Blog Post 11

Well first things first, if I were to ever interview Egaeus from "Berenice" by Edgar Allen Poe there would be some things that would have to be done before I agreed to it. Straight jacket, shackles, and a shatter proof glass between us. This guy pulled Berenice's teeth out and clearly has some severe OCD or even schizophrenia. God forbid he took a liking to my hair and tried to rip it out. Nooo nope, not ok. Anyhow, if I were to interview him my questions would be less about Berenice and more about his own story. Like where the heck was his father? Did he die too? Does he know if both his parents were related? Poe seems to really like to write about inbreeding and about how inbred people seem to always have mental illnesses so I'm assuming that his parents were related and that's why his health so messed up. Has he ever had other moments where he blanked out and then realized that he had done something while he was blanked out and didn't remember? He seems to not really care for Berenice, could this be because he is jealous that she was beautiful, graceful, and filled with light while he was filled with darkness? Was he obsessed with her teeth because as the beauty and light from her body started to deteriorate due to her illness, her teeth still remained white and shining? Was the library the only place he wanted to be in because it was where his life began but where the life of the woman who gave life to him ended? So many questions for this very deranged man.

"The Furnished Room" by O. Henry really reflects his view of city life because he spends a lot of the time describing the rooms little details and wondering what could have happened before the man got there since a bunch of people have inhabited that room before him. In the beginning of the story it says "the houses of this district, having had a thousand dwellers, should have thousands of tales to tell", this really reflects his fascination with the stories that lie within every house. Reading this story was actually really cool for me because I actually think about things like that a lot. Anytime I stay in a hotel room I always wonder who stayed here before me and what happened in the room. I also tend to move to different houses every year so every time I move into a new home I'm always thinking about how the house was once home to someone else and I wonder what stories they have in the time that they lived there and I ponder how they might have decorated the rooms. Houses, apartments, hotels, and so on contain the stories of the best night of someone's life or maybe the worst year of their life which fascinates me and reading this story was just interesting cause I probably would've been doing the same thing as the main character, just sitting there looking around and wondering how or why those stains got there, etc. BTW super creeped out when it said "Marie" was carved on the wall! I'm reading this at night and reading about my own name being carved on a wall in a creepy story at this time of night is not pleasant.

I don't think "The Boarded Window" by Ambrose Bierce actually contains any supernatural factors in it, only things that seem supernatural. At the end when Murlock falls asleep by his wife's dead body we're told he hears wailing sounds, which we might assume is the beginning of a supernatural occurrence.  Later on after he wakes up he sensed that there was something there. A ghost perhaps? As the story goes on he hears foot steps and the table shakes beneath him. When he can't find it in him to say his deceased wife's name and is too scared to reach out for her we might think that the wife's body has become possessed or something and is now the living dead. When he was hit by the table and there were scuffling sounds everywhere the idea that the wife had become some type of living dead may have been reassured. Especially when he reaches out for her and there is nothing on the table anymore. It says in the story "there is a point at which terror may turn to madness" which means Murlock probably thought that his wife went zombie on him too. However after he shoots his rifle we found out that it was actually just a panther. The horrify-ling funny thing is that the next morning we find out Murlock's wife wasn't the living dead, she was just living. Murdock basically set up his wife's death by binding her hands and laying her on a table next to a window which attracted the panther and left her helpless since her hands were bound. This story just kinda proves that every one becomes a madman when they're scared.