Lit Test #2

The Artist of the Beautiful description

'The Artist of the Beautiful' is a short story by American writer Nathaniel Hawthorne, first published in 1844. The story explores the value of making art for its beauty rather than for a practical purpose."The Artist of the Beautiful" follows Owen Warland as he works on an unknown project. The story begins with Peter Hovenden, a retired watchmaker and Owen's former master, walking by with his daughter Annie. Peter scoffs at Owen for working on something other than a watch, and tells his daughter that the more practical work of the blacksmith Robert Danforth is more admirable. Working with such strength, Peter believes, "takes the nonsense out of a man." Owen has overheard this conversation and wonders if Annie agrees with her father. Robert presents Owen with a tiny anvil he had requested and the two briefly discuss the differences between practical work and more ambitious work. Resuming his project, Owen finds himself affected by Robert's practical-mindedness and unintentionally ruins his work. In despair, Owen put the project aside and begins to focus on his watchmaking, becoming well-respected in town. In the midst of this success, Peter returns to the shop and sees that Owen has resumed work on his secret invention. He threatens to destroy it, which he believes will be helping him. Owen shouts at him and curses the "coarse world" that does not appreciate his work. Months later, Annie visits and asks him to repair a thimble of hers. Owen, for a moment, thinks she is the one person who might understand his work, but changes his mind when she accidentally breaks his small machine. Owen breaks from society for a time and finds his nourishment in nature and in chasing butterflies. Peter returns to invite him to a celebration for the engagement of his daughter to Robert Danforth. Owen secretly loves Annie and is despondent for a time but, once his spirits revive, he returns to his project with vigor. Years pass before he visits Robert and Annie at their home. He offers his invention to Annie as a late wedding gift and instructs her to open an extravagantly decorated box. Inside is a small butterfly which lands on her finger. She is unsure if it is real or a machine. Her child reaches for the butterfly but he has inherited his father's strength and his grandfather's skepticism and the butterfly is crushed in his small hands. Owen is not upset because he had already achieved his goal as the artist of the beautiful; the butterfly itself was only the physical manifestation of that symbol.

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

-" All these, however, were mere terrors of the night, phantoms of the mind that walk in darkness; and though he had seen many spectres in his time, and been more than once beset by Satan in divers shapes, in his lonely pre-ambulations, yet daylight put an end to all these evils; and he would have passed a pleasent life of it, in despite of the devil and all his works, if his path had not been crossed by a being that causes more perplexity to mortal man than ghosts, goblins, and the whole race of witches put together, and that was - a woman." -"If ever I should wish for a retreat whither I might steal from the world and its distractions, and dream quietly away the remnant of a troubled life, I know of none more promising than this little valley." -"The dominant spirit, however, that haunts this enchanted region, and seems to be commander-in-chief of all the powers of the air, is the apparition of a figure on horseback, without a head." -"His head was small, and flat at top, with huge ears, large green glassy eyes, and a long snipe nose, so that it looked like a weather-cock perched upon his spindle neck to tell which way the wind blew. To see him striding along the profile of a hill on a windy day, with his clothes bagging and fluttering about him, one might have mistaken him for the genius of famine descending upon the earth, or some scarecrow eloped from a cornfield."

The Artist of the Beautiful quotes

-"'Now, that is a pleasant sight,' said the old watchmaker. 'I know what it is to work in gold; but give me the worker in iron after all is said and done. He spends his labor upon a reality.'" -"Thus it is that ideas, which grow up within the imagination and appear so lovely to it and of a value beyond whatever men call valuable, are exposed to be shattered and annihilated by contact with the practical." -"In a word, the heavy weight upon his spirits kept everything in order, not merely within his own system, but wheresoever the iron accents of the church clock were audible."

"Moby Dick"

-"Call me Ishmael." -"I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I'll go to it laughing." -"There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own."

The Minister's Dark Veil

-"Do not desert me though this veil must be between us here on earth. Be mine, and hereafter there shall be no veil over my face, no darkness between our souls. It is but a mortal veil; it is not for eternity. Oh, you know not how lonely I am, and how frightened to be alone behind my black veil!" -"The grass of many years has sprung up and withered on that grave, the burial-stone is mossgrown, and good Mr. Hooper's face is dust; but awful is still the thought that it mouldered beneath the black veil." -"It was a tender and heart-dissolving prayer, full of sorrow, yet so imbued with celestial hopes, that the music of a heavenly harp, swept by the fingers of the dead, seemed faintly to be heard among the saddest accents of the minister."

"The Masque of the Red Death"

-"Even with the utterly lost, to whom life and death are equally jests, there are matters of which no jest can be made." -"There are chords in the hearts of the most reckless which cannot be touched without emotion, even by the utterly lost, to whom life and death are equally jests, there are matters of which no jest can be made." -"There was much of the beautiful, much of the wanton, much of the bizarre, something of the terrible, and not a little of that which might have excited disgust." -"And the life of the ebony clock went out with that of the last of the gay. And the flames of the tripods expired. And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all."

"Bartleby the Scrivener"

-"I am a man who, from his youth upwards, has been filled with a profound conviction that the easiest way of life is the best." -"Ah, Humanity"

Rappaccini's Daughter quotes

-"I do so bid you, signor," she replied. "Forget whatever you may have fancied in regard to me. If true to the outward senses, still it may be false in its essence; but the words of Beatrice Rappaccini's lips are true from the depths of the heart outward. Those you may believe." -"How often is it the case that, when impossibilities have come to pass and dreams have condensed their misty substance into tangible realities, we find ourselves calm, and evenly coldly self-possessed, amid circumstances which it would have been a delirium of joy or agony to anticipate!" -"By all appreciable signs, they loved; they had looked love, with eyes that conveyed the holy secret from the depths of one soul into the depths of the other, as if it were too sacred to be whispered by the way; they had even spoken love, in those gushes of passion when their spirits darted forth in articulated breath, like tongues of long-hidden flame; and yet there had been no seal of lips, no clasp of hands, nor any slightest caress, such as love claims and hallows." -"But there is an influence in the light of the morning that tends to rectify whatever errors of fancy, or even of judgment, we may have incurred during the sun's decline, or among the shadows of the night, or in the less wholesome glow of moonshine."

The Birth-Mark

-"In the latter part of the last century there lived a man of science ... who not long before our story opens had made experience of a spiritual affinity more attractive than any chemical one." -"Shocks you, my husband! ... You cannot love what shocks you!" -"It was the fatal flaw of humanity which Nature ... stamps ineffaceably on all her productions, either to imply that they are temporary and finite, or that their perfection must be wrought by toil and pain." -"Had Aylmer reached a profounder wisdom, he need not thus have flung away the happiness which would have woven his mortal life of the selfsame texture with the celestial. The momentary circumstance was too strong for him; he failed to look beyond the shadowy scope of time, and, living once for all in eternity, to find the perfect future in the present."

"The Fall of the House of Usher"

-"Not hear it? --yes, I hear it, and have heard it. Long --long --long --many minutes, many hours, many days, have I heard it --yet I dared not --oh, pity me, miserable wretch that I am! --I dared not --I dared not speak! We have put her living in the tomb!" -"I was forced to fall back upon the unsatisfactory conclusion, that while, beyond doubt, there are combinations of very simple natural objects which have the power of thus affecting us, still the analysis of this power lies among considerations beyond our depth. It was possible, I reflected, that a mere different arrangement of the particulars of the scene, of the details of the picture, would be sufficient to modify, or perhaps to annihilate its capacity for sorrowful impression." -"They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night. In their grey visions they obtain glimpses of eternity, and thrill, in awaking, to find that they have been upon the verge of the great secret. In snatches, they learn something of the wisdom which i of good, and more of the mere knowledge which is of evil."

"The Tell-Tale Heart"

-"Now this is the point. You fancy me a mad. Madmen know nothing. But you should have seen me. You should have seen how wisely I proceeded..." -"True, nervous, very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am, but why will say that I am mad?! The disease had sharpened my senses, not destroyed, not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute." -"Villains!' I shrieked. 'Dissemble no more! I admit the deed! Tear up the planks! Here, here! It is the beating of his hideous heart!"

"William Wilson

-"Upon mankind at large the events of very early existence rarely leave in mature age any definite impression. All is gray shadow -- a weak and irregular remembrance -- and indistinct regathering of feeble pleasures and phantasmagoric pains. With me this is not so. In childhood I must have felt with the energy of a man what I now find stamped upon memory in lines as vivid, as deep, and as durable as the exergues of the Carthaginian medals." -William Wilson Quotes Showing 1-2 of 2 "Oh, outcast of all outcasts most abandoned! --to the earth art thou not forever dead? to its honors, to its flowers, to its golden aspirations? --and a cloud, dense, dismal, and limitless, does it not hang eternally between thy hopes and heaven?"

Young Goodman Brown

-"We have been a race of honest men and good Christians, since the day of the martyrs." -" A lone woman is troubled with such dreams and such thoughts, that she's afraid of herself, sometimes." -"The whole forest was peopled with frightful sounds--the creaking of the trees, the howling of wild beasts, and the yell of Indians; while sometimes the wind tolled like a distant church bell, and sometimes gave a broad roar around the traveler, as if all Nature were laughing him to scorn. But he was himself the chief horror of the scene, and shrank not from its other horrors." -"With Heaven above and Faith below, I will yet stand firm against the Devil!" -"It was not love, although her rich beauty was a madness to him; nor horror, even while he fancied her spirit to be imbued with the same baneful essence that seemed to pervade her physical frame; but a wild offspring of both love and horror that had each parent in it, and burned like one and shivered like the other."

Rip Van Winkle

-"Whoever has made voyage up the Hudson must remember the Kaatskill mountains. They are a dismembered branch of the great Appalachian family, & are seen away to the we just of the river,swelling up to a noble height, & lording over the surrounding country. Every change of season, every change of weather, indeed every hour of the day, produces some change in the magical hues and shapes of these mountains, and they are regarded by all the good wives, far and near , as perfect barometers. When the weather is fair and settled, they are clothed in blue and purple, and print their bold outlines on the clear evening sky; but, sometimes, when the rest of the landscape is cloudless, they will gather a hood of gray vapors about their summits, which, in the last rays of the setting sun, will glow and light up like a crown of glory." -"He was a descendant of the Van Winkles who figured so gallantly in the chivalrous days of Peter Stuyvesant, and accompanied him to the siege of Ft Christina. He inherited,however, but little of the martial character of his ancestors. I have observed that he was a simple good-natured man; he was, moreover, a kind neighbor, and an obedient hen-pecked husband. Indeed , to the latter circumstance might be owing that meekness of spirit which gained him such universal popularity; for those men are most apt to obsequious & conciliating abroad, who are under the discipline of shrews at home. Their termagant wife may, therefore, in some respects, be considered a tolerable blessing ; and if so, Rip Van Winkle was thrice blessed." -"Rip van Winkle, however, was one of those happy mortals, of foolish , well oiled dispositions, who take the world easy, eat white bread or brown, whichever can be got with least thought or trouble, and would rather starve on a penny than work for a pound. If left to himself, he would have whistled life away in perfect contentment; but his wife kept continually dinning in his ears about his idleness, his carelessness, and the ruin he was bringing on his family. Morning, noon, and night, her tongue was incessantly going, and everything he said or did was sure to produce a torrent of household eloquences." -"I am a poor quiet man, a native of the place, and a loyal subject of the king, God bless him!"

"The Black Cat"

-"Yet mad I am not...and very surely do I not dream." -"The fury of a demon instantly possessed me. I knew myself no longer. My original soul seemed, at once, to take its flight from my body; and a more than fiendish malevolence, gin-nurtured, thrilled every fibre of my frame." -"Who has not, a hundred times, found himself committing a vile or silly action for no other reason than because he knows he should not? Have we not a perpetual inclination, in the teeth of our best judgement, to violate that which is Law, merely because we understand it to be such?" -"I am above the weakness of seeking to establish a sequence of cause and effect, between the disaster and the atrocity."

Edgar Allan Poe

-William Wilson -The Masque of the Red Death -The Tell-Tale Heart -The Black Cat -The Fall of the House of Usher -is best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales of mystery and the macabre. He is widely regarded as a central figure of Romanticism in the United States and of American literature as a whole, and he was one of the country's earliest practitioners of the short story. He is also generally considered the inventor of the detective fiction genre and is further credited with contributing to the emerging genre of science fiction.[1] Poe was the first well-known American writer to earn a living through writing alone, resulting in a financially difficult life and career.[2]

"The Fall of the House of Usher" description

-is a short story by American writer Edgar Allan Poe, first published in 1839 in Burton's Gentleman's Magazine, then included in the collection Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque in 1840. The short story, a work of Gothic fiction, includes themes of madness, family, isolation, and metaphysical identities. -The story begins with the unnamed narrator arriving at the house of his friend, Roderick Usher, having received a letter from him in a distant part of the country complaining of an illness and asking for his help. As he arrives, the narrator notices a thin crack extending from the roof, down the front of the house and into the adjacent lake. It is revealed that Roderick's twin sister, Madeline, is also ill and falls into cataleptic, deathlike trances. Roderick and Madeline are the only remaining members of the Usher family. The narrator is impressed with Roderick's paintings and attempts to cheer him by reading with him and listening to his improvised musical compositions on the guitar. Roderick sings "The Haunted Palace", then tells the narrator that he believes the house he lives in to be alive, and that this sentience arises from the arrangement of the masonry and vegetation surrounding it. Further, Roderick believes that his fate is connected to the family mansion. Roderick later informs the narrator that his sister has died and insists that she be entombed for two weeks in the family tomb located in the house before being permanently buried. The narrator helps Roderick put the body of Roderick's sister in the tomb, and notes that Madeline has rosy cheeks, as some do after death. They inter her, but over the next week both Roderick and the narrator find themselves becoming increasingly agitated for no apparent reason. A storm begins. Roderick comes to the narrator's bedroom, which is situated directly above the vault, and throws open his window to the storm. He notices that the tarn (lake) surrounding the house seems to glow in the dark as it glowed in Roderick Usher's paintings, but there is no lightning. The narrator attempts to calm Roderick by reading aloud The Mad Trist, a novel involving a knight named Ethelred who breaks into a hermit's dwelling in an attempt to escape an approaching storm, only to find a palace of gold guarded by a dragon. He also finds, hanging on the wall, a shield of shining brass on which is written a legend: Who entereth herein, a conqueror hath bin; Who slayeth the dragon, the shield he shall win;[1] With a stroke of his mace, Ethelred kills the dragon, who dies with a piercing shriek, and proceeds to take the shield, which falls to the floor with an unnerving clatter. As the narrator reads of the knight's forcible entry into the dwelling, cracking and ripping sounds are heard somewhere in the house. When the dragon is described as shrieking as it dies, a shriek is heard, again within the house. As he relates the shield falling from off the wall, a reverberation, metallic and hollow, can be heard. Roderick becomes increasingly hysterical, and eventually exclaims that these sounds are being made by his sister, who was in fact alive when she was entombed. The bedroom door is then blown open to reveal Madeline standing there. She falls on her brother and both land on the floor as corpses. The narrator then flees the house, and, as he does so, notices a flash of moonlight behind him which causes him to turn back, in time to see the moon shining through the suddenly widened crack. As he watches, the House of Usher splits in two and the fragments sink into the lake.

"The Black Cat" description

-is a short story by American writer Edgar Allan Poe. It was first published in the August 19, 1843, edition of The Saturday Evening Post. It is a study of the psychology of guilt, often paired in analysis with Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart".[2] In both, a murderer carefully conceals his crime and believes himself unassailable, but eventually breaks down and reveals himself, impelled by a nagging reminder of his guilt -The story is presented as a first-person narrative using an unreliable narrator. He is a condemned man at the outset of the story.[3] The narrator tells us that from an early age he has loved animals; he and his wife have many pets, including a large, beautiful black cat (as described by the narrator) named Pluto. This cat is especially fond of the narrator and vice versa. Their mutual friendship lasts for several years until the narrator becomes an alcoholic. One night, after coming home completely intoxicated, he believes the cat to be avoiding him. When he tries to seize it, the panicked cat bites the narrator, and in a fit of drunken rage he seizes the animal, pulls a pen-knife from his pocket, and deliberately gouges out the cat's eye. From that moment on, the cat flees in terror at his master's approach. At first, the narrator is remorseful and regrets his cruelty. "But this feeling soon gave place to irritation. And then came, as if to my final and irrevocable overthrow, the spirit of perverseness." In another fit of drunken fury, the narrator takes the cat out in the garden one morning and ties a noose around its neck, hanging it from a tree where it dies. That very night his house mysteriously catches fire, forcing the narrator, his wife and their servant to flee the premises. The next day, the narrator returns to the ruins of his home to find, imprinted on the single wall that survived the fire, the apparition of a gigantic cat with a rope around the animal's neck. At first, this image deeply disturbs the narrator, but gradually he determines a logical explanation for it; someone outside had cut the cat from the tree and thrown its corpse into the bedroom to wake him during the fire. The narrator begins to miss Pluto and hate himself for his actions, feeling guilty. Some time later, he finds a similar cat in a tavern. It is the same size and color as the original and is even missing an eye. The only difference is a large white patch on the animal's chest. The narrator takes it home, but soon begins to fear and loathe the creature, due to the fact that it amplifies his feeling of guilt. After a time, the white patch of fur begins to take shape and, much to the narrator's horror, forms the shape of the gallows. This terrifies and angers him more, and he avoids the cat whenever possible. Then, one day when the narrator and his wife are visiting the cellar in their new home, the cat gets under its master's feet and nearly trips him down the stairs. His rage amplified by alcohol, the man grabs an ax and tries to kill the cat but is stopped by his wife. Being unable to take out his drunken fury on the cat, he angrily kills his wife with the ax instead. To conceal her body he removes bricks from a protrusion in the wall, places her body there, and repairs the hole. A few days later, when the police show up at the house to investigate the wife's disappearance, they find nothing and the narrator goes free. The cat, which he intended to kill as well, has also gone missing. This grants him the freedom to sleep, even with the burden of murder. On the last day of the investigation, the narrator accompanies the police into the cellar. They still find nothing significant. Then, completely confident in his own safety, the narrator comments on the sturdiness of the building and taps upon the wall he had built around his wife's body. A loud, inhuman wailing sound fills the room. The alarmed police tear down the wall and find the wife's corpse. Sitting on the corpse's rotting head, to the utter horror of the narrator, is the screeching black cat. The terrified narrator is immediately shattered completely by this reminder of his crime, which he had believed to be safe from discovery, and the appearance of the cat. As he words it: "I had walled the monster up within the tomb!"

Herman Melville

-wrote "Bartleby the Scrivener" and "Moby Dick" -was an American novelist, short story writer and poet of the American Renaissance period -adventure, sailed and wrote about it

Washington Irving

American writer remembered for the stories "Rip Van Winkle" and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," -became the first American writer of the nineteenth century to achieve an international literary reputation -typically a genial and comic writer , he regularly addressed darker and more complex themes -considered one of the "inventors" of the modern short story -was first to have career solely in literature and copyright

The Birth Mark description

is a short story by Nathaniel Hawthorne. he narrator introduces Aylmer as a brilliant scientist and natural philosopher who has abandoned his experiments for a while to marry the beautiful Georgiana. One day, Aylmer asks his wife whether she has ever thought about removing the birthmark on her cheek. She cheerfully says no but grows serious when she sees that he asked the question seriously. Many people, she says, have told her the mark is a charm, and she has always thought maybe they were right. Aylmer says that because her face is almost perfect, any mark is shocking. Georgiana is angry at first, and then she weeps, asking how he can love her if she is shocking to him. The narrator explains that the birthmark in question is a red mark in the shape of a tiny hand on Georgiana's left cheek. The mark disappears when she blushes. Georgiana's male admirers love the birthmark, and many would risk their lives just to kiss it. Some women think the mark ruins her beauty, but the narrator says this is nonsense.Aylmer obsesses about the birthmark. For him, it symbolizes mortality and sin and comes to tower over Georgiana's beauty in his mind. He can think of nothing else. One night she reminds him of a dream he had. He spoke in his sleep, saying they must take out her heart. Aylmer remembers dreaming that he had removed the birthmark with a knife, plunging down until he had reached his wife's heart, which he decided to cut out. Georgiana says that she will risk her life to have the birthmark erased. Thrilled, Aylmer agrees to try. He professes complete confidence in his own abilities, likening himself to Pygmalion. He kisses his wife's unmarked cheek.They decide to move to the apartments where Aylmer has his laboratory. He has already made stunning discoveries about volcanoes, fountains, mines, and other natural wonders. Now he will resume his studies of the creation of life. As the couple enters the laboratory, Aylmer shudders at the sight of Georgiana, and she faints. Aminadab, Aylmer's grotesque assistant, comes out to help. He says he would not remove the birthmark if Georgiana were his wife. Georgiana wakes up in sweet-smelling rooms that have been made beautiful for her. Aylmer comforts her with some of his more magical creations: "airy figures, absolute bodiless ideas, and forms of unsubstantial beauty." He shows her moving scenes that mimic real life. Then he gives her a fast-growing flower that dies as soon as she touches it. Next he tries to create a portrait of her with a metal plate, but when the plate shows a hand, he throws it into acid. Between experiments, Aylmer tells Georgiana about alchemy. He believes that he could turn base metal into gold and create a potion that would grant eternal life if he wanted to, even though he says he knows that doing so would be wrong. He disappears for hours and then shows her his cabinet of wonders. One such wonder is a vial that holds a powerful perfume. Another is a poison that, depending on the dose, would allow Aylmer to kill someone instantly or after a long period of time. Georgiana is appalled, but Aylmer says the poison is more good than bad. He shows her another potion that can wipe away freckles, but he says her birthmark needs a much deeper cure.Georgiana realizes that Aylmer has been doctoring her food or making her inhale something in the air. Her body feels strange. She reads the books in his scientific library, as well as his accounts of his own experiments. She realizes that his achievements always fall short of the goals he originally sets. Still, the accounts of his studies make her worship him. Aylmer catches her crying over his journals, and although his words are kind, he is angry. She sings to him, restoring his spirits. A few hours later, Georgiana goes to the laboratory to find Aylmer. When he sees her, he grows angry, accuses her of prying, and tells her to go away. She stands her ground and refuses, saying he should trust her and not try to hide his fears. She promises to drink whatever he tells her to drink. Moved, Aylmer says the mark goes deep into her body, and its removal will be dangerous. In her room, Georgiana thinks about how noble it is that Aylmer refuses to love her as she is, insisting instead to create his ideal version of her. He brings her a potion that he says cannot fail. He shows her how it cures a geranium of blots. She drinks the liquid and sleeps. Aylmer watches her with tenderness but also as if he is watching a scientific experiment unfold. Gradually the birthmark fades. Aminadab laughs. Georgiana wakes, sees herself in the mirror, and tells Aylmer not to feel bad about rejecting "the best the earth could offer." Then she dies.

"William Wilson" description

An unnamed narrator announces that his real name shall remain a mystery, for he wishes to preserve the purity of the page before him. Instead, the narrator asks that we know him as "William Wilson" throughout the tale of misery and crime that he is about to tell. He explains that this tale will explain his sudden and complete turn to evil.The narrator believes that he has inherited an excitable temperament from his otherwise dull-minded parents. As a young student, he escapes from this environment, and his early memories concern a large Elizabethan house in England where he attended school. He describes the school as a Gothic prison, with a spiked iron gate that has creaky hinges. The principal, who also acts as the pastor of the church, enforces the severe rules of the school. Despite the severity of his surroundings, the narrator emerges as a colorful student and feels a certain superiority to his classmates, with the exception of one student. According to the narrator, this student bears exactly the same name: William Wilson. This second William Wilson interferes with the narrator's mastery over his classmates, thereby becoming for the narrator an object of fear and competition. This rivalry becomes only more pronounced for the narrator when he learns that they joined the school on the same day and that, because of the two William Wilsons' identical builds and styles of dress, many older students believe they are brothers. The narrator's rival even imitates his mode of speaking, except he can never raise his voice above a whisper. Nevertheless, the narrator rejects any connection between him and his rival. Despite this antagonism, though, the narrator remains on speaking terms with his competitor and admits, at first, to being unable to hate him. The relationship soon deteriorates, however, and a violent altercation ensues between the two William Wilsons. The scuffle evokes in the narrator memories of his infancy, which makes him grow only more obsessed with William Wilson. On a night not long after the scuffle, the narrator sneaks into his rival's bedroom to play a practical joke. Shining the light from his lamp on his rival's face, the narrator believes he sees a different William Wilson, a face unique to the darkness. Terrified by the facial transformation he imagines, the narrator rushes from the room.After several months, the narrator becomes a student at another school, Eton, and attempts to leave behind memories of the other William Wilson. He abuses alcohol in this effort to forget the past, and he recalls one debaucherous party in particular. In the midst of the drunken revelry, a servant announces the presence of a mysterious guest calling for the attention of the narrator. Excited and intoxicated, the narrator rushes to the vestibule, only to discover a youth of his same size and dress. The faintness of the light prevents the narrator from discerning the visitor's face. Grabbing the narrator's arm, the guest whispers "William Wilson" in the narrator's ear and quickly vanishes. Changing schools again, the narrator moves to Oxford, where he picks up the vice of gambling. Skilled at this vice, the narrator chooses weak-minded classmates on whom to prey for extravagant monetary gain. After two years at Oxford, the narrator meets a young nobleman named Glendinning and makes him his next gambling target. Allowing him to win at first, the narrator lures him with the prospect of more success to a large party he has arranged. At this party, Glendinning plays exactly as the narrator expects and quickly amasses large debts. At the moment that he quadruples his debt, Glendinning becomes ghastly pale, and the narrator realizes his triumph. Suddenly, however, a stranger intrudes on the party with a rush that extinguishes all the candles in the room. He reveals the narrator to be a scam artist and promptly retreats. The announcement ruins the narrator, forcing his departure not only from Oxford, but also from Britain.

Harriet Beecher Stowe

Author of Uncle Tom's Cabin: most influential antislavery novel in the nation's history

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Originally a transcendentalist; later rejected them and became a leading anti-transcendentalist. He was a descendant of Puritan settlers. The Scarlet Letter shows the hypocrisy and insensitivity of New England puritans by showing their cruelty to a woman who has committed adultery and is forced to wear a scarlet "A". -wrote "Young Goodman Brown" "The Minister's Black Veil" "The Birth-Mark" "The Artist of the Beautiful" and "Rappaccini's Daughter"

"Bartleby the Scrivener" description

The narrator of "Bartleby the Scrivener" is the Lawyer, who runs a law practice on Wall Street in New York. The Lawyer begins by noting that he is an "elderly man," and that his profession has brought him "into more than ordinary contact with what would seem an interesting and somewhat singular set of men the law-copyists, or scriveners." While the Lawyer knows many interesting stories of such scriveners, he bypasses them all in favor of telling the story of Bartleby, whom he finds to be the most interesting of all the scriveners. Bartleby is, according to the Lawyer, "one of those beings of whom nothing is ascertainable, except from the original sources, and, in his case, those were very small." Before introducing Bartleby, the Lawyer describes the other scriveners working in his office at this time. The first is Turkey, a man who is about the same age as the Lawyer (around sixty). Turkey has been causing problems lately. He is an excellent scrivener in the morning, but as the day wears on—particularly in the afternoon—he becomes more prone to making mistakes, dropping ink plots on the copies he writes. He also becomes more flushed, with an ill temper, in the afternoon. The Lawyer tries to help both himself and Turkey by asking Turkey only to work in the mornings, but Turkey argues with him, so the Lawyer simply gives him less important documents in the afternoon. The second worker is Nippers, who is much younger and more ambitious than Turkey. At twenty-five years old, he is a comical opposite to Turkey, because he has trouble working in the morning. Until lunchtime, he suffers from stomach trouble, and constantly adjusts the height of the legs on his desk, trying to get them perfectly balanced. In the afternoons, he is calmer and works steadily. The last employee—not a scrivener, but an errand-boy—is Ginger Nut. His nickname comes from the fact that Turkey and Nippers often send him to pick up ginger nut cakes for them. The Lawyer spends some time describing the habits of these men and then introduces Bartleby. Bartleby comes to the office to answer an ad placed by the Lawyer, who at that time needed more help. The Lawyer hires Bartleby and gives him a space in the office. At first, Bartleby seems to be an excellent worker. He writes day and night, often by no more than candlelight. His output is enormous, and he greatly pleases the Lawyer. One day, the Lawyer has a small document he needs examined. He calls Bartleby in to do the job, but Bartleby responds: "I would prefer not to." This answer amazes the Lawyer, who has a "natural expectancy of instant compliance." He is so amazed by this response, and the calm way Bartleby says it, that he cannot even bring himself to scold Bartleby. Instead, he calls in Nippers to examine the document instead. The last employee—not a scrivener, but an errand-boy—is Ginger Nut. His nickname comes from the fact that Turkey and Nippers often send him to pick up ginger nut cakes for them. The Lawyer spends some time describing the habits of these men and then introduces Bartleby. Bartleby comes to the office to answer an ad placed by the Lawyer, who at that time needed more help. The Lawyer hires Bartleby and gives him a space in the office. At first, Bartleby seems to be an excellent worker. He writes day and night, often by no more than candlelight. His output is enormous, and he greatly pleases the Lawyer. One day, the Lawyer has a small document he needs examined. He calls Bartleby in to do the job, but Bartleby responds: "I would prefer not to." This answer amazes the Lawyer, who has a "natural expectancy of instant compliance." He is so amazed by this response, and the calm way Bartleby says it, that he cannot even bring himself to scold Bartleby. Instead, he calls in Nippers to examine the document instead.

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow description

The protagonist of the story, Ichabod Crane, is a Yankee schoolteacher who lives in Sleepy Hollow, a Dutch enclave on the Hudson River. A suggestible man, Crane believes the ghost stories and tales of witchcraft he has heard and read. He is particularly impressed by the tale of a spectral headless horseman said to haunt the area. Crane is also mercenary; he courts Katrina Van Tassel mostly because she is the daughter of a rich farmer and is expected to receive a large inheritance. Abraham Van Brunt (also called Brom Bones) is Crane's jealous rival, a local favourite and a rash horseman who often plays tricks on the schoolmaster. Late one night as Ichabod Crane rides home from a party at Katrina's home, he is suddenly frightened by a ghostlike headless horseman. The ghost pursues him and hurls at him a round object that he takes to be a head but is later revealed to have been a pumpkin. The schoolmaster is never seen in Sleepy Hollow again.

James Fennimore Cooper

Wrote numerous sea-stories as well as the historical romances known as the Leather stocking Tales, featuring frontiersman Natty Bumppo. Among his most famous works is the romantic novel The Last of the Mohicans, which many people consider his masterpiece. -32 novels, history of American Navy, 5 travel books, ad 2 major works of criticism -transatlantic and European fiction

Young Goodman Brown description

allegorical short story by Nathaniel Hawthorne, published in 1835 in New England Magazine and collected in Mosses from an Old Manse (1846). Considered an outstanding tale of witchcraft, it concerns a young Puritan who ventures into the forest to meet with a stranger. It soon becomes clear that he is approaching a witches' sabbath, and he sees with horror that prominent members of his community are participating in the ceremonies. Ultimately, Brown is led to a flaming altar where he sees his wife, Faith. He cries out to her, "Resist," and suddenly finds himself alone among the trees. He returns home but loses forever his faith in goodness or piety. -- In the beginning, YGB is seen giving his goodbyes to his wife Faith. He goes into the woods to do his "errands" and runs into a man with serpent staff. (He represented the devil's temptation.) YGB later meets other citizens of the village he was from and questions why they are there. Now, more "evil" supernatural forces come and YGB thinks he hears Faith. Faith is indeed also at the same "supernatural" place where YGB is. They exchanges looks and YGB is unable to truly trust Faith now. Both are intertwined in a "cult" like group that worships the devil and fiends. This teaches the reader and YGB that there is evil inside everyone and "evil is the nature of mankind". When YGB returns home he questions the people he saw at the ritual and questions Faith and his own self.

"The Masque of the Red Death" description

is a short story by American writer Edgar Allan Poe, first published in 1842. The story follows Prince Prospero's attempts to avoid a dangerous plague, known as the Red Death, by hiding in his abbey. He, along with many other wealthy nobles, hosts a masquerade ball in seven rooms of the abbey, each decorated with a different color. In the midst of their revelry, a mysterious figure disguised as a Red Death victim enters and makes his way through each of the rooms. Prospero dies after confronting this stranger, whose "costume" proves to contain nothing tangible inside it; the guests also die in turn.

"The Tell-Tale Heart" description

is a short story by American writer Edgar Allan Poe, first published in 1843. It is related by an unnamed narrator who endeavors to convince the reader of the narrator's sanity while simultaneously describing a murder the narrator committed. The victim was an old man with a filmy "vulture-eye", as the narrator calls it. The narrator emphasizes the careful calculation of the murder, attempting the perfect crime, complete with dismembering and hiding the body under the floorboards. Ultimately, the narrator's feelings result in hearing a thumping sound, which the narrator interprets as the dead man's beating heart. -is told from a first-person narrative of an unnamed narrator, who insists on being sane, but is suffering from a disease (nervousness) which causes "over-acuteness of the senses". The old man with whom the narrator lives has a clouded, pale, blue "vulture-like" eye, which distresses and manipulates the narrator so much that the narrator plots to murder the old man, despite also insisting that the narrator loves the old man. The narrator insists that this careful precision in committing the murder proves that the narrator cannot possibly be insane. For seven nights, the narrator opens the door of the old man's room in order to shine a sliver of light onto the "evil eye". However, the old man's vulture-eye is always closed, making it impossible to "do the work", thus making the narrator go further into distress. On the eighth night, the old man awakens after the narrator's hand slips and makes a noise, interrupting the narrator's nightly ritual. The narrator does not draw back and, after some time, decides to open the lantern. A single thin ray of light shines out and lands precisely on the "evil eye", revealing that it is wide open. Hearing the old man's heart beating loudly and dangerously fast from terror, the narrator decides to strike; jumping out with a loud yell and smothering the old man with his own bed. The narrator then dismembers the body and conceals the pieces under the floorboards, and ensures the concealment of all signs of the crime. Even so, the old man's scream during the night causes a neighbor to report to the police, who the narrator invites in to look around. The narrator claims that the scream heard was the his own in a nightmare and that the man is absent in the country. Confident that they will not find any evidence of the murder, the narrator brings chairs for them and they sit in the old man's room. The chairs are placed on the very spot where the body is concealed; the police suspect nothing and the narrator has a pleasant and easy manner. The narrator begins to feel uncomfortable and notices a ringing in the his ears. As the ringing grows louder, the narrator comes to the conclusion that it is the heartbeat of the old man coming from under the floorboards. The sound increases steadily to the narrator, though the officers seem to pay no attention to it. Terrified by the violent beating of the heart, and convinced that the officers are aware not only of the heartbeat but also of the narrator's guilt, the narrator breaks down and confesses. The narrator tells them to tear up the floorboards to reveal the remains of the old man's body.

Rappaccini's Daughter description

is a short story by Nathaniel Hawthorne first published in the December 1844 issue of The United States Magazine and Democratic Review, and later in the 1846 collection Mosses from an Old Manse. It is about Giacomo Rappaccini, a medical researcher in medieval Padua who grows a garden of poisonous plants. He brings up his daughter to tend the plants, and she becomes resistant to the poisons, but in the process she herself becomes poisonous to others. The traditional story of a poisonous maiden has been traced back to India, and Hawthorne's version has been adopted in contemporary works. -"Rappaccini's Daughter" is a short story by Nathaniel Hawthorne in which Giovanni falls for his neighbor Rappaccini's beautiful and mysterious daughter, Beatrice. Giovanni rents a room overlooking Dr. Rappaccini's garden, and he falls for Rappaccini's daughter, Beatrice. Giovanni learns of a secret path into the garden. Over time, Beatrice and Giovani fall in love. However, Giovanni begins noticing that flowers and insects die in his presence. Another doctor, Baglioni, tells Giovanni that Rappaccini has raised Beatrice on poisons and that she is now poisonous as a result. He gives Giovanni an antidote. Giovanni gives Beatrice the antidote, but she dies as a result.

The Minister's Dark Veil description

is a short story by Nathaniel Hawthorne in which the Puritan reverend of a small New England town begins wearing a black veil. Reverend Hooper delivers a sermon one day wearing the veil. At the funeral of a young girl, parishioners suspect that he is wearing it because of some secret sin committed while the girl was still alive. Reverend Hooper refuses to remove the veil for his fiancée, and will not even remove it at death. He tells Reverend Clark, a colleague from a neighboring town, that he sees a black veil on the face of everyone he meets.

"Moby Dick" description

novel by American writer Herman Melville. The book is the sailor Ishmael's narrative of the obsessive quest of Ahab, captain of the whaling ship Pequod, for revenge on Moby Dick, the giant white sperm whale that on the ship's previous voyage bit off Ahab's leg at the knee. A contribution to the literature of the American Renaissance, Moby-Dick was published to mixed reviews, was a commercial failure, and was out of print at the time of the author's death in 1891. Its reputation as a "Great American Novel" was established only in the 20th century, after the centennial of its author's birth. William Faulkner said he wished he had written the book himself,[1] and D. H. Lawrence called it "one of the strangest and most wonderful books in the world" and "the greatest book of the sea ever written".[2] Its opening sentence, "Call me Ishmael", is among world literature's most famous.[3]

Rip Van Winkle description

written by Washington Irving -Rip Van Winkle is an amiable farmer who wanders into the Catskill Mountains, where he comes upon a group of dwarfs playing ninepins. Rip accepts their offer of a drink of liquor and promptly falls asleep. When he awakens, 20 years later, he is an old man with a long white beard; the dwarfs are nowhere in sight. When Rip returns to town, he finds that everything is changed: his wife is dead, his children are grown, and George Washington's portrait hangs in place of King George III's. The old man entertains the townspeople with tales of the old days and of his encounter with the little men in the mountains.