To be sentence homework

One final though concerning this story is, what was the sin the minister committed in the first place? On the first day Mr. Hooper wears the veil, he presides over the funeral of a young woman. “… to take a last farewell of his deceased parishioner. As he stooped, the veil hung straight down from his forehead, so that if her eyelids had not been closed forever, the dead maiden might have seen her face…. At the instant the clergyman’s features were disclosed, the corpse has slightly shuddered”. The dead girl reacted to the minister’s face. Of all of the people who would see the minister’s face after he veiled it. It was this dead girl. After the funeral one of the town’s persons remarked; “I had a fancy that the minister and the maiden’s spirit were walking hand in hand”. Somehow the minister and the girl had a connection that overcame even death. The last point is that Mr. Hooper refused to tell his wife the reason for the veil even when she threatened to leave him. He could have stopped her but instead he let her leave. All of the facts could suggest that Mr. Hooper had an affair with the Girl who just died. Considering that the author is Nathaniel Hawthorn, it is a plausible assumption.

The Minister's Black Veil

Simone Sutton

10/20/09

AP English III

The Minister’s Black Veil

The minister wears a veil that obscures his face from everyone in town. In a way both the minister and the town’s people suffered from the veil in a way. The minister himself was burdened with a cloud of gloom and a constant reminder of a sin he has committed. The people who looked upon him from the congregation and around town were burdened with the creepiness and gloom that seemed to follow the minister around. They were also burdened with not knowing what caused him to wear the veil.

One day Reverend Hooper came out of his house wearing a black veil around his face, exciting the people of his congregation. The black veil was dark and creepy and made everyone very uncomfortable. “He has changed himself into something awful, only by hiding his face”, this line reflects a unanimous view that all of the towns people share. It is the veil that is making the aura around Mr. Hooper so dark and uncomfortable. It is strange that just one little change of the man’s appearance drastically altered everyone’s opinion of him. Through the town there were whispers and rumors about the meaning of the minister’s veil, but not one of them thought it would be a good idea to ask the minister about it. Only Elizabeth, his wife, would ask him directly of the meaning of his veil. Mr. Hooper tells her “… this veil is a type and a symbol, and I am bound to wear it ever…”” I have sorrows dark enough to be typified by a black veil”. His answer is complete yet, vague. He tells her why he wears the veil without giving her a reason. He is keeping a secret from her. Elizabeth comes up with the idea that he has sinned, and he does not say she is wrong. The fact of the matter is, is that Mr. Hooper will not remove his veil in his life time and asks that she jus deal with it. “Have patience with me, Elizabeth!...It is but a mortal veil—it is not for eternity”. He pleads to her that she realize the veil won’t be with him in the next life. Elizabeth, though, wants him to make an exception just for her. When he refuses, she leaves him. After that nobody in the town made an effort to make him remove his veil or ask him about. But the questions the people has still remained and followed him to his grave. While he lay on his deathbed no one was able to wrestle the answer out of him or remove the veil from his face.

Reverend Hooper’s experience from behind the veil, however, was a different one. Instead of having questions he had all of the answers. Only he knows why he wears the veil, and he only asks that the town’s people respect that. Whatever his sin was it burdened him so much he couldn’t even look at his own reflection. “Mr. Hooper raised a glass of wine to his lips…At that instant catching a glimpse of his figure in the looking-glass, the black veil involved his own spirit in the horror with which it overwhelmed all others….he … rushed forth onto the darkness”. Whatever the town’s people felt when that laid eyes on Mr. Hooper, he himself was not immune to it. This makes the peoples reaction somewhat more acceptable. Whatever the minister did it was powerful enough that he could not escape the thought of it unless he covered his face. And even then he could not avoid it forever. The minister’s veil is a punishment for his sin because wearing it had caused him pain while trying to prevent pain. “… did not intercept his sight, further that to give a darkened aspect to all living and inanimate things.” The veil didn’t make his life impossible to live but it did make it hard. Every where he looked there would be a dark cloud over head following him around like the rumors circling the town. A punishment for his sin that he probably did not for see was being separated from his wife. He probably hoped that she would be the one person who would accept him even with the veil.

One final though concerning this story is, what was the sin the minister committed in the first place? On the first day Mr. Hooper wears the veil, he presides over the funeral of a young woman. “… to take a last farewell of his deceased parishioner. As he stooped, the veil hung straight down from his forehead, so that if her eyelids had not been closed forever, the dead maiden might have seen her face…. At the instant the clergyman’s features were disclosed, the corpse has slightly shuddered”. The dead girl reacted to the minister’s face. Of all of the people who would see the minister’s face after he veiled it. It was this dead girl. After the funeral one of the town’s persons remarked; “I had a fancy that the minister and the maiden’s spirit were walking hand in hand”. Somehow the minister and the girl had a connection that over came even death. The last point is that Mr. Hooper refused to tell his wife the reason for the veil even when she threatened to leave him. He could have stopped her but instead he let her leave. All of the facts could suggest that Mr. Hooper had an affair with the Girl who just died. Considering that the author in Nathaniel Hawthorn, it is a plausible assumption.

The Black Veil caused pain for many people; the minister, his wife, and the towns people. It was not the reason for the veil but, what the veil represents. The secrets that it held were dark and mysterious. The veil is a symbol of evil secrets, and when it is put on the minister, a symbol of righteous good; it obscured the line between good and evil.

Young Goodman Brown

Simone Sutton

10/19/09

AP English III

Young Goodman Brown

Things are not always as they seem, and sometimes they are worse. No one can ever be sure of what is real either. Sometimes our imaginations are so powerful that they cam completely change who we are.

Goodman Brown is going to run an errand that he does not want his wife to know about. The young couple is passionately in love and it seems nothing can destroy the love they have for each other. “What a wretch am I to leave her on such an errand?” We still do not know what Goodman Brown is going to do yet but, we can tell he is not proud of what he is going to. He thinks so highly of his wife faith that he is sure that being with her will make up for the thing he is about to do. “… And after this one night I’ll cling to her skirts and follow her to heaven.” On the surface this sentence suggests that Goodman Brown is just using his wife, but deeper this sentence means that he can barely stand to be away from her. He doesn’t want to do what he is about to do but, he can only hope that it won’t condemn him to hell and separated him from his wife.

Much like Tom Walker, Goodman Brown walks down a dark path leading him to trouble. “He had taken a dreary road, darkened by all the gloomiest trees of the forest.” A dreary ominous path is leading him to his traveling companions. Unlike Tom Walker, though, Goodman Brown is not oblivious to the darkness and evil around him but rather hyper-aware of it. “”There may be a devilish Indian behind every tree,” said Goodman Brown to himself; and he glanced fearfully behind him as he added, “What if the devil himself should be at my very elbow!”” And instead of taking the path home, to where he wants to be, he is taking it away from home, and to a place he doesn’t want to be. Goodman Brown is afraid of what he has to do. “… having kept covenant by meeting thee here, it is my purpose now to return to whence I came”. Not only is he afraid he is trying to come up with any sort of excuse to get himself out of this situation before he gets into something he can’t get out of.

By now we’ve learned that Brown set out to be inducted into an evil brotherhood of which and he is surprised to see people he recognizes from his town there, like members of the clergy and other upright pious people from the community, which is strange, and possibly ironic, considering the fact that they are all from Salem, the same community who killed people who were thought to be witches. Despite seeing these people coming to this witches ceremony to be inducted, Goodman Brown is firm in his faith in god.””With heaven above and Faith below, I will yet stand firm against the devil!””. Instead of succumbing to peer pressure he vows to oppose the dark things he sees. The only reason he stays to witness the ceremony is out of pure curiosity, he can’t help himself.

“Then came a stronger swell of those familiar tones, heard daily in the sunshine at Salem village, but never until now from a cloud of night”. Goodman Brown hears a familiar voice in the darkness. It is his wife Faith and she is being pressured to come to the ceremony by the same people from the community. “Both saints and sinners, seemed to encourage her onward”. Goodman Brown calls her name but she is gone. Without Faith Brown has nothing. This is because Faith is a symbol of his ‘spiritual’ faith, if she could be consumed by the deviltry of the ceremony then so would be his spiritual faith.

When Goodman Brown wakes up in the forest it is unknown whether or not his experience was a dream or reality. On his walk home he sees all of the people who were present the night before, like the Deacon and Cloyse, as they should be, the religious upright people they are. But Goodman Brown is still wary of them. If what he experience the night before then he has reason to be wary, but if it really was a dream then the dream was so vivid it completely changed him. In the end he is never the same again. “A stern, a sad, a darkly meditative, a distrustful, if not a desperate man did he become from the night of that fearful dream.”, “they carved no hopeful verse upon his tombstone; for his dying hour was gloom.” Compared to the happy, loving man at the beginning of the story, Goodman Brown’s end was the complete opposite of what his beginning character suggests.

Simone Sutton

10/15/09

AP English III

The Devil and Tom Walker

To avoid interaction with the devil at all costs is the lesson this story aims to teach us. It tells the story of a normal man who gets caught up in his greed and sells his soul to the devil only to regret his decision when he realizes that he will go to hell. And no matter how much he prays, he won’t be able to escape the Devil. Washington Irving wrote this story to explain a proverb, and claims it to be the origin of a popular saying.

“The Devil and Tom Walker” begins with a description of the setting. It Takes place around Boston, Massachusetts. This is important because Boston has always been an area of supernatural activity. If something involving the Devil or some other evil being, it would happen there. The first paragraph also points out an important plot point, the treasure of Kidd the pirate that is guarded by the devil himself.

Tom Walker is a greedy old man who lives with his wife who he hates. They don’t trust each other and they argue with each other a lot. They don’t live a happy life and they would rather hurt each other that help each other. This kind of relationship is a breeding ground for bad things to come. One day Tom Walker decides to toke a short cut home, and” like most shortcuts, it was an ill chosen route.” This suggests that Tom doesn’t think ahead, and makes poor and random decisions in his life. Also the “ill chosen route’ suggests that he is walking down a path to danger. The description of the area is very gothic. He is in a swamp with; “dark stagnant pools”, and “half drowned, half rotting” pine trees. These descriptions give images of death and dying that seem to foreshadow the outcome of the story. Despite all of this, Tom Walker seems oblivious to it all. “Tom Walker, however, was not a man to be troubled with any fears of the kind”. He is not a superstitious guy and is skeptical of the supernatural.

When Tom meets up with the devil for the first time he is described as “black”, but a different black from Negro. It looks like his face is covered in soot, as if he has been working in some kind of furnace. Tom instead of being afraid just acknowledges the “black” man as he would any other human.

The devil and Tom get to talking and they end up on the subject of the treasure of Kidd the Pirate. But so far Tom is reluctant to sell his soul away to the Devil. He asks the devil for proof of his claim and the Devil presses his finger into Tom Walker forehead. “When Tom Reached home he found the black print of a finger burnt, as it were, into his forehead, which nothing could obliterate”. This is symbolic of the Devils presence around Tom Walker. Tom can’t avoid the Devil, nor can he escape him. It is like the devil is a part of him now.

When Tom gets home he learns the man whose tree was recently cut down has just died. Like the grim reaper. The devil decides who lives and who dies, and when it happens. His axe represents the grim reapers scythe. And burning the tree is damning that person to the fiery depths of hell.

Tom tells his wife about the deal the Devil offered him, and demands the he offer his sol in exchange for the wealth. But Tom, being spiteful, won’t do it even though he wants to just to anger his wife. His wife goes to find the devil and she leaves with an apron full of valuable silver. After she has been gone for a while Tom is more worried about the silver than his wife’s life. ”Tom consoled himself for the loss of his property with the loss of his wife”. Tom is Happy to trade his property to get rid of his wife. He is still so greedy that he wish he had it back, but either way he still went to make the deal with the devil.

Tom’s deal with the devil goes well for much of his life. Until he realizes in his old age the he is going to die soon. He is still so greedy to think that he should keep his wealth and his own life that he turns to God and church hoping that will save him. “He became, all of a sudden, a violent church goer”. But to no avail. “Tom, you’re come for… never was a sinner taken more unawares”. Tom never saw what was coming to him. There was nothing he could have done to stop the Devil from taking him.

This story teaches a lesson in avoiding greed, as it is one of the seven deadly sins. It only leads you to more trouble. No one should ever want to trade his soul for wealth. “As Tom waxed old, however, he grew thoughtful. Having secured the good things of this world, he began to feel anxious about those of the next.” The things you have in this life won’t follow you into the next, and people should focus less on material thing, and more on goodness.

The Pit and The Pendulum

The Fall of the House of Usher

Simone Sutton

10/06/09

AP English III

“The Fall of the House of Usher”

The unnamed protagonist of this story is going to see his sick friend who has requested that he come see him. The protagonist then makes a trip through the “dull, dark and soundless day of the year” to see his childhood friend, who is of the ancient Usher family. Upon reaching the house he is filled with a sense of foreboding. ” I know not what it was but with the first glimpse of the building a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit”. His unease comes from the sight of the building. It causes him to feel such strong feelings, yet he does not turn away. The House of Usher is literally the house in which the Usher family lives. If this is true then, feelings of the outside of the house tells something about the family that lives in it

Roderick Usher, the childhood friend of the protagonist, has asked him to visit him to ease the pain from his sickness. But it’s not just a bodily sickness, but also a mental illness he suffers from. “Although, as boys, we had been even intimate associated, yet I really knew very little of my friend.” The protagonist only goes to see his friend because they were childhood friends. He knows nothing else about his friend other than bits of his family history. This situation brings an air of mystery. Giving the Usher little background information and making him into an anomaly. Since we know nothing about him we don’t know what he is capable of.

Incedents in the life of a slave girl

Simone Sutton

10/05/09

AP English III

Incidents in the life of a Slave Girl

I. Childhood

Harriet Jacobs childhood was born as a slave but she didn’t realize it until she turned six years. Her childhood was a happy state of oblivion and naiveté. She probably didn’t know it at the time but her parents worked very hard to try and save her and her brother from the life of slavery. Even her grandmother tried to sell crackers to buy her from her owners. They all worked hard despite the futility of the situation. Her father worked as a carpenter and he was skilled in his trade. “On condition of paying his mistress two hundred dollars a year as supporting himself, he was allowed to work at his trade , and manage his own affairs. His strongest wish was to purchase his children; but, though he several times offered his hard earnings for that purpose, he never succeeded”. Her father was allowed to make his own money. He wasn’t exactly a slave but he was owned by a family. He worked hard to free his children from this kind of life, because they were sure to become slaves, but it’s like the people didn’t want his money. They either wanted more than he had or they just didn’t want to sell his children to him.

Her Grandmother also worked hard to make money for her grandchildren after a whole day of work she would stay up all night to make crackers to sell for her own profit. “Upon these terms , after working hard all day for her mistress, she began her midnight backings, assisted by her two oldest Children” The money she made was for her family and herself. All of her hard work was in vain though, she let her slave owner borrow her money and legally her mistress doesn’t have to pay her back. She and her brother owed her Grandmother a lot for the things she did for them.

When Jacobs’ mother died she was left in the care of a kind mistress, who treated her like her own daughter, and for a moment everything was good. Then Her mistress died and Dr flint owns the property now.

Learning to Read and Write

Simone Sutton

10/02/09

AP English III

“Learning to Read and Write”

Frederick Douglas was a slave who was fortunate enough to learn how to read and write, while still being enslaved. He would eventually run a way to join the abolitionist movement. But it was not easy, he had to do most of his learning in secret or he would face the wrath of his cruel(ish) owners. At first his learning was actually encouraged by his mistress. She would be the one to teach him how to read.”When I first went to live with her, to treat me as she supposed one human being ought to treat another.” A soul like hers must have been rare and dying in those times. For a person to treat a slave like an equal, like how one human being ought to treat another was unheard of and actually discouraged. She saw Douglas as a person not as a slave, but something made her change that. “Slavery proved as injurious to her as it did to me, when I went there she was pious, warm and tender hearted… Slavery soon proved to divest her of these heavenly qualities.”Being a slave owner was just as bad as being a slave. It changes people. Good people like the mistress become mean and evil. She began to think that slaves are not the people she once thought they were, ad because of this change she stopped teaching Douglas how to read, and she would attack him if she even thought he was reading. “.. Education and slavery were incompatible with each other” that is what was constantly going through the mistress’s mind when dealing with Douglass.

“Mistress, in teaching me the alphabet, had given me the inch, and no precaution could prevent me from taking the ell.”

Showing great ingenuity Douglass still learns to read by reading when he is out of the house doing errands for his owners, befriending the neighborhood kids so they would teach him how to read. “This bread I used to bestow upon the hungry little urchins, who in return would give me that more valuable bread of knowledge”. Douglass literally craves knowledge and learning. So much so that he would trade his own personal for a chance to learn something new. Him using the word bread suggests that knowing is on the same level as food as necessary for his survival. And wallowing in ignorance is like starving to death.

When he turns twelve is when he realizes the gravity of his situation as a slave. He just now realized that he will never be free. When he begins reading the book “The Columbian Orator” he reads a conversation between a master and his slave. The slave is very intelligent and soon becomes emancipated. The book was full of argument for and against slavery, and the more he read the more he began to think, he became angry. “The more I read the more I began to abhor and detest my enslavers” The book he was reading introduced many ideas that lead him to realize his life as a slave was completely unfair. He became angry and hateful and felt a kind of pain. “Master Hugh had predicted would follow my learning to read had already come, to torment and sting my soul to unutterable anguish. As I writhed under it, I would at times feel that learning to read had been a curse rather than a blessing. It had given me a view of my wretched condition, without the remedy” In learning to read Douglass learned everything that was wrong about his life and knew nothing he could do to fix it. Reading led him to this point yet it couldn’t tell him how to get out. Now he is stuck knowing something that he never wished he knew “I envied my fellow-slaves for their stupidity”, if at that moment he could unlearn everything he knew he probably would.

Feeling depressed and still a little angry Douglass listened to everything he could about slavery, kind of looking for a way out. That’s when he heard of abolition. But he couldn’t learn very much about the subject.

In learning to write he learned how to draw four letters by working in a shipyard, and then he would show off to the neighborhood kids. He would show them what he knew and they would show him what they knew. Whenever he was left alone he would practice something form his young masters copy book or from a dictionary, and after years of hard work he could say he knew how to write.