Response 9: Motif Analysis

       Egdar Allan Poe uses motifs extensively in his works. One motif that is in all works that we've read by him is the night. In The Raven, the story is taking place at midnight. In The Tell-Tale Heart, the narrator kills the old man at night. All settings in Poe's poem The Bells take place at night. This shows that nighttime is a recurring topic in Poe's works.

       Nighttime is a symbolism for many things. At night, obviously, the sky is black as pitch. The color black is associated with death and the occult, as in black metal. The night is also associated with obscurity, since in the dark, you cannot see anything and anything terrible could be lurking in the obscurity. This implies that Poe uses this motif to show that he has a negative outlook on life, that life is like the dark and there could be anything terrible in it.

Response 8: Tone vs. Mood

     Tone and mood, in literature, are two completely different things. In The Black Cat, Edgar Allan Poe uses tone to convey the point of the story. Based on the tone (the author's feelings in the story) that The Black Cat has, which is , we know that Poe is writing about a dark topic. In The Black Cat's case, he is saying that all of us have a beast or "fiend intemperance" inside of us. One example of a line that establishes the tone is ". . . perverseness is one of the primitive impulses of the human heart". 

Response 7: Revenge

       Revenge, in my opinion, is a natural human instinct. When somebody commits something bad on you, you feel the need to get back to them so you feel like they paid the price. I believe that revenge also does NOT have to be direct, such as an instance in which someone says something degrading to you and you build yourself up to be better than what they called you while not hurting them directly.
       The ideas of revenge can be brought about by many events. One widely discussed event that causes revenge is when somebody bullies you. You feel degraded by them, or in some cases, are physically hurt by the bully. Immediately feeling anger, you may begin having thoughts of verbally degrading them back or hurting them back to raise your self-esteem and to feel better.
       This type of vengeance can hurt both sides equally, even though it feels good to have gotten somebody back. If the person that you performed your revenge on decides not to mess with you anymore, you feel good but leave the other party feeling bad. If the bully performs another revenge for your revenge, you might perform a revenge for their revenge. It's like a cycle if that happens; the revenges might go back and forth, hurting each other more.