearing of day and the bright light of the “suburban temples of Intemperance – one of the palaces of the fiend, Gin” (661) marks the end. 

The sense that this chase was fruitless or that we are back where it started emphasizes the conclusion of the narrator that “er lasst sich nicht lesen” (662). 

-Katherine Adee

 

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While Poe’s stories undoubtedly indulge in those classic “creepy” elements everyone looks for in horror tales — misty, gloomy nights; resurrected dead; ghosts; old, decaying mansions; and blood — I cannot help but suspect that beneath those gimmicks (likely used, at least in part, to lure in the public and make a living), Poe was trying to get at something a little deeper. Beyond all the undead, the ghosts, and the monsters, the true “horror” in these stories appears to lie in terrifying truths of human nature and society. 

One more obvious social commentary struck me forcefully: I could not read “The Masque of the Red Death” without shuddering at its seemingly prophetic parallels to 2020. The “happy and dauntless” Prince Prospero (I mean, just the name…) and his “thousand friends” might easily represent the wealthy and the “prosperous” who, upon getting the early intel on a worldwide pandemic, jetted off to their second house in Malibu with their influencer friend group for a year-long “COVID party.” The “Masque” motif evoked some N-95 images for me, too. The clock — striking ominously on the hour — consistently elicited apprehension and even dread among the party-goers, despite their best efforts to feign that everything was fine; they looked to one another with uneasy smiles as if to say, We’re okay, right? Nothing, not even the Red Death, can touch us in this ivory tower… right?

Just as in Poe’s story, COVID-19 went after even the most affluent — pandemics are not classist. The Red Death showed up at Prince Prospero’s party and ruined the fun. While everyone likes to fear the ghastly threat in a bloody mask, who is really the “monster” in this story? The facts of life in themselves — disease and misfortune — or the complexes of those who deceive themselves into thinking that status, wealth, and a good party will protect them? 

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I remember reading some of Poe’s stories when I was much younger and thoroughly enjoying them. I had read “Masque of the Red Death” and “The Tell-Tale Heart,” but am realizing now that I definitely read the children’s versions of these stories because I would not have understood the language. Reading these stories now, along with new ones that I didn’t have any previous experience with, I found myself noticing many more common themes and types of characters. I’m not just interested in the scary story aspect anymore. 

One thing that I found continuously appearing in all of Poe’s stories was the description of architecture. A lot of this architecture is similar in the sense that it there are castles and vaulted ceilings. I was surprised by how in detail Poe went at describing the scenes, but found that it really helped put me in the story. The dark windows described, produced an eerie feeling in my from the beginning of the story and I knew it wasn’t going to end well. If there was light that shined through stained glass, it was masked by drapes and the hope was gone. The buildings had dark basements and long, narrow, winding corridors that had no sense of planning. After reading these descriptions, I felt trapped, as well as the characters. 

Poe cleverly used descriptive language to make the reader feel particular emotions. When it was dark, I felt dark, when the hallway was confusing, I felt confused, when there was a glimpse of light, I hesitated. This made my reading of the stories much more enjoyable because I leaned into this. Not only were Poe’s characters feeling these emotions, but so was I.