for better or worse.

Poe is creepy. The end.

He seems to have a couple of either thematic reoccurring fears or obsessions.

1. (obviously) death

2. insanity "a sickly smile quivered about his lips; and I saw that he spoke in a low, hurried, and gibbering murmur, as if unconscious of my presence" (House of Usher)

3. a person who is buried alive

4. a person who is unaware of his surroundings

5. a person speaking gibberish

Throughout all of his work the reader can easily notice his building descriptions. He reveals the ending of the story within his constant descriptive foreshadowing. His verbal illustrations are so powerful that I would NEVER want to read Poe by myself in an empty mansion. I may never go in another mansion again. I am really wondering if Poe has a bigger goal, other than scaring the pants off his audience....Entertainment? Joy and I don't understand Poe or scary movies....oh well. guess we will just watch sappy ones (:

At a Loss

So, maybe no one will even see this, but as I do not have Facebook I found I had no where else to turn but back to the UM Epic.

Honors this semester...is awful. I am having the hardest time adjusting to the material and the lack of challenge. I miss having this blog where we can each argue our positions on the material, I miss having legitimate discussions in class, I miss struggling with truth. Why have we replaced philosophical debates with the social origins of hipsters and scene kids? Where has our IQ gone? What happened to the unity that Dr. Mitchell so eloquently referred to last semester? I ended my first semester at UM intellectually exhausted yet stimulated. I was beyond excited about returning to honors; honors had become a safe-harbor, home even. I felt like I was going to be able to jump right into the madness this semester and finally open up in class, but I am utterly discouraged right now to say the least and have thus retreated back into a little corner of my mind. All I can think is I just want to quit and return to the tasteless normalcy of basic lit courses.

S.O.S!?