Reflection: Henry David Thoreau's Essay

Henry David Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience” is one of the most influential works of literature with a strong focus on protest. Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience” is about his protest against a poll tax. In, “Civil Disobedience,” Thoreau speaks of the poll tax placed on people rather than property often for the right to vote, that he refused to pay. In turn, he is arrested and spends some time in jail (Thoreau). He spends a lot of time talking about the injustice of charging someone for something that they are not a part of. This work revolves around a wrong or injustice that has been done by a large group that has an immense amount of power. Thoreau uses a very personal point of view, speaking primarily of his own actions and opinions of the occurrences that happened to him during his protest of the poll tax (Thoreau). This work highlights the idea of protest of the wrongs and injustices done by organizations like government that have arguable too much control.

Henry David Thoreau is talking about a poll tax that he does not want to pay. Henry David Thoreau had a good point with his protest. The poll tax is a little bit much; although I did know that the government needed money. The poll tax was okay and almost manageable for the wealthy citizens, but the poor people were kind of hung out to dry. There is no way that the less fortunate people of the country could afford any poll tax because they simply just did not have the money. Some people could barely keep themselves and their families living at the time because their money was not going as far as they needed it to go. So I believe Henry David Thoreau had justification in his refusal to pay the poll tax because some people could just simply not afford to pay it.

Henry David Thoreau writes his essay, Civil Disobedience, after he had refused to pay the tax and he talked about what had happened to him when he was in jail and what happened before that and after jail. Henry Davis Thoreau is just writing for a general population, no one in particular.

The two major issues being debated in the United States during Thoreau's life were slavery and the Mexican-American War. Both issues play a prominent part in Thoreau's essay. “By the late 1840s, slavery had driven a wedge in American society, with a growing number of Northerners expressing anti-slavery sentiments. In the 1850s, the country became even more polarized, and the introduction of slavery-friendly laws such as the Fugitive Slave Law, prompted many abolitionists to protest the government's actions via various forms of civil disobedience. (Civil Disobedience) ” These issues may have also made Thoreau a little bit irritable because they were big conflicts.

I believe that Thoreau does show elements of Transcendentalism in his work. The literature of this time was known to have had a distinct focus on nature, philosophy, emotion, intuition, and psyche (Barney and Paddock). These are demonstrated through many works of American writers, especially ones of the subgenres known as Transcendentalism or Dark Romanticism (Barney).

Works Cited

"Thoreau's Civil Disobedience - 1." The Thoreau Reader. Web. 25 Jan. 2012.

Barney, Brett, and Lisa Paddock, eds. "Transcendentalism." Encyclopedia of American Literature: The Age of Romanticism and Realism, 1816–1895, vol. 2, Revised Edition. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2008. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc.

"Civil Disobedience: Context." SparkNotes: Today's Most Popular Study Guides. Web. 26 Jan. 2012.

Journal #26: Breaking the Rules

I cannot think of any situation that would be acceptable for someone to break the law. Breaking the rules could be a little bit different because that is not in violation of a state or federal law. I think that even if you are a single mom and you have kids that you are trying to feed. I think that the mom could have been able to ask someone else for help before she had to go steal food. I think that I would never find it acceptable for me to ever steal something. I believe that everyone has an equal opportunity to be successful in the world, so it would never be considered acceptable under my opinion. I can understand why some people do break the law, but I have to saw that I would never purposefully break the law just because I can. I would probably understand if someone had to steal medicine. Some people can not afford the medicine that they need to survive and I think that it is just unethical to make them suffer because they can't afford the medicine. There should be a charity that collects money to pay for drugs that the less fortunate people in our society need and can't afford. I think that the topic of this journal said something along the lines of breaking the rules and breaking the laws. There is a huge difference between laws and rules. I think that I could probably think of many times when I did something that I knew was breaking a rule, but I think that I can only come up with one time that I was doing something that would be considered against the law, but we are not going to talk about that! Anyway, I do think that it is okay to break the rules every once in a while because we are all human and nobody is perfect, but breaking the law just because you can is a totally different story.

Journal #25: Fear

Fear... When I think of fear I probably think about things that I am afraid of. I am afraid of nuns and the dark. Nun really scare me because one time at Sam's club I was in the bathroom with my mom. She was still in the stall when I walked out. Anyway, I walked out of the stall and this nun lady was walking by. Apparently I walked out in front of her and made her run into me. She grabbed my arm ans lectured me because I walked in front of her without saying anything. She basically told me that all kids of my generation were rude and inconsiderate. I do agree with her that some of the people that are around my age can be very rude to people of her old age, but I really was not trying to be rude and I did not even recognize that I walked in front of her until she grabbed my arm and was yelling at me. I think that this is one of the scariest moments of my life because it involved someone that I was not familiar with. I was playing volleyball at a tournament and the coach from Loyola University in Chicago came up and talked to my coach about me and if I had any interest in playing volleyball for that school when I go to college. I flat out told my coach no because I am so scared of nuns that I refuse to go to a Catholic college where there might be nuns on the campus. By the way, when I was having trouble with my eyes I had to go to the Springfield Clinic, and I think that every nun in Springfield was there. It was the worst place that I have ever been. I think that it might have been scarier that walking alone at night in downtown Atlanta. The other fear that I have is the fear of the dark. I think that I am scared not only of the dark itself, but what or who could be hiding in the dark and waiting to come and get me.

Reflection: The Minister's Black Veil

The biggest presence of characteristics that I notice in the story, "The Minister's Black Veil" was mystery. The author, Nathaniel Hawthorne, used mystery as the driving tool this story. The whole story revolved around the mystery behind the Minister's veil. I have to say that if my minister at church came to church on Sunday wearing a black veil; it would make me rather curious. For some reason I think that humans automatically assume that something is wrong when there is a sudden change in the appearance or behaviors of someone they know very well. Just like when a group of people is talking and one person walks away. When that person comes back to the group, if anyone in the group is laughing, the person who left is automatically under the impression that they were being talked about. That is most of the time not the case, but I think it is human nature to assume that people are being negative.

Even though the people of the church have no other reason to think that something weird was going on with their minister, they assume that he is hiding something. Like I said earlier, I agree with the people of the church that it would be a little weird, but I don’t think that I would go so far as to say that he was hiding something. I am not really sure what the author meant in saying that the Earth was wearing her black veil too (Hawthorne 284). I think that he may be talking about the mask that people put on to hide their evil thoughts. When I think about people who wear black fabric over their faces, I think about bank robbers. It is really common for people to wear a black disguise if they are going to rob a bank.

It is very interesting that even Elizabeth, Mr. Hooper’s lover does not know the motivation for Mr. Hooper to wear the black veil. Eventually Elizabeth gets so fed up with him wearing the veil that she says that he is going to have to choose between her or wearing the black veil. I found it interesting that he chose the black veil. He thinks that it is more important to him that he covers up his face with a black veil. I guess Elizabeth was expecting him to say that he would take off the veil for her, but because of his decision to keep the veil on, she is going to leave him to find another man.

It is also interesting that the minister goes all the way to his grave without talking off the veil and letting anyone see his face. I thought that when he said yes that meant that he was going to let the man take the veil off of the minister’s face. I was wrong again. It seems like the minister is really just trying to get peoples’ hopes up because it turns out that he does not let them take it off. I think that the use of mystery was also shown at the end when the author never explains why the minister had a black veil over his face. The reader is left open ended with no clue as to why the minister was covering his face. Was he just trying to get a rise out of people? Or was he really hiding something bad that he has done. Sarah Wright says that Edgar Allan Poe had the idea of thinking that the minister was maybe hiding something that had to do with the death of the woman's funeral that he composed (Wright).

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. "The Minister's Black Veil." Eldritch Press. 1986. Web. 24 Jan. 2012.

Stade, George, and Karen Karbiener. "romanticism." Encyclopedia of British Writers, 1800 to the Present, 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= EBWEP364&SingleRecord=True (accessed January 23, 2012).

Wright, Sarah Bird. "'The Minister's Black Veil'." Critical Companion to Nathaniel Hawthorne: A Literary Reference to His Life and Work, Critical Companion. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2006. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc. http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp?ItemID=WE54&SID=5&iPin= CCNH403&SingleRecord=True (accessed January 24, 2012).

Reflection: The Pit and the Pendulum

The Pit and the Pendulum is written by Edgar Allan Poe. This work seems to represent both the works or Edgar Allan Poe himself and also the works of the Dark Romanticism literary period. In the dark romanticism period works that we are reading, the authors seem to have been using a mysterious and suspenseful approach in their writings. They use horror, darkness, mystery and suspense.

In this particular story, “The Pit and the Pendulum,” Edgar Allan Poe uses all of the characteristics above. In the very first paragraph of the story, the speaker is already preparing himself for death. Poe says, “The sentence—the dread sentence of death—was the last of distinct accentuation which reached my ears.” (Poe 263) The speaker is preparing himself for the end. Although he does not know how he will be dying, he is thinking about all the terrifying ways they could brutally kill him. The judge and the jury in this case in the Spanish Inquisition are already scaring the living daylights out of this man of whom we do not know why he is receiving the sentence he is.

The story goes on and eventually the character discovers that he is in a dark dungeon and after a while of observing the walls and ceiling he discovers that the walls are moving in on him. Also, he realizes that there is a giant pendulum suspended from the ceiling moving back and forth in greater arcs and slowly descending to a table on which he is strapped. Rats come along and chew away the ropes just before the pendulum comes low enough to sever his body in two. He is still trapped in the dark dungeon alone though, so his situation still is not one to be happy about. Poe is talking about the rats when he says, “"They were wild, bold, ravenous; their red eyes glaring upon me as if they waited for motionlessness on my part to make me their prey" (Poe 271). The speaker has not yet figured out that the rats are not going to eat him, so his is mortified of death by rats. This description is really intriguing to me because Edgar Allan Poe must have had a freakishly broad imagination to come up with stories such as this one.

After the rats gnaw the ropes off of the victim, the speaker begins to go in and out of consciousness. This pattern of moving in and out of consciousness is much like the pattern in "Ligeia" and is typical of Poe, for in such an alternating state consciousness has some of the characteristics of unconsciousness and vice-versa; one state is imbued the qualities of the other state (May). I think that this method is a very good one and also very well execution of Ligeia in this work. Edgar Allan Poe’s writings sure do have the general characteristics of the Dark romanticism writing era.

The ending of this story was not at all what I expected to happen. Because Edgar Allan Poe seems to always write dark and gory thing, I had figured that the speaker was going to have a gruesome death and I was going to have to read about it. I am very glad that I am wrong and he is saved from the gross death I have predicted.

May, Charles E. "Alternate Realms of Reality." In Edgar Allan Poe: A Study of Short Fiction. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1991, pp. 96–97. Quoted as "Dreams and Reality in the Story" in Harold Bloom, ed. Edgar Allan Poe, Bloom's Major Short Story Writers. Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishing, 1998. (Updated 2007.) Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc. 

Poe, Edgar Allan. "The Pit and the Pendulum." Comp. Jeffrey D. Wilhelm, Ph.D. and Douglas Fisher, Ph.D. Glencoe Literature. American Literature ed. Columbus: McGraw-Hill Companies, 2009. 263-273. Print.

"Romanticism." Merriam-Webster Online. Web. 22 Jan. 2012. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/romanticism

Journal #24: Spooked

There was one night when I was in sixth grade my dad played a huge prank to scare me.  My daily routine at night is to get ready for bed, then I usually read for a while and after that my mother would always come and turn my light off and shut the door. Well, this one night, my dad decided that he was going to go lay on the floor under my bed before I went in there to read. When I went in there to read, he was really quiet and I had absolutely no idea that he was hiding under my bed. I was done reading and my mom came in to shut the light off. All was well and I think about ten minutes passed before I started to hear something rattling at the end of my bed. He was laying on the floor shaking something.  I was freaking out, so I called out to my mom and told her to come into my bedroom. As she was walking down the hallway to my room, he jumped out and jumped on my bed. I was so freaking scared that I wanted to sleep in my parents room for the rest of the night.  My mom was so mad at my Dad that she made him sit in my room until I fell asleep.  She was not happy with that little guy. He was going to lay at the bottom of the bed until he knew that I was a little bit scared. He did a very good job at scaring me that night because I was scared for like a whole week. The two scariest things to me are nuns and the dark.  I think that the dark is scary for me because I have a creative imagination. I imagine that there are things that are coming to get me. When I get home at night I always run to the front door because I am afraid that something is waiting to come get me. Maybe I could just blame my father for all of their fears. 

Reflection: Edgar Allan Poe- Poem of Choice

The poem that I have chosen to analyze is titled “The Spirits of the Dead,” by Edgar Allan Poe. I chose this poem because I had never heard of it before. I love the writings of Edgar Allan Poe and I was looking forward to reading a poem of his that I had never read before.

The literal meaning of the first stanza is saying: You will find yourself alone in the middle of dark thoughts of gray tombstones, and not one person in the entire crowd is going to interrupt your time of secrecy. I think the author’s meaning is really that there will be no one in the cemetery at night to disrupt your thinking.

The second stanzas literal meaning is: You should keep quiet in your aloneness because you are not truly lonely because you are surrounded by the spirits of the dead, who before stood alive, but now are dead and standing around you. Don’t move. I believe that the meaning of this stanza is to say that when you are in the cemetery at night, you may feel like you are alone, but you really are surrounded by many of spirits of the people that are buried under the ground you are walking upon.

The third stanza was a little bit more confusing than the first two; stanza three requires more analysis to truly understand the author’s meaning. The stanza is literally saying: The night is clear, but it frowns, and the stars are not looking down from their thrones in heaven with light and hope. Their red orbs are not beaming, and they seem like a burning fever that will last forever. This literal meaning translates into the author’s true meaning. I think Edgar Allan Poe was trying to set the scene of the sky and make it clear that the person in the cemetery is going to be feeling lonely because not even the stars in the sky are there to keep you company. The red glow of the stars is like a fever making you feel exhausted forever.

The forth stanza is talking about the person going to visit the dead spirit has thoughts that will not go away and visions that will not vanish because they pass for the spirit like nothing. As small as a dew-drop on the grass.

The fifth and final stanza is still setting the scene of the conversation of the visitor and the spirit of the dead. It was a windy night because God was breathing his breath and mist upon the hill of the cemetery. I am not quite sure what the author is referring to when he says, “Shadowy, shadowy, yet unbroken/ Is a symbol and a token/ How it hangs upon the trees, A mystery of mysteries!” (Poe 25-28).

This poem definitely is characterized by the dark romanticism era of literature. One of the things that stuck out to me the most was the mythology of the stars in the sky. They were referred to as people that were not there to keep the visitor company. The last stanza shows the characteristic of mystery, but I did not really catch the meaning of that part, so it is difficult to explain.

Krueger, Christine, ed. "Romanticism." Encyclopedia of British Writers, 19th Century, vol. 1. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2002.Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc.

Poe, Edgar Allan. "Spirits Of The Dead by Edgar Allan Poe." PoemHunter.Com - Thousands of Poems and Poets.. Poetry Search Engine. Web. 17 Jan. 2012.

Sova, Dawn B. "'Spirits of the Dead'." 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.

Journal #23: Scary Story Techniques

What makes a scary story scary? I believe that the authors and movie producers use suspense in scary movies. The movies seem to always start out as a normal, day to day story line and then all of the sudden there is a scary scene. Then the movie goes down another slow path until there is another scary scene. I think that the Paranormal Activity movies are great examples of a good scaring technique. The movie always starts out as a normal day and the camera just gives you an over view of the house and the people in the house and closely related family. Then at night, there is always something a little bit sketchy going on. In the beginning of the movie the nights are always just a little bit scary and then as the movie goes on, the nights get gradually scarier. They also use shadowing and strange noises to make the setting scarier. Gross and ugly things can also make things more scary in a literary work or movie. Slow continuous movements can also make someone or something scary because things are said to move like that if they are possessed by the devil. Scary stories usually have a "bad guy" or a threatening antagonist. A lot of scary stories involve death and or dying because that is something that most humans are scared of. We all know that everyone is going to die eventually, but people are scared of dying in a scary or haunted way. I was trying to think about what makes a haunted house haunted, and the only thing that I was able to come up with was the strange noises and the dustiness with cobwebs. Creaky floors can be scary because it makes you think that there is something or someone in your house coming to get you. Many people are also scared of the dark, so most scary movies have mostly dark scenes. People in disguise can also be scary because you never know who might be hiding in the disguise.

Journal #22: Sledding Poem

In winter we get a snow day from school

Children go outside although it is cool

Their mothers watch at the window with care

 Little girls struggle to wrap up their hair

Children have trouble to get up the hill
Sometimes they slow down because of the chill
Some kids wake early to go out and sled,
while others are still asleep in their bed

The snow will fall down on top of your head,
but it's all worth it to go out and sled.
The brisk winter winds will turn your nose pink
And when you're all done you might need a drink

Teachers are mad 'cause they don't get to teach
Preachers are sad that they don't get to preach
Rich children can sled, but so can the poor
All you have to do is get out the door

People must sit down to lace up their boots
You better watch out for trees and their roots
When you come in, hang your coat on the hook
Grab a blanket and sit down with a book.

If your mom is nice, she'll make you a drink
Pour in the mix and stir it clink clink clink
Serve you hot chocolate and give you a wink
What you don't finish just pour down the sink

Journal #21: Snow

Well considering the fact that I have not seen snow in way over a year, I consider it difficult to describe it accurately. White. I love when everything outside is covered with a smooth white blanket. I feel like the environment is sleeping under the pure white blanket of the snow. The world is quiet and innocent. I love when it snows because the snow muffles all of the sounds of the environment. The sounds of the car tires crunching the snow and ice is a pleasing sound for my ears. I almost think that a beautiful blanket of snow is prettier than the green of the grass. I consider the snow to be more beautiful because it does not occur as much in central Illinois as the green grass. A blanket of snow shows some innocent youthful qualities. I perceive youthful innocence as quietness and not arguing. The younger you are, the more you obey and respect your parents because they are so much bigger and older than you. So that is why I see the snow as innocence because it is quiet and innocent. There are also things that go along with snow that are not so innocent and youthful. The ice and blistering wind are just unbearable. Sometimes the elements of winter are harsh and cannot be personified in a youthful sense. The weight of the heavy, white snow is can also become problems for people. Although winter snows seem light and fluffy, sometime they can be heavy enough to break in roofs and an even weight down the power lines. Icy roads cannot be seen as youthful and innocent because they are guilty of causing many car accidents every year. The sight of snow always makes my mouth water over hot chocolate. The best thing after playing out in the snow on a cold day is to come inside and find a piping hot mug of hot chocolate on the counter waiting for you. Snow can have youthful qualities, but for some people it is hard to see past all of the tragedies that it causes.