Appendix D
Caption:
- This is an example of how I have used blogs to enhance instruction and meet the needs of diverse learners.
- It shows my knowledge, understanding and use of technology to demonstrate my commitment to diverse learners in my classes.
- The educational technology adaptations to this lesson demonstrate my understanding of CTTC A, CTTC B, CCCT 1, CCCT 2, NETS Standard 2
Open Ended Stories and Mystery
I look forward to hearing my students' thoughts on some of these topics. Please post a response that is at least 10-12 sentences in length. Check for grammar and spelling errors prior to posting otherwise I will not post your response. Read other people's responses if that helps you to get your ideas together. Above all.....METACOGNITION! Think about your thinking.
It seems to me that Edgar Allen Poe was a master at leaving his readers guessing. I know that some of you like to have stories with clear beginnings, middles and ends, but Poe does not give that to us. Instead, he leaves us guessing about many things in his stories.
Even after reading The Tell-Tale Heart many times, I am still unsure who the narrator is. Is he a relative of the old man? Or is he a friend or servant? Poe also leaves me to wonder what led to this narrator's insanity. Has he always been insane? Or, did some traumatic event in his life lead him to this insanity over a long period of time. I also wonder if the old man is the first person this man has killed. He seemed to know what he was doing. Is this because he planned it so well (in his own mind) or because he has killed before?
In the Cask of Amontillado, I
struggle with Montressor's motivations. I cannot believe that he would
kill a friend because of an insult, or even many insults. His behavior is
that of a toddler in a tantrum, except for the fact that he is a man and has
resources and apparently a motive to kill. I wonder if his family motto
was so ingrained into him that he felt that he had no choice but to kill
Fortunato. Think about this: If the narrator's father, uncles, etc.
also believed in the family motto; was there possibly a lot of violence and
abuse in Montressor's life as he was growing up? They say that we are a
product of our environments and upbringing. If this is the case; can we
hold Montressor accountable for his actions?
The Pit and the Pendulum is the scariest of the three stories, in my opinion. This is Poe at his finest in making his readers draw inferences and guess. Who is it that is torturing the unnamed narrator? I am talking about the text here, not the movie. I get the feeling that his torturer holds a special grudge against this narrator. Otherwise, why wasn't he killed with the other people convicted by the tribunal and killed in the autos de fey that same day? Why is his torture so long and drawn out? Did he commit an exceptionally horrible crime in the eyes of the Spanish Inquisition? Or, did he just anger someone who holds a lot of power. I am also unsure if the narrator lives or dies at the end of the story. It just seems like too much of a miracle (and too unlike Poe's normal endings) for him to be rescued at the last possible second.
Posted by mtarbox on Thursday, Jan 11 at 05:14 AM
28 Comments:
I do think that in the Cask of Amontillado, Montressor might have thought that he had to kill Fortunato because of his family motto. He might have thought that since his family motto means ‘no one messes with me and gets away with it’ he had to kill Fortunato because he insulted, hurt, and basically “messed” with him. I think what took Montressor so long to kill Fortunato was the fact that he knew the thing he was about to do was horrible, but he also had in mind that he wanted to stand by his family motto. I think he actually had a conscience and thought about his actions. He might have even thought about not committing that murder and had second thoughts.---- I don’t know, there’s a lot to think about when you’re reading something that was written by a guy who always leaves you guessing.----Montressor might have never even went through all of that just to kill a guy who insulted him. What I’m saying is, maybe he was just thinking about it and that was his plan. He could have never even done all of that he said he’d done…..
from Kamariah Jackman on 01/11/07 at 08:53 AM
I kind of get where you are going with this. Because the narrator in the Tell-Tale-Heart would tell us one thing then do another. I believe that he might have killed someone else before he killed the old man. He might have just thought really hard about what he was doing. Now in The Cask of Amontialldo I Believe that Montressor had no right at all to kill a man for insulting him. Montressor could have talked to his “friend” (Fortunato) and told him that he doesn’t like him insulting him. I also believe he might have been through a lot when a child because every human should have more sense then that. In the Pit and the Pendulum I believe that it was wrong to trick someone and make them crazy. But in the end Elizabeth and the Doctor got what they deserved for tricking and lying to Nicholas the whole entire time. In all of these story’s there was always someone to blame. Or so we thought, because we believed that in every story there was an unreliable narrator.
from Alexia Colon on 01/11/07 at 09:00 AM
Mrs. Tarbox
I agree with you that Poe leaves you guessing about what happens at the end of the story. Did the narrator die or live? During the story, Poe leaves you thinking about what’s going to happen to the narrator after kills his victim. But the strange thing about the story is that every goes as planned in the Tell-Tale Heart and the Cask of Amontillado nothing bad happens to the narrators. I think in the end of the Pit and the Pendulum the narrator ends up going insane and dying after get away from the pendulum. He fell in the pit and died from starvation. And when the narrator said that the wall was moving he was going insane and he was hallucinating that there was someone’s arm had come and pull him out, but it could have been a dead person arm that was in the pit that grab to when he fell it to the pit at the end of the story, and at the ending you never knew who the narrator was if it was a man or a women in this story.
from Ernal Marsh III on 01/11/07 at 11:29 AM
Well Mrs. Tarbox your blog was pretty long, but I agree with you when you said that Edgar Allen Poe is a master at leaving his readers guessing because every time I read one of his stories he leaves me wondering what happend and why something happend. Also I agree when you said that in the Tell Tale heart , Edgar left you wondering what led the narrator to insanity. I don't agree with you when you said that you can't believe that Montressor would kill a friend just because he insulted him because in the beginning it said "The Thousand Injuries of Fortunado" not insults. Also anyway we don't know what Fortuneado did to Montressor to hurt him. Fortunado might have done something to really hurt Montressor's feelings. Another thing Fortunato might have done is he might have killed Montressor's family members because in the story it did not mention any of his family members, only the ones who are DEAD! I think that Edgar Allen Poe is a wonderful author, he writes books and stories and poems that either scare me , make me curious, or dissapointed. I love books that make me scared. I have a different Interpretation of THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM, after seeing the prologe it made me think, if this is Catherine's story, is she telling the truth or is she just tricking us, she might be an unreiliable narator.I think that we should hold Montressor accountable for his actions because even if somebody did hurt him you don't kill somebody, thats just . . . . BARBARIC! Well that ends my explanation, ( sorry for my random thoughts). from Cheriece Carrington on 01/11/07 at 11:48 AM
Random thoughts are OK for this Blog, Cheriece. This works like a stream of consciousness. We all put in our thoughts, examine others' points-of-view and then keep on thinking! from mtarbox on 01/11/07 at 12:23 PM
Mrs. Tarbox, I agree with you that In the Cask of Amontillado, Montessor’s behavior was like that of a child having a tantrum. I don’t believe that an insult or two would have made a fairly wealthy Frenchmen kill. But if Fortunato was to have done something so wrong to Montressor I don’t believe he would have been as chummy with him as a drunk. Montessor’s actions were too well thought out to be the actions of an insane person though. In the end though I guess that no one except Poe would ever really know about Montessor’s pain though. But a mans pride will force him to do strange or even terrible things though. Montressor’s family motto is no one who messes with me gets away with it. To me the Cask of Amontillado wasn’t the scariest book of Poe’s that I had read, but it was definitely the one that made me think the most. I also believe that Poe was at his best when he made this mysteries murder. Poe was probably the best horror author of all time.
from Kasey Cordero on 01/11/07 at 07:13 PM
Great thoughts, Kasey! What do they call that male honor thing---Machismo? I bet a lot of men get in trouble because they don't want anyone else to make them feel unmanly. What do you think?
from mtarbox on 01/11/07 at 07:32 PM
I agree that the Edgar Allen Poe’s pieces literature is confusing. It is that way because he omits crucial details and might add unnecessary information. Take for example, the prologue of the “Pit and the Pendulum”. Could that be included just to make you doubt your previous judgment on if this story true? But what if Katherine really is insane and she tried to kill Nicholas and Elizabeth’s brother. When you think about this it brings up other thoughts, like what would be Katherine’s motive, and who actually saved the brother from the pendulum. If the story is true why is she in an asylum? Wouldn’t you think someone might back her up? Edgar is extremely good at making things suspenseful. For that, I think he is the master of horror.
from DeQuan Dickson on 01/11/07 at 09:50 PM
DeQuan,
Great thoughts and great questions. I have many of the same questions about The Pit and the Pendulum. You make a good poing when you say that Poe " omits crucial details and might add unnecessary information." So, do you agree that he does this on purpose? Or do you think that nthis disorganization is a sign of his own unbalanced mind?
Mrs. T from mtarbox on 01/12/07 at 04:54 AM