Once upon a time I got spooked. I was at my friends house celebrating her birthday. Me and a few other people slept at her house over night. We stayed up late watching scary movies. One movie that we watched was The Blair Witch Project. After we finished this movie, we decided to go for a walk. It was around one in the morning. We went outside, and it was pretty cold outside because it was late in November. Of course we decided to go walk by the cemetery. After watching all those scary movies, we were all a little jumpy and scared. We walked to the cemetery in the cold dark night and once we got there, we decided to walk a little farther down the road. As we walked, we came across a farm, and obviously, we had to check it out. We were walking along a fence when a truck drove by. It was late at night and this was not a busy road so we all thought it was a little strange for a car to be driving by, but we quickly pushed the thoughts out of our minds. We continued walking when, not even five minutes later, the same truck drove by again. We watched the truck drive in the other direction and then quickly pull into the cemetery. A man got out of the truck and was shining a very bright flashlight all around. The flashlight pointed in our direction. We quickly fell to the ground to hide in the ditch before he could see us. After a while the truck pulled out of the cemetery and slowly drove by us one more time as we were hiding. When the truck got far enough away from us, we began to run the whole mile back to my friend’s house thinking that the man driving the truck was after us. We hid at the sight of any headlights thinking that it might be that man. We did not see the truck on our way back to her house, and we did not leave the house again until the next morning. Of course, we were all a bit paranoid from watching all of those scary movies, but I am convinced that the man had come back for us and that is what he was looking for in the cemetery that night. One thing that I know for sure is I’m not doing any more late night cemetery walks in the near future.
Thursday, January 19, 2012
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Edgar Allan Poe Reflection Blog
The poem that I chose to read for my reflection blog was "A Dream Within a Dream" by Edgar Allan Poe. This poem was really cool. It was kind of hard to understand at first, but after reading Dawn Sova's literary analysis of the poem, it became easier to understand. According to Sova's literary analysis, this poem was written shortly before Edgar Allan Poe's death. When this poem was written, Poe was struggling with the thought that what he was seeing and experiencing in his life was not reality, but in fact, a dream (Sova). In his poem he says,
“You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.” (Poe)
In this passage of his poem, I think that what Poe is trying to say is that it does not really matter if what he is seeing and experiencing is just a dream or if it really is reality, because in a sense, it is all real. For example, when he says
“if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in non,
Is it therefore the less gone?” (Poe)
I think that here he is saying that no matter if you lost hope in a dream or in reality, the hope is still lost and it is still gone. It’s like when you wake up from a dream and in your dream, you got in a fight with your friend, you wake up and you still feel like you are mad at that person. He is saying that if you lose hope in a dream, you still feel that feeling of lost hope in real life when you wake up. I think that what Poe is saying is very interesting.
The poems that Edgar Allan Poe wrote were examples of dark romanticism. According to an analysis of what dark romanticism is written by Abby Werlock, dark romanticism is characterized by literature including magic, chivalry, mystery, terror, the irrational, and the perverse. The poem “A Dream Within a Dream” by Edgar Allan Poe does not include many of these characteristics. It does include mystery in it. A theme of this poem is the difference between dreams and reality. This is mysterious because dreams are very mysterious. In his poem, Poe ponders whether all of his experience and pretty much his whole life has just been a dream the whole time. It is a mystery to him whether he has been living in reality for his whole life. I think that this poem was an interesting one. If you think about this poem a lot, you begin to convince yourself that maybe Poe was right and how do you really know that all of your life experiences have not just been created in your own mind? What if your whole life has really just been a dream?
Werlock, Abby H. P. "gothic." The Facts On File Companion to the American Short Story, Second Edition. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2009. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc. http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp?ItemID=WE54&SID=5&iPin= CASS391&SingleRecord=True (accessed January 18, 2012).
Sova, Dawn B. "'A Dream within a Dream'." Critical Companion to Edgar Allan Poe: A Literary Reference to His Life and Work, Critical Companion. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2007. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc. http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp?ItemID=WE54&SID=5&iPin= ffazpoe037801&SingleRecord=True (accessed January 18, 2012).
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Scary Stories
Scary stories and scary movies use many common techniques to make them scary. In most scary stories, there is some kind of supernatural thing that is evil. Usually it is a ghost or a demon or some super human who is evil. This is a common theme in a lot of the scary movies that I have seen lately, such as all of the Paranormal Activity movies. I think that scary movies and stories include these scary characters because a lot of people find these types of things scary. They are scary because they are mysterious and they are powerful. I think that people are afraid of them because they are stronger than us. Another technique commonly used in scary stories and scary movies is suspense. Using suspense in scary stories keeps them people on the edge of their seats. Suspense makes stories and movies more scary because it can be used to make people jump. Like when you know that the bad guy is hiding in the closet, but the character in the movie does not know it. So as they slowly walk by the closet door, BAM! The bad guy comes out and gets him. It is suspenseful because you know what is going to happen, but you are hoping that it will not actually happen. Scary stories and movies can be pretty predictable, but what makes a scary story really scary is a twist ending. They make the story scarier because what you expect to happen, does not happen. This is another thing that keeps viewers on the edge of their seats. I love a movie that has a twist ending because you never know what is going to happen next. Mystery is another common characteristic of a scary movie or story because things that are mysterious are naturally a little scary for humans. Humans like to be in control of things; and if something is mysterious, then it is scary because we do not know how to react to it. All of these things combined is what makes a story or movie really scary.