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the Poe must go on part 1

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nice we're done. high-protein low-fat yeah I'm on the Paleo. diet hmm anyway.

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thanks for being with us on a midnight drear,y or an afternoon sunny or wherever [raven pecks at dead Poe]

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you happen to be watching this video. meet Edgar Allan Poe. wells little late

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without a chance that probably for the best he was always a little less bitter. [Raven discussing Poe]

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well Poe was born in 1809 orphaned after dad skipped town and mom died

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young. off to a good start there. a kindly couple john and frances Allen took him

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in but a yes later wish they got enough puppy. well Poe and his dad got along

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wonderfully. teddy boy had a gambling problem and gambled away his family's [Poe doing somersaults]

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pennies. then the death blow he wanted to be a writer. oh so long son. you know

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we're cheering for you. off Poe went, became a literary critic wrote, for [Poe surrounded by books]

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Broadway journal, southern literary messenger, any publication that allowed

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him to rip other writers to shreds, he was game. and yeah everyone loves the [literary reviews in print of Poe's work]

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critics. well Poe's writings helped define gothic romanticism. gothic

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romanticism tends to feature macabre element. ie gruesome and ghastly stuff

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blood dripping from walls head torn half off really bad paper cuts. you know that

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sort of thing. it also focuses on characters emotions. no sadness isolation

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despair all the happy ones. and dead people got to have the dead people not

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zombies but actual dead people. well makes sense. Poe's writing was so

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grim and the guy was so friendless. orphaned broke despised angry and

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resentful, well he would run today we probably be hearing about him on the [Man being interviewed by news reporter]

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evening news he died of unknown mysterious causes in 184.9 yes of course

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he did and the obit was harsh check it out.

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well Poe may not have been a yes beloved figure but his work was. without [Poe's obituary on screen]

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him this guy might have been a postal worker. this guy might have been a shoe

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salesman. and this guy might have been a fly fisherman . Poe inspired generations of [Stephen King fishing in lake]

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horror mystery and suspense writers. a shame nobody ever hired him as a clown

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for their birthday party. In Poe's work there was a focus on conscience. what is

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conscience? well you know that little voice in your heads and you probably

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should have paid for that pack of ding-dongs? yeah that. it's that part of [Man with pack of ding-dongs]

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us that moves the needle on our inner moral compass. another thing it goes from

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something that's a-ok to something that you know morally iffy , to i'm gonna regret

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that to what ever i can get away with. everything breaking bad. well Poe was [moral compass explained]

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hooked on the idea of repressed morality. in other words he was fascinated by

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people who knew that what they were doing was wrong but did it anyway. of [Man with pack of ding-dongs and police sirens appear]

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course shoplifting is pretty low stakes. instead pull up the emotional ante by

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writing about murder and deceit and well more murder. yeah beating hearts of

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a murder victim ticking away under the floorboard. just a quick reminder by the

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way that the murder is bad.

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guilt over gouging out a cat's eyes with a penknife? yeah it's also [Black cat with one eye appear]

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considered bad in America anyway even by dog lovers. like the dingdong thing pales

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in comparison. but not everyone's viewed conscience the way Poe did. look at the [Raven eats ding dongs off dead Poe]

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Puritans for a second. you guys had the word pure in their name. ok we did that.

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all they had to do was spit out an evil word or show a little ankle and they're

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guilty conscience would go into overdrive. but for the Puritans they're [Puritans heads explode]

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guilty conscience brought them closer to God, so there was an upside. for Poe it was an

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awareness of guilt that anchored your morals. whatever made you feel guilty

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framed your vision of what was good and bad in the world. and to bring home [Eye in a picture frame]

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Puritanism on steroids. Poe had that guilt haunt you until you went mad. Bet he

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was a fun guy he also did party trick this bar mitzvah. Poe was influenced by

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five-dollar words transcendentalism. that's trans, I mean beyond or a cross, and the

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Latin sender in the order ie climbing. so the word all together basically means

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climbing beyond. or surpassing a usual state of being. well the philosophy

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stresses the importance of self-reliance and independence. it says that you can

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achieve happiness enlightenment even through isolation. just another way of [Buddha appears]

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saying you need some three times. well this guy Emerson had a lot to do with

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making the entire movement happen. emerson wrote an essay self-reliance [Emerson's most famous works listed]

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about the dangers of conformity IE go along with what everyone else is doing.

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peer pressure anyone? Emerson wanted everyone to follow their own instincts

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and stick to their own ideals. in his opinion it was the only path toward true [Dorothy on a yellow brick road]

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happiness and self-fulfillment. if instead you just went with the flow and

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astride to a herd mentality and we're doomed to get crushed by the rest of the

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herd. and then there's this fellow henry david Thoreau. and he spent a lot of time

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hanging out alone in the woods with his favorite person henry david Thoreau. yeah [Henry Thoreau key works appear]

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and there was his locality a cabin near Walden pond.

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Solicitors laughed. like ever since the Thoreau felt someone could become happier

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and more enlightenment by being isolated. Poe on the other hand thought that by

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spending time only with your miserable self you could become well miserable. go [Man crying alone with a teddy]

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figure. and more prepared to welcome desolation and death. yeah well someone

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just hang out with him for half an hour. please give them a foot rub or something.

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okay let's dive into one of Poe's masterpieces. we're assuming you've [Poe portrait appears]

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actually read the thing, so here we go. Fall of the House of Usher. quick recap

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our unnamed narrator shows up at his friend Roderick assured mansion which is

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badly in need of a home makeover. Roderick and his sister Madeline are [narrator looks at a cracking mansion under a red moon]

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sick both mentally and physically and Madeline soon kicks the bucket. the guy's

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into her in a vault under the mansion but woo she seems quite dead. she comes

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back for revenge killing her bro and dying herself from reals this time. and

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then the entire house crashes into the ground. you know typical [House cracks and collapses]

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brother-sister stuff. pass the salt. you may want to get the story one more read

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as you do read it and yes people actually read it don't just crack the

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cover. look for these literary elements: narrative voice- that's the person or

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persons telling us the story. in this case our unnamed narrator. look for

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setting- where stuff goes down. the big spooky mansion that could use a power

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wash. look for symbolism- something that represents something else like the crack

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in the mansion that represents the crack in the brother-sister relationship. and

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spoiler alert there sorry. right look for imagery vivid descriptions like the

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unnatural light of a faintly luminous and distinctly visible gaseous

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exhalation. and look for tone- the writers attitude or approach to the story. so [symbolism and imagery defined]

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we've got some typical Poe on our hands here. how do we know? well look at the

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first four sentences. dull dark dreary melancholy gloom bleak. yeah talk about

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setting. the mood okay first up. narrative voice well this story is told in [Narrative voice definition appears]

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first-person. Why? well why can't we just be a fly on the wall watching two other

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characters Joe Blow and his friend Roderick chillin at the mansion. well for

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one thing Joe Blow would be a dumb name for [Roderick and Narrator standing over man]

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protagonist but writing in first-person Poe takes us into the story. we're not

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just impartial observers it's more inclusive. we're enveloped in the story .if

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half dead freak jumps out of a closet they're not jumping at some random [A narrow corridor appears]

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character, they're jumping at us. that whirring blades about to chop us in half.

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that killer squirrel with a bazooka has us in its sights. yes what first person [Squirrel holding a bazooka]

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brings the intensity, makes us involved forces us to take part puts us in the

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driver's seat of a car that's about to go over side of a cliff. yep thank you. [road block]

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okay now for the setting. well you know a setting is important when it's in the

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title of the story. few authors have written setting better than Poe. he [Poe appears in a green mist]

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doesn't just establish the environment to create a spoon the atmosphere, he

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makes the setting itself a character in the story. the carnival full of deranged

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carnival workers is a start but makes a carnival alive and now you're cooking. a

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ferris wheel that spins riders off into space, a merry-go-round where the animals [Ferris wheel spinning]

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eat you. not so merry. well in Assure, our narrator spends a lot of time up front

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describing the setting to us. like you usually do with a character. doors blow [Raven talking beside dead Poe]

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open by themselves the entire house cracked in two and then synced into a

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lake. so yeah. if it was just some run-of-the-mill house where everything

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took place while the setting wouldn't do much to add to the scary claustrophobic

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feel of the story. instead this place is held in house form. what about symbolism? [House in flames]

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and imagery? well first symbolism which is a literary device that uses one for

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the story to represent something else. usually something deeper, or more

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abstract. like at the end of the story our narrator describes a blood-red moon

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overhead. paints a pretty picture of a red moon yeah but it also points to the [red moon]

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murder and horror that's been playing out at the house of usher. author uses

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symbolism to get us thinking on multiple levels. otherwise we might as well be

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watching on TV.and there's imagery which is advice where an author uses [Poe with teddy watching TV]

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highly descriptive language to cement an image in our head.

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the precipitous brink of a black and lurid Tarn that lay an unruffled luxor

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by the dwelling. that isn't saying there's a lake by the house yo. yes it'll

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do that, Poe took his time with word joy. time he probably could have spent making [Poe at a desk writing]

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friends, but uh well. he mentioned roderick painting an underground tomb

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foreshadowing what would happen to madeline perhaps? like why else

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would you paint a tomb? bored much? Roderick's foreshadowing about the decline of [Roderick singing]

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a house. at the end of the story of the house literally declined. not just the

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structure itself that's dilapidated but people who live inside of it. there are

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reflection references. narrator sees inverted reflection of the mansion in

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the tarn, ie in the lake. Madeline roderick are reflections of each other.

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male female mental physical alive dead mac pc. and there's that crack in the [Roderick and Madeline pictured]

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mansion assign the whole place is about to come crashing down. also the sign that

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there are cracks in the brother-sister relationship. those two could use some [Man fixing a toilet and Madeleine appears]

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serious family bonding time. well finally there's all the image Poe uses

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to establish atmosphere. vacant eye like windows. feeble gleams oven crimson light. [Eyes peering through windows]

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the dark and tattered draperies which tortured into motion by the breath of a

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rising tempest, swayed fitfully to and and fro upon the walls. is it a wonder this

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guy had trouble booking babysitting gigs? on come on. all right what about tone?

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well in other words what's the author trying to do to us? is he trying to lift

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our spirits by being upbeat? bring us down by being depressing? freaked us out

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by creating suspense ?make us pee ourselves by scaring us silly? huh and we [Emojis appear]

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never did that. well the voice setting in imagery all sort of contribute to the

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tone. there like a vibe sausage. sure together they combine to give us a

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general sense of unease, like this is not a place we'd like to take a holiday.

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we're left with a storyteller who's filled with anxiety and since his entire [People visiting Disneyland appear at the house]

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yarn while in the state of terror. another opposed classic non bird

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related poem is Annabel Lee. if you've got the gumption read that one, and look [Annabel Lee pictured]

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from the same literary elements of narrative voice setting symbolism

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imagery and tone. as for me while our relationship is now ended. you shall see

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me Nevermore. That's my signature line. I have to go there

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