The Tell Tale Heart, the human body, and horror movies today

I have always found Edgar Allen Poe’s The Tell Tale Heart to be incredibly frightening and creepy. The images portrayed by Poe and the dark imagery has served as a classic  example of horror literature. The eerie fear of the old man’s eyes reminds me of a lot of themes in scary movies. Usually, there is one factor that serves as an omen. For example, in Jeeper’s Creeper’s, the beast is after eyes and different body parts to keep himself in tact. The eyes are often seen as the window to the soul. The man’s extreme obsession with the eyes alludes to this. How can a simple body part become so incredibly enticing? Also, the heart is of much importance in this poem. Although he kills the man, he still imagines his heart beating and hears the sound of it even though it has been silenced. The heart is once again one of those organs that holds a lot of symbolic meaning in our culture. Sayings such as “the heart wants what it wants” connect it to love and human relation. I find it interesting that the narrator has such a fascination with all of these body parts, yet it is his own mind that’s deteriorating. It is the loss of his own sanity that causes his violent actions. The brain is often forgotten as an actual organ. Just like the rest of your body can get sick, so can the brain. Mental insanity—like any other disease—is a physical ailment.

Often times in modern day horror films we portray the supernatural as the most frightening thing. Recently, this theme of the supernatural has been interrupted. The new movie released and produces by M. Night Shmayalan, The Visit examines just how scary the mentally insane can be. As two siblings go to visit their 15 year estranged grandparents, they quickly realize that something is not right with their grandparent’s mental state. After a series of events, the children discover that their grandparents are in fact not their actual grandparents, but two patients from the local mental hospital they volunteer at that killed them and wish to experience real grandchildren and family. But, they cannot keep up the allusion of sanity and quickly fall victims to their mental illnesses. 

Poe touches on the incredibly real affects of mental illness and deterioration. Oftentimes the most scary things can simply be real humans. Not images of demons or ghosts, but real humans with mental illnesses. This paired with his emphasis on other human body parts keeps The Tell Tale Heart as a frightening tale.

Thoughts on Defining Moral Lines in the Sciences in Shelly’s Frankenstein and the World Today

Today’s blog post will focus on Mary Shelly’s Frankenstien and some thoughts on defining moral lines within the sciences in Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein and the World Today.

    We will argue here that Victor and today’s society share a love for rationality and science, but also that they tend to blur the line between rationality and madness. In the beginning of the novel the reader sees that Victor commits himself to his studies. While he begins studying philosophy he ends up in field in the physical sciences due to his desire to base his studies in facts rather than philosophy. He also shows a desire to come to a level of academic mastery of multiple subjects in order to support his knowledge in science. In this way Victor relates closely to today’s society which seems to engage heavily in research and the sciences and has recently seemed to take a turn toward having a strong preference for science and mathematics over the arts. Another similarity that Victor shares with modern day society seems to be his desire for friendship. This desire for human connection shows rationality both mentally and emotionally, however it can be easily argued that creating a companion is too extreme and falls into the category of madness.

    Victor and today’s society also both attempt to find and define the line between science and morality. Victor and society both seem concerned with the morality of their scientific discoveries. Victor shows self doubt and concern about creating his “monster” after creating it. He also decides that creating another “monster” as a companion to his first creation would be a bad idea out of fear that the two would reproduce and create more “monsters” and cause destruction on earth. While Victor seems to have a clear idea about the morality of his creation, today’s moral lines are much more difficult for an entire society to decide upon. In today’s context controversy has arisen around embryonic research, abortion, assisted suicide, and other scientific medical research. In this way we see rising concern around the moral lines within the field of science. There continues to be rallies for and against different scientific fields that debate the morality of sciences across the world. For instance, just here in Pullman WA a planned parent hood was caught on fire by arsonists on September 4th, 2015 only 6 days ago in protests of abortions. Also a movement “defund planned parenthood” recently gained a lot of momentum after the release of a video which some believed to show illegal practices in the harvesting of fetal tissues at the cost of the mothers. In this way we can see that themes about scientific creation and destruction are still relevant today.

Manifesto

The goal of this blog is more than just getting a good grade. We don’t necessarily expect many people to read this blog, but we do feel that this blog has the potential begin meaningful conversations within our group. We hope to identify themes and patterns within texts and use the information we extract from the text as a way to reflect upon something larger like the humanities, the growth of the English language, the growth (or lack of growth) of societal normality, the world in which we live, and more. Just as any other humanities class, we believe that the subjects we study and reflect upon in class will somehow connect to the lives we live outside of the classroom. Ultimately we hope to use this blog to highlight and share the connections we find between 19^th century global British and American literature and our own lives with each other and whoever else stumbles upon our blog.