Magical realism is a literary genre that combines reality and fantasy alike showing insightful commentary on that of the human nature. Such examples can be shown in Julio Cortazar’s “House Taken Over” in which a pair of normal siblings, leading ordinary lives, encounter a mysterious unknown entity that gradually intervenes and changes their lifestyle. For instance, Cortazar describes, “Irene was knitting in her bedroom, it was eight at night...I went down the corridor as far as the oak door, which was ajar...I heard something in the library or dining room...sound came through muted and indistinct...a second later, I heard it at the end of the passage...I hurled myself against the door before it was too late and shut it...I went down to the…
Imagination limits reality. In “Horses of the Night”, Margaret Laurence suggests that attempts to live unconstrained by an uncontrollable circumstance using imagination as an escape can prove insufficient and detrimental. Chris, the protagonist, is born into the Great Depression, has a dream that cannot come true. Chris attempts to escape this circumstance to realize his dreams. These attempts at escape leave Chris in a broken psychological state.…
In the book, Alender uses figurative language to show how frightened she becomes at those overwhelming moments. This connects to the idea that fear could lead to being overwhelmed or the other way around. Figurative language helps the reader visualize what’s going on in an over-exaggerated manner.…
He said some nonsense about reading the books. I slumped to the floor, not wanting to believe this was happening to ME. He spoke more nonsense as I thought about the things we might lose. At that time, the door voice called to me. I was sure it was over, but the person at the front door went away.…
The story begins with the unnamed narrator arriving at the house of his friend, Roderick Usher, having received a letter from him in a distant part of the country complaining of an illness and asking for his help. Although Poe wrote this short story before the invention of modern psychological science, Roderick's condition can be described according to its terminology. They include a form of sensory overload known as hyperesthesia (hypersensitivity to light, sounds, smells, and tastes), hypochondria (an excessive preoccupation or worry about having a serious illness), and acute anxiety. It is revealed that Roderick's twin sister, Madeline, is also ill and falls into cataleptic, deathlike trances. The narrator is impressed with Roderick's paintings, and attempts to cheer him by reading with him and listening to his improvised musical compositions on the guitar. Roderick sings "The Haunted Palace", then tells the narrator that he believes the house he lives in to be alive, and that this sentience arises from the arrangement of the masonry and vegetation surrounding it.…
In Edgar Allan Poe's “The Fall of the House of Usher” they are disturbed and irrational, this happens when Roddrick and the usher decide to bury madeline. For instance, “An effect which the physique of the grey walls and turrets and of the dim tarn in into which they all looked down had at length brought upon the morale of his existence. However Julio Cortazar's “House Taken Over” is similar because it uses the same kind of factors. This is proven when irene talked in her sleep and he would wake up. Therefore the two stories are two similar because they use the same factor in each story.…
In her little book, Maria Teresa writes about her growing understanding of politics. She describes situations that she doesn’t yet understand, and how strange they seem to her. Maria Teresa also describes the fear she feels when she sees a police officer, or when she hears a siren. Maria Teresa is beginning to understand the fear that her whole country lives under on the daily level when a girl from her school goes missing and federal police look around her school for signs of the missing girl, Maria Teresa knows the girl is hiding in the school and Maria feels scared for her.…
How is the sense of fear created and developed in’ The Sound of the Pony trap’…
She discussed that the way her and her friends entertained themselves other than playing outside was by telling each other stories. They used to climb up a hill in the town named Pedro de Valdivia, where they would try to scare other people with scary stories. Once sunset arrived, they were frightened or afraid to come down the hill because they had a feeling that they would see a devil or something that looks similar to the devil. I connected to this topic because when I was younger, I also enjoyed sharing frightening and amusing stories with my childhood friends and cousins. We would sometimes stay up at night and climb up on the roof of my house to tell each other stories.…
The short story, The Fall of the House of Usher, uses a rational first person narrator to illustrate the strange effects the house has on the three characters within it. Everything about the house is dark and supernaturally evil, and appears to convey some fear that is driving its occupants insane. The narrator enters the story as a man with a lot of common sense and is very critical of the superstitious Usher, but he himself senses these same powers only he tries to escape the reality of the phenomena by reasoning or focusing on something else. Edgar Allen Poe, the author of this short story, is trying to show through the narrator that the denial of our fears can lead to insanity, much the same way it has already turned Usher insane and is slowly but surely acting upon the narrator.…
The main narrator tells the story from a third person point of view. Everything that is known is told from an all knowing voice. While reading the story Ray Bradbury makes it easy to understand that the narrator is more than the talking house. From a part in the story “It sniffed the air and scratched the kitchen door. Behind the door, the stove was making pancakes which filled the house with a rich baked odor and the scent of maple syrup. The dog frothed at the mouth, lying at the door, sniffing, its eyes turned to fire.” (Bradbury 2)This part is interesting because of the use of detail in the senses. The narrator talks to us through his senses and describes the surroundings very vividly. This narrator also gives us certain descriptions that only a person outside of the house could tell us, and since there is no one left to tell us what is happening it must be from the view of a third person…
At the beginning of the story, the narrator comes upon “the melancholy House of Usher”(Edgar Allen Poe 264). Immediately Poe’s description of the house sets the atmosphere for the story and begins building on Poe’s single effect of terror. “With the first glimpse of the building a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit”at the mere presence of the house the narrator is over come with sadness(264). As the narrator goes into a deeper description of the house, the reader can begin to visualize the dark and scary house with rotting trees surrounding it and old molding bricks creating its structure. “Dark draperies hung upon the wall,” shows the house’s visual appearance and atmosphere do not get any clearer within. The interior of the house compliments the house’s dark and decaying outwardly appearance. The narrator describes the house as having “many darken intricate passages”with very large sad tapestries and ebon…
Imagination is the ability of the mind to be creative or resourceful. Reason is the power of the mind to think, understand, and form judgments by a process of logic. " Fall of the House of Usher, “written by Edgar Allen Poe, is a story about insane friends imagining things. " House Taken Over, “by Julio Cortazar is similar in that way. Imagination overcomes reason when the mind doesn't want to believe something so it makes up scenarios that are easier to believe than the truth.…
This also triggered his imagination the think something is in the house, because he had previous where he heard other noises in the Usher’s house from what he read in the story he is reading. Another example would be if someone is home alone and it is night out. And then all of a sudden, that person hears something tap on the window and they think that someone is out to get them. Most ideas from having a bad imagination also starts from what we do in our everyday…
A haunted house is a house or other building often perceived as being inhabited by disembodied spirits of the deceased who may have been former residents or were familiar with the property. Parapsychologists attribute haunting to the spirits of the dead and the effect of violent or tragic events in the building's past such as murder, accidental death, or suicide. More scientific explanations for the perception that a house is haunted include misinterpreting noises naturally present in structures, waking dreams, suggestibility, and the effect of toxic substances in environments that can cause hallucinations.…