The Cask of Amontillado

I love reading Poe's short stories, for he was a master of the craft. He talked about how a short story should have a "single effect" that strikes a chord within the reader's emotions. There is quite a bit of dramatic irony in this piece since the reader knows that Montresor is going to exact vengeance on Fortunato but Fortunato knows nothing about it. Fortunato's name, which contains the root word "fortune", is ironic, since he is going to meet with a future demise. Montresor makes ironic statements to Fortunato in order to mask his true intentions, intentions that the audience is well aware of: "I drink," he (Fortunato) said, "to the buried that repose around us." "And I (Montresor) to your long life" (par. 40). Yet one question that the reader may ask is why does Montresor want to kill Fortunato? Well one thing that really jumped out at me (and I caught this when I read it before I took this class) is that Montresor is a Mason, and that Fortunato must've said something to deeply offend him on religious grounds, even though the reader dosen't exactly know what Fortunato is guilty of. One thing I like about Poe's tale (and even more so Herman Melville's Moby Dick and Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter) is that they give the reader some liberty to interpret the story for themselves. One quote that might prove that Montresor is a Mason is this one allusion from the biblical book of Genesis about how Christ will conquer Satan (in Montresor's case, the Catholic Church): "...the foot crushes a serpent rampant whose fangs are imbedded in the heel" (par. 45).

Works Cited: Poe, Edgar Allan. "The Cask of Amontillado." The Norton Introduction to Literature. Eds. Alison Booth and Kelly J. Mays. 10th ed. New York, London: W.W. Norton and Company, 2011. 107-113.

Sonney's Blues

I like how "Sonney's Blues" begins with the algebra teacher feeling like ice is going down his system at the mention of Sonney being on the news for possessing heroin. Such a beginning creates suspense for the reader and ushers them to keep on reading to see what happens next. I also distinctly saw another technique Baldwin used to generate suspense. He always insinuates that there is a problem with Sonney yet he never elaborates as to what it is. The reader is simply drawn to the story by the theme of mystery. At the end of the story, Sonney reveals that he is a man who suffers all kinds of woes just like all people yet he never mentions all the things he goes through besides heroin. Even when Sonnney's brother says something he usually follows with the statment "I don't know why."

Baldwin also starts at the middle of the plot and gives more flashbacks as the story progresses. He wants to show us why the brother felt so nervous about him before. Personally when I like to write a short story I often use a flashback or two sometimes. By the title I rightly guessed that the story would be about black musicians expressing themselves through music. B.B. King automatically comes to mind. I learned a little about black musical history from the brother mentioning Charlie Barker and Lois Armstrong. The musicians use the music to try to deal with the pain of everyday life. That pain comes in different ways for each of the characters, both major and minor. Sonney's dad is haunted by memories of his brother being killed by a group of drunk whites. For Sonney it could very well be what he saw in World War 2. For the brother, it is the guilt that he never looked after Sonney the way his mother wanted him to.

Cathedral

When I first saw the title "Cathedral", I expected the setting to be an actual cathedral. The image of a medieval church actually conjured up images of Victor Hugo's novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame. I distinctly remember Hugo taking the liberty (but admittedly a difficult one for me) of describing Paris in every way you could imagine, including the cathedral where Quasimodo lived. But as for "Cathedral" it was an "okay" story, meaning that I didn't feel as impressed with it as I would, say, Hawthorne's "The Minister's Black Veil" or Poe's "The Masque of the Red Death". It seemed to have ordinary characters in an ordinary setting. A blind man named Robert basically comes over to stay at a married couple's house in Conneticut. The wife used to work for Robert in Seattle and she seems to be very fond of him, telling him about her first, failed marriage to an army officer, even once allowing him to touch her face (par.2). This incites jealousy in the narrattor who is also the second husband. When he speaks about his wife's past, he is using the past tense. When the main plot happens, he begins to use the present tense. When Robert arrives, the husband and wife have dinner with him and also smoke pot together. Robert helps the husband draw a picture of a cathedral they were discussing in the livingroom, yet the husband never opens his eyes to see what they drew together. I honestly believe the husband is the main character in the story even though Robert at first feels like the central character. Robert seems to be the husband's antagonist simply because the husband uses repetition to sarcastically describe how caught up in Robert his wife is. He does not think highly of Robert. He even says outright that Beulah (Robert's former wife) and Robert were fools to have a church wedding to celebrate their marriage: "It was a little wedding-who'd want to go to such a wedding in the first place?" (par.16). Overall, it seems that the husband is a judgmental person. Yet I believe he is this way because he is not confident in himself deep down. He seems to have a bad relationship with his wife, for they get into a brief argument about how he has little friends, not to mention the fact that his wife hardly ever talks to him. After he gives a decent account of what a cathedral looks like, the husband puts himself down by saying: "...I can't tell you what a cathedral looks like" (par. 107). Robert encourages him to keep drawing even though he feels like he cannot do it. He says that the experience drawing with Robert was the best that had happened to him so far. Yet he never looks to see what he draws. Part of me thinks he dosen't want to see the messy job he and Robert did because he thinks it will be more respectful to Robert due to his blindness. But I believe it is more so because he is simply unconfident in anything he does.

Works Cited: Carver, Raymond. "Cathedral." The Norton Introduction to Literature. Eds. Alison Booth and Kelly J. Mays. 10th ed. New York, London: W.W. Norton and Company, 2011. 32-44.