Journal 17

 As the blue fuzz feathered through the warm current of air purring from the heating vent, I was awoken from my daydreaming by the sudden appearance of a large man. I was so scared that I was just about some of my wicked awesome kickboxing moves on him, until he held out his hands in surrender. I glared at him with slitted eyes and demanded why he had interrupted my daydreams. He stuck out a large sweaty hand and said to me, "Your a wizard." My friend Allie had come in suddenly to the room and startled the big ugly man. She had heard what the man had said and declared him to be a fake. This made the guy very upset so he turned her into an iguana. I was very upset that my friend Allie had been turned into an iguana. I turned to the man and demanded that he change her back. The big man soon became on the verge of tears and assured me that he did not mean to turn my friend into an iguana. With a trembling voice, the man spoke a new incantation. A puff of purple smoke appeared above Allie and she became to change. I watched with a heavy heart as my friend was not transformed back into a human, but a tiger. Allie was very mad and roared at the guy. He got scared and vanished into thin air. My once human friend now turned his predatory eyes vtoward me. I gave her a weak smile and said, "Stripes are a good style on you, Allie." This seemed to calm Allie. I laughed in relief and wondered out loud what we should do next. Allie looked at me with larges questioning eyes, and I got the best idea of my whole entire life. We would start a circus in which the star of the show, Allie the tiger,would do tricks and other various things. The end.

Journal 17

 As the blue fuzz feathered through the warm current of air purring from the heating vent, I was awoken from my daydreaming by the sudden appearance of a large man. I was so scared that I was just about some of my wicked awesome kickboxing moves on him, until he held out his hands in surrender. I glared at him with slitted eyes and demanded why he had interrupted my daydreams. He stuck out a large sweaty hand and said to me, "Your a wizard." My friend Allie had come in suddenly to the room and startled the big ugly man. She had heard what the man had said and declared him to be a fake. This made the guy very upset so he turned her into an iguana. I was very upset that my friend Allie had been turned into an iguana. I turned to the man and demanded that he change her back. The big man soon became on the verge of tears and assured me that he did not mean to turn my friend into an iguana. With a trembling voice, the man spoke a new incantation. A puff of purple smoke appeared above Allie and she became to change. I watched with a heavy heart as my friend was not transformed back into a human, but a tiger. Allie was very mad and roared at the guy. He got scared and vanished into thin air. My once human friend now turned his predatory eyes toward me. I gave her a weak smile and said, "Stripes are a good style on you, Allie." This seemed to calm Allie. I laughed in relief and wondered out loud what we should do next. Allie looked at me with larges questioning eyes, and I got the best idea of my whole entire life. We would start a circus in which the star of the show, Allie the tiger,would do tricks and other various things. The end.

Journal 19

There once was this guy

and he really liked to lead

Except no one else really liked him

He had made some mistakes

The guy's name was Benedict.

His last name was Arnold

And he watched with bitterness

As he watched others be promoted

But poor Benedict was not

And this created anger

that caused him to

put others in danger

This made his commander George Washington upset

and Benedict was put into disgrace

So Benedict was put in charge of a fort

A little fort known as West Point

Benedict was still upset

So he concocted a plan

He went to the British

And with them made a treasonous plan

The plan was found out

and Benedict was wanted

So he fled the country

And lived in disgrace

Journal 18

As I pondered the multitude of eyes beaming at me from the magnificent creature, it jumped out of the bush and bit me. I screamed and the mountain lion glared at me with its many eyes before it ran off into the cover of the trees. I was aware of a throbbing pain in my left hand, and looked down to see a gruesome sight. My middle finger had been taken off completely by the wicked beast. I frantically dropped to the ground and crawled on my hands and knees looking for the remainder of my mangled finger. I could only see by the moon light filtered by the trees in the forest. I slowly inched my hands across the cool soil of the ground, but I did not find my finger. As the shock of the attack wore off my hand was immersed in increased pain. Without finding my finger, I stood up and brushed myself off. An anger was rising up in my heart and I cried out. "I WILL HAVE MY REVENGE YOU DIRTY ROTTEN MUTANT MOUNTAIN LION!" I was delirious from the attack and could have sworn that I heard the mutant mountain lion chuckle off in the cover of the trees. With despair I retreated back the way I had come before my encounter with the devious mountain lion. I was just to emerge from the forest and unto a hiking path when I heard a  rattling noise in a nearby bush. I stopped dead in my tracks and listened closely. I did not dare to even breath lest I give myself away to what was in that bush. The rattling stopped and I was about to continue on my way, until I spotted the glow of multiple eyes in the bush. I gasped for I was once again face to face with my attacker. He lept out of the bush with my finder between his yellowed teeth. His lips curled upward with a sneer. Then I died.

Journal 15

One person that I miss is my brother Michael. I used to see him all the time, but now he is away at college. The college that he now attends is a several hour drive, so I do not see him often. Most weekends he cannot come home because he works at the college and has to work on the weekends, and has to give up a lot of time to come down and see us.Thankfully, many of today's modern conveniences help us keep in touch. For example, any time I want to talk to him I can text him. This provides an instantaneous way to communicate with each other. I also sometimes call him because I feel that phone calls are a more personal way of communication than texting. Besides, when I call him I do not have to wait for him to see that he has a new text, and he can respond immediately. Another way that my brother and I keep in touch is through visiting each other. He will get a long winter break so I will be able to see him then and catch up with him. Also, sometimes my parents and I drive up to his college for the weekend to see him and visit. Overall, everyone is always excited to see each other and we have a lot of fun. Despite the convenience of technology, sometimes the best way to stay in touch with someone is to visit them. Visiting someone and seeing them face to face I think is the best way to stay in touch mostly because you can create new memories with your loved one while actually being with them. Phone calls and text messages are not memorable at all and can only build a relationship so much before you fall out of touch with them. It is easy to fall out of touch because you are no longer have any experiences with them and are no longer a part of their life.

Journal 14

     
Often have I felt the creeping chill of total fear. One time when I was  seven years old my brother and I watched this odd show on the television. It described these people's encounters with aliens. The people on the show were just saying these awful things about aliens and what they did to humans. This freaked my young self out, and I wanted to change the channel, but my hideous brother Danny refused to. This made me even more upset, but I kept watching anyway. My fear grew even worse when a new "victim" of the aliens came in the show and said that he had been abducted by aliens several times. He went on to describe how the aliens tortured him several times in his life. He even claimed that he had been abducted from his bed as a child. Since I was young and impressionable, I believed his whole story. I was terrified. That night I lay in my bed shaking with fear. My imagination was being overactive, and I was positive that the aliens were going to come into my room and take me to their spaceship. I believed that they were going to experiment on me and I would die. They never did come and I soon fell asleep. In the morning I was relieved that nothing bad had happened to me. This relief soon faded though when I went back to bad the next night. Like the night before, I was terrified that the aliens were still going to come and abduct me from my home. Once again I had trouble falling asleep until I could no longer keep my eyes open. This ritual continued on for about two weeks, but fortunately the aliens never came to do their grisly experiments on me. After several weeks I began to completely forget about the aliens. My fear had faded and was forgotten, until I would hear strange noises and get scared all over again.

Journal 13

Honestly, I do not feel that I learned very much from this project. I feel that we had already analyzed Franklin's virtues enough in class that I really did not need to do a project on it for a couple of weeks. The virtues were pretty easy to understand and I really did not gain much from doing the extra analysis on it. I did learn how to communicate with group members that did not go to my school. By having people from different schools in my group, I was able to see other people's perspectives on Benjamin Franklin and his thirteen virtues. I also did not like how much we had to depend on technology so much in this project. My Internet connection at home is pretty slow and frustrating. I also had to use technology that I had never used before. This could have helped me gain some knowledge about the computer, but I do not think that I will ever need to use programs like Xtranormal again ever for a school project or anything else.Sometimes Gmail would not work and I could not communicate with my group members.
I think that several things can be done to make this project better. First, I would get rid of the group video part. Everything that was in the video was already compiled on the group page, making the video part unnecessary. I also did not think the video was useful because one person had to be the video editor. This person had to do much more work on the video portion than everyone else did. The project was also very complex. There were too many parts to it and too many deadlines. This made me very confused about all of the things that I had to do and when I needed to do it by. I think that we should have taken more time to look over the project and have it explained.

The Pit and the Pendulum

Edgar Allen Poe, the author of "The Pit and the Pendulum", was a writer during the Romanticism period of American literature. The Romanticism period was a time when writings were based on emotion and elements that caused emotion."The Pit and the Pendulum's" supernatural elements, mystery, and use of fear are some characteristics of Romanticism and create emotion. 

One characteristic of Romanticism that "The Pit and the Pendulum" contains is supernatural elements. The supernatural in this story makes it very creepy and heightens the emotions of the reader. This is critical in Romantic writing styles because it is all about human emotion over logic. An example of supernatural elements in this story is when the main character is describing his judgement at the Spanish Inquisition (263). In "The Pit and the Pendulum" the main character, who remains nameless throughout the story, says, "I saw the lips of the black-robed judges. They appeared to me white, whiter than the sheet upon which I trace these words, and thin even to grotesqueness; thin with the intensity of their expression of firmness, of immovable resolution, of stern contempt of human torture. I saw that the decrees of what to me was fate were still issuing from those lips." (Poe 263). This description of the judges makes them seem like hideous monsters (Poe 263). From this description the reader is just imagining a person made of horrible and gross lips declaring the main character's fate. By making the judges appear more supernatural then human Poe expresses the character's absolute fear. It is also an emotional appeal to the reader to sympathize with the character in his experience in the prison.

Supernatural elements, however, is not the only characteristic of Romanticism in "The Pit and the Pendulum". This story also includes mystery, which is a property of Romanticism. Mystery can be seen often in this story. For example, in the story many things are very vague such as the character's name. The reader also does not know what the character did to receive such a punishment, or even who is behind the scenes watching the main character and inflicting the tortures upon him (Poe 272).  At one point the reader is unsure whether the character is dreaming or not (May). The use of mystery in the story heightens the readers interest in the story. The reader wants to know all of these things that Poe is not telling, and it makes them keep reading so they can eventually find out. Poe, however, does not give in and never resolves the mystery of the place the main character was in. 

In addition to supernatural elements and mystery, "The Pit and the Pendulum" also uses fear which makes it a writing of Romanticism. Fear may be important in Romanticism writings because it is very emotional. Fear is irrational and can not sorted out by logic. This may appealed to writers of the Romanticism period because it was the something that the writers of the Rationalism period could not work out with their logic and very emotional. Since logic can not get rid of fear, it places fear and other emotions over reason. An example of fear in this story is when the character is afraid of the rats crawling all over him (Poe 272). The main character is terrified of the rats, but he cannot move because he is tied up and the pendulum with the blade is getting closer to him (Poe 272). This means that the character must get over his fear of rats or die an awful death by the pendulum (Poe 272). The character chooses to conquer his fear and calms himself down (Poe 272). When he calms down he finds that the rats have chewed through his bondage (Poe 272). This enables the character to get out of the way of the swinging pendulum before it skewers him (Poe 272). This shows the individual conquering fear. Since the character was able to work out his fears emotionally he was able to win in the end. This shows that Poe felt that the emotions of the individual could conquer fear. The fear also engages the emotions of the reader and make them feel connected through the story because they too fear and can empathize with the character. 

In conclusion, "The Pit and the Pendulum" contain many characteristics of Romanticism. These characteristics include supernatural elements, mystery, and fear. By using all of these elements, Poe was able to evoke emotion, which was the main goal of Romanticism writers. 

Bibliography: 

May, Charles E. "Alternate Realms of Reality." In Edgar Allan Poe: A Study of Short Fiction. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1991, pp. 96–97. Quoted as "Dreams and Reality in the Story" in Harold Bloom, ed. Edgar Allan Poe, Bloom's Major Short Story Writers. Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishing, 1998. (Updated 2007.)Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc. http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp?ItemID=WE54&SID=5&iPin= BMSSEP39&SingleRecord=True (accessed November 5, 2012).

Poe, Edgar Allen. "The Pit and the Pendulum." Glencoe American Literature. N.p.: McGraw Hill, 2009. 263-73. Print.