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115 comments:
yeah thats right
first comment
First is the worst,
second is the best
I disagree, third is the coolest.
No you have the tresure chest!
dont u kno the rhyme?
Just a reminder...more than 108 comments :)
goodness, you and your 108 comments!!
Well, lets dicuss The Lottery for now.
and 1st is still the best.
Ok, what is the secret in The Lottery?
Why would you kill an innocent man just beacuse of one imperfection? Why does Poe do this?
Yeh im going to just take notes,
easier
Maybe it is that the people that live in the village actually think that what they are doing is wrong.
But they are not speaking up about it because of the fear of rebellion.
Just a thought.
Shauna-I think the secret is that the lottery is bad, because the whole story seems happy and lighthearted, right until the end. Also, a "lottery" is something usually would want to win, so it's misleading all the way until the last paragraph.
Is the old man blind in the eye that is coated with white?
Why are there random capitalized words?
I agree with Maria because at first the story seems so innocent, but at the end we find out that the Lottery is not what we thought it was-- instead it is a burtual killing of a defenseless person.
why would he be scared of the eye?
Oh never mind, Devon just kind-of answered it
.
exactly christa
Another question: What defines sanity? The narrator of the story believes him to be completely sane.
Caitlin- he is scared because it is unfamiliar. Maybe he has some like childhood memory or something.....?
That is so true, we are natuaraly drawn to tradgedy. Look at the news, all it is is people dying and robbed and all of the bad things that happen.
Does anyone think that the killer WASN'T insane?
Well I think anyone who kills someone is insane
KFLAN- Hard question! I think sanity is normalcy. And that doesn't really make any sense..... but people who are "normal" are "sane". So what defines normal? I don't know.
Why do we want to assume that the narrator is mentally ill?
This kind-of reminds me of Beautiful Mind. Has anyone seen tha movie?
Is it human nature to be disgusted and awed by tragedies in humanity and deformities of the human body?
kristen, he even believes that the disease has made his senses sharper, but sanity is defined by society.
I think the killer wasn't totally insane. He was definitly a littl strange, but not totally insane.
I agree Caitin, you have got to be crazy to take someone's life.
Another thing: I got the impression that the police officers that came in at the end were all part of the killer's imagination. Or maybe that was obvious to everyone else.
I agree with Annika. I think we fear people that aren't like us and reject the unfamiliar to some extent. So maybe this fear of things that aren't like us can drive us to do crazy things.
Kristin--
That is a good question. I think that sanity is in the eye of the beholder, because the person that is insane doesn't think that they are insane, so its kind of a hard thing to define. Also, people that were outcasts or that others thought were crazy have ended up giving major contributions to society, like Albert Einsten. I'm sure a number of people thought that he was a crazy loner person school.
KYLE- Why do you think he isn't insane?
Normalcy is relative though. What one person seems totally unreasonable may seem perfectly natural to others. Who are we to judge?
I believe he wasn't insane, he just has a diffrent mind track than others.
emma--I thought they were actually there...what made you think it was just his imagination?
kristen- Sanity to me, means doing whats expected. Doing something out of the ordinary mught spark insanity. I think the narrator was completely insane. Just the fact he killed someone, makes him insane.
Yeah emma, that's like the movie. There all in his mind.
I think sanity is defined by insanity, it makes it more definitive and it’s almost like ying and yang.
I don't think that all killers are insane, but I do think that the narrator's utter lack of regret makes him insane. Not only is he unable to distinguish good from evil, but he revels in his evil and thinks that we should be proud of him as well.
Do you guys think that the murderer was imagining the sound of the old man's heart? Was it his guilt that made him think that he heard the old man's heart?
So why do we want to assume that he is insane? I think it is because we don't want to accept that someone "normal" like us is capable of doing such a terrible thing.
Annika- He isn't insane because he logically plans all of his moves to kill the old man. The only part where he is insane is at the end when he thinks he hears the old mans heart beating.
Laura, I thought they were actually there too. I don't understand how they could just be part of his imagination. Can you explain Emma?
In alot of the stories we have read there are alot of people that try to make convince themselves that nothing is happening. Like Usher's friend trying to act like all teh noises are natural as well as the glowing color out side that her tied to tell himself that is is a natural phenomenon.
In this storry the guy become overly confident and then sits the people down right int eh room that is happened in. All of a sudden, the adrenaline rush went away and then he got nervous and went crazy.
laura- just the way that he picked up a chair and threw it and the police officers didn't do anything, they just smiled.
For the people who say he wasn't insane- How do you take someone else's life and then live with that and think it is okay, and even normal? That is just insane, because he thinks he has the right to decide whether someone should live or not. CRAZY
Yeah, ms.kakos. Sometimes we even feel sorry for the villian in lots of stroies. I know I do sometimes. Like, Mr. Freeze in Batman.
I think this story also goes along with saying that we are our worst enemy.
GO BATMAN!!!!!!!
I think he was so afraid of being caught (since he's insane) he invented the officers.
If this story defines insanity as a "sharpness of the sense," then is sanity a "dullness" of the senses? Is insanity somewhat exalted in the Poe stories?
I keep finding a huge theme in Poe's stories about physical imperfections that reflect internal imbalances.
I personally think that the heart-beat is actually the killer's heart-beat. This idea could also be related to fear of one's internal failures and past actions.
Also, the eye of the man could be related to how society saw Poe's stories at the time. At the time society found Poe's stories to be very disturbing (novel concept there!), and so they critiqued his stories so much that it would cause insanity in anybody.
christas- I think he was imagining the old mans heart beat because of his guilt. When you are nervous and scared you imagine things.
Laine--
I agree. Overconfidence has proved to be the downfall of several characters, like in "William Wilson", Wilson#1 has the mentality that he is superior over evryone, and when he is threatened by Wilson #2, he starts to lose it.
Emma-I agree that it is strange that the police officers just smile at him. However, i think that he felt the police officers already knew he had killed the old man, and were simply mocking him.
I agree with Brynn...it's like in William Wilson, he goes crazy because he can't stand the person that is most like himself. And in this story he's confident and then suddenly loses himself.
I'm not saying that he wasn't insane. I am just questioning why we assume that. But moving on to another on of my questions...
The story is written as if it is a speech. When I read it, I imagined the speech as very fast paced and eccentric. How did you guys imagine the narrator's tone?
Yeah Julia, I totally agree with that.
Annika- are you saying that all soldiers are insane, because they kill all the time. Having the ability to kill does not make one insane.
sara--do you think the police were trying to mess with him and make his confidence crack?
What is the significance of only one eye being crazy? If the guy is totally blind shouldn't both of his eyes be crazy? Is it related to how the old guy is half crazy too? What other things does that stand for?
I would also have to agree that when you are guilt you feel like everyone knows and they are doing everything in their will to make you admit that you are guilty. I think the narrator believes it his him against the world.
annika- i agree. Like Mrs. Kakos said, mentally insane people have different reactions to horrible things than normal people do. The fact that this guy was so calm while he was murdering the old man supports that he's crazy. Normal people can't do that.
I agree with Julia. I think Poe is all about taking many people's internal fears, insecurities, and secrets and bringing them to the outside world through actions and physical features.
Kristen-
I think the narrator's tone is calm and triumphant at first, but then like someone else said, it is fast and eccentric, bc he is nervous.
That is a really good point Kyle, I guess I hadn't thought of it that way. I don't really think that anyone should be killed in the first place, regardless of whether they are serving or not. But let's get away from this topic before it becomes a crazy political thing. :D
Laura--Great connection to "William Wilson"! Could the old man be a doppelganger to the narrator? Is there narrator seeing his own disturbance reflected in the old man's eye?
Do you think you are born insane or does something make you that way?
I think that the narrator imagines the old man's heart beating, it is almost like "William Wilson" his conscience is creating the beating noise and telling him to confess.
sara- That's why I think he is imagining them. They couldn't have known that he murdered them, so he imagines them coming in and performing his worst fear.
laura--that's a good point. I guess what I was thinking was that the police officers are trying to put him through that guilt of having just murdered someone and trying to convince him to confess without letting him know what they know. But I like what you said too.
Brynn--
I agree. Wen you do something like murder, you kind of isolate yourself from the world because you are the one who has committed the sin, and you are the only one responsible. In the story, the murderer started to get paranoid when the police officers were in his house because he thought they knew what he had done, and he became so scared because he had no one else to turn to, and nothing to do to try to protect himself.
Laine ---- I think that the single eye being blind is a key point in the story. I'm not sure why yet, so I will think about that.
I'll check back later.
Annika- i wasn't trying to say anything political, I was just trying to say there is a difference between what you believe is right and what is insane.
We are concentrating a lot on sanity and insanity. Is there any other reason he may have killed the old man?
Kyle- I hope you don't mind if I answer your question, I think that killing doesn't make you insane, yo1u are usually already a little crazy if you do kill someone in cold blood. A soldier, however, is not always killing in cold blood but eventually so much killing will drive you crazy. Most soldiers do not start crazy, but eventually they will be driven out of their wits due to the conditions.
Brynn- I think that experiences in your life would drive you to insanity.
Oooo good one brynn. I think that some people can be born insane, but also their environment makes them that way.
Also, so you think that the old man is the villain and there is a good reason for killing the old man, for his own defense?
I like Ms. Kakos' question. I definitely think that the narrator felt threathened by the old man, or atleast the old man's eye. Maybe the narrator felt that the old man was somewhat like a doppelganger to himself. What do you guys think?
Kyle- haha. Yeah, I know. I just also know that I go crazy on that subject.........
Does anyone else think it is interesting that Poe always includes really violent ways of death. There are no simple gunshots or random peaceful deaths. It almost always occurs at night and is slightly unusual.
Yeah adam. A lot of soldiers will become insane after war. They will keep thinking they are on the battlefield, or wnat to be back.
We think that it is crazy to kill because we can't see ourselfs killing someone. Anyone who can just has a diffrent mind set, it doesn't mean their crazy.
I think that you are not born insane but made, has anyone ever read "The Gotham Cafe" by Stephen King, in the story a waiter at the Gotham Cafe goes insane after hearing his neighbor's dog barking everyday and the sounds of the city. In the end the waiter kills a lot of people in the Gotham Cafe and being sent to an asylum.
What could the old man have done to make the narrator feel so threatened? Did he do anything?
Maybe the old man wasn't exactly a doppelganger but the eye made the narrator think about his weaknesses or what he doesn't like about himself and he wanted to escape.
sara--why do you think he feels threatened by the eye?
Julia--
Maybe the blind eye is significant because like Ivy in The Village, some blind people can see beyond your voice and they cannot see physical appearances, so they seem to know things about another person's character just by listening to them and being around them. Maybe the murderer in the story felt uncomfortable with the old man's eye because he felt like his innermost secrets were known to the old man, and that scared him.
kflan--I think that is simply a characteristic of gothic stories. Bad things happen at night. They are supposed to be creepy and somewhat frightening right?
The lack of a background story shows how it doesnt matter who you are, what you want, or what your situation is, the lesson applies to you. But what is the lesson?
Josh, so who makes people crazy? Society? Others?
Well, Kristen, serial killers like to be in the moment and make that moment last for a long time, so they will do something that will make them die slowly and painfully.
Not that I know...
Emily-
Do yopu have any other ideas as to why he killed him? I think that no matter what excuse you would make up for him to have killed the old man you could lead that back to being insane.
Caitlin ---- I think that the killer is the villian, because his horrendous actions have no understandable purpose behind them.
Also, I got the feeling that the old man was Poe's character's tenant.
Clewis- I don't think soldiers become insane, just more jumpy and they suffer from a mental disease, usually, called shell shock that are flashbacks to the war and those horrible moments.
Maybe that is true.
I completely agree with Christa. The disabled tend to have better senses besides the one that is disabled. Since they are without it, they sharpen the other one.
Thanks for the blog everybody!
Can we relate this to other gothic stories?
Au revoir guys and gals!
Are villians really insane or the saneisty of us all?
Can it be related to comic books?
HEY LOOK GUYS MY COMPUTER FINALLY STOPPED LOSING ENOUGH TO LET ME ON! OH NO ITS TIME TO GO!!!
AS YOU CAN TELL WE GOT 110
112
113 GO BATMAN!!!!
Kristen-
for what defines sanity, I agree with Annika by saying that it's pretty much being normal- meeting the standard of what everyone else thinks is normal and being able to make rational desicions.
I understand that "rational desicions" are different for everybody, but there are 'unrational' things like eating soup from a plate or cutting someone off while driving, and then there are things that are rational to almost no one. The people who think killing someone because they're creeped out by their eye is not rational to most.
To Julia-
That was a deep idea, connecting it to Ivy! And we can already see that the killer thinks that he is not insane, he just ahs senses more acute than anyone else.
Maybe he does think that the man with the blind eye can see him that much more.
Ms. Kakos-
About sanity being a "dullness" of the senses-
I don't think it is. I think that "sane" people just don't think about the kind of things that would require very heightened senses, like sneaking into someone's room so slowly it takes an hour to get the door open far enough to stick your head in.
Sane people are also just more ocmfortable in the world they live in. They might be creeped out by a milky eye, but secure enough and more able to know that the eye can't hurt them, besides not being able to fathom killing someone just because of their eye, that they wouldn't ever contemplate that.
I do, however, agree that Poe exalts insanity. Probably because he was jacked up on opium himself.
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