| It is common for writers to write at least one piece of work that is based on or closely related to events in their own lives. Edgar Allen Poe wrote The Fall of the House of Usher; a short story about a woman being entombed alive, something Poe was deathly afraid of. Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck, was set in rural California, where Steinbeck was born and raised. In On Walden Pond, Henry David Thoreau wrote about the two years he spent living in the wilderness. F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote The Great Gatsby based on his time spent in France. Art cannot exist without the life that inspires it.
Edgar Allan Poe was born on January 19, 1809, in Boston, Massachusetts to David Poe Jr. and Elizabeth Arnold Hopkins. His parents died when he was three and he was sent to live with John Allan in Richmond, VA. He attended the University of Virginia, but dropped out after getting into debt and publishing his first book of poetry, Tamerlane and Other Poems.
In May of 1827, he joined The United States Army and eventually received an appointment at West Point. While at West Point, Poe published his second collection of poetry, Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane and Minor Poems. Eventually John Allan stopped financially supporting Poe and Poe was dismissed from the service. Poe continued living in Baltimore with his aunt, Mrs. Clemm, and her daughter, Virginia, and published a third book of poetry, Poems by Edgar Allan Poe, Second Edition.
After his third book, Poe began writing prose, and eventually became an editor for the Southern Literary Messenger. Not long after this he married his thirteen-year-old cousin, Victoria Clemm, on May 16, 1836.
One of Poe’s most popular short stories, The Fall of the House of Usher, was published in 1839 in Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine. In The Fall of the House of Usher, a man goes to visit his friend, Roderick Usher, because Usher’s sister is dying and Usher is in a poor mental state. From the moment he steps onto Usher’s property, the narrator has an uneasy feeling. “I know not how it was -- but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit. I say insufferable; for the feeling was unrelieved by any of that half-pleasurable, because poetic, sentiment, with which the mind usually receives even the sternest natural images of the desolate or terrible. I looked upon the scene before me -- upon the mere house, and the simple landscape features of the domain -- upon the bleak walls -- upon the vacant eye-like windows -- upon a few rank sedges -- and upon a few white trunks of decayed trees -- with an utter depression of soul which I can compare to no earthly sensation more properly than to the after-dream of the reveller upon opium -- the bitter lapse into everyday life -- the hideous dropping off of the veil. There was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart -- an unredeemed dreariness of thought which no goading of the imagination could torture into aught of the sublime. What was it -- I paused to think -- what was it that so unnerved me in the contemplation of the House of Usher?” When the narrator is greeted by Usher he learns the condition of Usher’s sister, Madeline. Madeline has a condition that her doctors can’t really figure out, but one symptom was that she would fall into a coma-like state.
For the next few days the narrator spends time with Usher, trying to cheer him up. But during the process, Madeline dies. Usher is heartbroken. The narrator and Usher hide Madeline’s body in a tomb-like room in the house in an effort to hide it from the doctors, who want to study it to try and figure out what caused Madeline’s condition. At the death of his sister, Usher loses it. His life is completely consumed with his mental illness. The narrator is unsure what to do. One stormy night, right after the narrator had decided it was useless to try to go to sleep, Usher comes in in his worst state yet. In an effort to calm Usher down, the narrator reads him a book. As the narrator reads the book, he starts hearing noises that coincide with the events in the book. At first he brushes them off as a figment of his imagination, but after hearing them for the third time, he is convinced that they are coming from somewhere within the house.
Just then, Usher goes into a strange state where he starts murmuring. "Not hear it? -- yes, I hear it, and have heard it. Long -- long -- long -- many minutes, many hours, many days, have I heard it -- yet I dared not -- oh, pity me, miserable wretch that I am! -- I dared not -- I dared not speak! We have put her living in the tomb! Said I not that my senses were acute? I now tell you that I heard her first feeble movements in the hollow coffin. I heard them -- many, many days ago -- yet I dared not -- I dared not speak! And now -- to-night -- Ethelred -- ha! ha! -- the breaking of the hermit's door, and the death-cry of the dragon, and the clangour of the shield! -- say, rather, the rending of her coffin, and the grating of the iron hinges of her prison, and her struggles within the coppered archway of the vault! Oh whither shall I fly? Will she not be here anon? Is she not hurrying to upbraid me for my haste? Have I not heard her footstep on the stair? Do I not distinguish that heavy and horrible beating of her heart? Madman!" -- here he sprang furiously to his feet, and shrieked out his syllables, as if in the effort he were giving up his soul -- "Madman! I tell you that she now stands without the door!" Usher looks up and sees Madeline, covered in blood, standing in the doorway. Madeline had been buried alive! Usher and Madeline then die in each others arms. Usher dies of fright and Madeline dies of exhaustion. The narrator flees from the house right before it collapses into the tarn.
One of Poe’s greatest fears was being buried alive. He even built a special tomb with a string attached to a bell at the top, so if anyone ever mistook him for dead and he was buried alive, he could pull on the string and someone would come get him out. Without Poe’s incredible infatuation with death and his fear of being buried alive, Poe couldn’t have written terror-filled stories such as The Fall of the House of Usher.
John Steinbeck was born on February 27, 1902 in Salinas, California. He was born to John Earnst Steinbeck and Olive Hamilton Steinbeck. After graduating from Salinas High School in 1919 he started attending Stanford. In 1925 he moved to New York City, but shortly after returned to California because he couldn’t find a publisher, and in 1929 his first book, Cup of Gold, was published.
He was married to Carol Hemming for twelve years before they divorced and Steinbeck published The Pastures of Heaven. Two years later Steinbeck’s mother died, and then his father died soon after. In 1936, Of Mice and Men was published.
Of Mice and Men is a story about George Milton and Lennie Small, two men with completely opposite characteristics, who travel together in order to protect one another. George Milton is clever and fast-thinking, while Lennie is big and burly, with a child-like mentality.
The story opens with George and Lennie talking in the woods. After a long walk, Lennie stops to drink some water, and George drinks some, too. Lennie asks George to tell him the difference between them and other men. George tells him that, unlike other men, they have each other. Other men only have themselves and they get lonely. But George an Lennie have each other to talk to.
After a night of resting under the stars, George and Lennie arrive at the ranch where they are planning to work. Here they meet Candy, a swamper with an old dog. As they are talking to Candy, a small man named Curley comes in looking for his father, the boss. Curley starts to get up in Lennie’s face, but George made Lennie promise not to talk, so Lennie just stands there. George tries to talk for Lennie, and that makes Curley mad. After Curley leaves, Candy tells George and Lennie that Curley likes to pick fights with big guys to seem tough.
Right after Curley leaves, his wife comes by. She is looking for Curley. George immediately doesn’t like her. Candy had told George that Curley’s wife gave me “the eye.” Lennie, on the other hand, just stares at her, and later, comments on how pretty she was.
Slim, the mule driver, comes into the bunk house and has a conversation with Lennie and George. Then Carlson comes in and asks about Slim’s dog’s puppies. He suggest trying to get Candy to get rid of his old, smelly dog in return for a puppy. After a lot of arguing and Slim’s opinion, Candy lets Carlson shoot his ancient dog.
A day or two later, candy overhears George and Lennie talking about their plan of having a place of their own. Candy is eventually drawn into their plans. George tells Candy to keep their plan a secret and Candy promises. Just then, Slim, Curley, Carlson and Whit come into the bunkhouse. Slim has a scowl on his face. Curley was saying he was sorry for always bugging Slim about where Curley’s wife was. Carlson and Candy take advantage of Curley’s moment of vulnerability, which just makes Curley angry. Lennie is smiling, thinking about the future ranch, but Curley thinks that Lennie is laughing at him, so he picks a fight. At first, Lennie is afraid to fight, but George tells him it’s ok, and Lennie breaks Curley’s hand.
On Saturday night, Lennie is lonely, so he goes to visit Crooks, the stable buck with a bad back. Crooks is annoyed at first, but then comes to like Lennie’s presence. Crooks asks Lennie what he would do if George never came back. This scares Lennie, because he doesn’t understand that it’s just a question. Eventually Candy comes into Crooks room, and they start talking about George, Lennie and candy’s future ranch. Crooks likes their idea, even though he doesn’t really act like it. At one point he even asks to become part of their plans, but changes his mind later.
On Sunday afternoon a lot happened. First, Lennie kills a puppy, just like he did with a mouse at the beginning of the story. It was an accident. Then, Curley’s wife goes into the barn where Lennie is. They talk about how Curley’s wife could’ve been in the movies. They somehow get onto the subject of hair. Curley’s wife let Lennie touch her hair. Because it was so soft, Lennie didn’t want to let go. So Curley’s wife gets frantic and Lennie gets scared and Lennie accidentally breaks her neck. Lennie knows he has done something bad, so he flees to a spot in the woods that George told him to go to if he ever got into trouble.
Not long after Lennie escapes, Candy discovers Curley’s wife’s body. He gets George and they concoct a plan to “discover” the body. Candy is extremely disappointed to learn that his dream of owning his own land with George and Lennie will never come true. Finally, George runs to tell men what had happened. They run into the barn. Curley claims that he knew who did it. “Curley can suddenly to life. “I know who done it.” he cried. “That big son-of-a-bitch done it. I know he done it.”” Curley is furious.
The men decide to go after Lennie and kill him. They make George come with them. Before George told the men about Curley’s wife, he stole Curley’s Luger. Before George finds Lennie, Lennie has a vision of his Aunt Clara scolding him for not being good to George. When George finds Lennie, Lennie asks George to tell him about the land they’re going to own. As George tells the story, he pulls the Luger out of his pocket and looks at the spot on Lennie’s neck where the skull and the spine connect. Then George shoots Lennie, just like Carlson shot candy’s dog.
Steinbeck gives a very accurate description of life in California in the 1930s. If he hadn’t been born and raised there, he couldn’t have given such an accurate setting for such an impression-making novel.
Henry David Thoreau was born on July 12, 1817 in Concord, Massachusetts. He was close with his brother John, and John worked to pay Thoreau’s tuition at Harvard. When John died in 1837, Thoreau was distraught. He shared his grief with his close friend, Ralph Waldo Emerson, whose son had died only three weeks before. In order to recover from his grief, he went out to live on a piece of land that Emerson had just bought. He built a one-room cabin and lived there for precisely two years and two months. There he wrote his first book, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, about a trip he had taken with his brother.
Despite contrary beliefs, Thoreau was not a recluse during his two years in the woods. He made frequent visits to the nearest village to get supplies and to socialize. But he wasn’t constantly submersed in society, leaving him time to reflect on nature. Eventually Thoreau wrote Walden, an account of his two years in seclusion. "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan- like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion."
Without the death of his brother, Thoreau would have never gone to Walden Pond, and without his trip to Walden Pond, the world wouldn’t have Walden.
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was born on September 24, 1896 in St. Paul, Minnesota. He was born to Edward Fitzgerald, an unsuccessful wicker salesman, and Mary “Mollie” McQuillan, the daughter of a wealthy Irish immigrant. Fitzgerald was named after his distant relative and the creator of the National Anthem, Francis Scott Key.
After primary and secondary school he attended Princeton but dropped out and joined the Army in 1917. He wrote his first novel, “The Romantic Egotist” because he thought it likely that he would die in the war. Charles Scribner’s Sons, a publishing company, liked the novel, but thought it needed to be revised.
In June of 1918, Fitzgerald met eighteen-year-old Zelda Sayre while stationed at Camp Sheridan near Montgomery, Alabama. They later got engaged, Fitzgerald was discharged from the Army in 1919, and he went to New York City to raise money so he could support Zelda. Shortly after he left, Zelda lost interest and called off the engagement.
Fitzgerald then left New York City and went back to St. Paul to rewrite “ The Romantic Egotist”, which was later named This Side of Paradise. But in late 1919, Fitzgerald took a break from writing his novel to write short stories for The Saturday Evening Post. Finally, on March 26, 1920, This Side of Paradise, a story about the career and love life of Amory Blaine, was published. A week after the successful release of This Side of Paradise, Fitzgerald and Zelda were married in St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City.
Fitzgerald and Zelda lived in New York City while Fitzgerald wrote his second novel, The Beautiful and the Damned. When Zelda became pregnant they took their first trip to Europe and then went back to St. Paul for the birth of their daughter, Frances Scott Fitzgerald. The Fitzgeralds then moved back to New York so that Fitzgerald could try his hand at playwriting. That didn’t work out and Fitzgerald wrote many short stories to try and get out of debt. At this time, Fitzgerald and Zelda’s relationship started to get shaky due to Fitzgerald’s alcoholism.
In order to get a clear head and start a new novel, Fitzgerald decided to take his family to France. In France, The Great Gatsby was born. Though the critics loved it, The Great Gatsby didn’t sell well.
The Great Gatsby is a story about a man named Nick who moves to Long Island, New York, and meets some very interesting people. His cousin, Daisy Buchanan, and her husband Tom, live in another part of the island, and a fun-loving man named Jay Gatsby lives next-door to him. Gatsby is known all over Long Island as the man who throws elaborate parties filled with only the most important people of New York. Everyone has theories about Gatsby’s past, but no one really knows anything about him. ““He’s a bootlegger,” said the young ladies, moving somewhere between his cocktails and his flowers. “One time he killed a man who had found out that he was nephew to von Hindenburg and second cousin to the devil.””(Fitzgerald, p.65)
One day, after Gatsby and Nick had formed a fairly stable friendship, Gatsby asks Nick to introduce him to his cousin, Daisy. Gatsby had known Daisy five years before and had fallen in love with her then. Gatsby and Daisy meet and fall in love, again. From that moment on, Daisy is always with Gatsby, and Tom starts to get suspicious, even though he was cheating on Daisy with Myrtle Wilson, his mechanic’s wife. During a day out on the town, Gatsby and Daisy’s relationship comes out. Daisy and Tom get into a huge fight and Gatsby and Daisy drive off.
Meanwhile, at about that same moment, Myrtle and her husband, George, are having a fight. Myrtle runs out into the middle of the street, and Daisy, in a fit of hysteria, hits her with the car. Daisy didn’t know who she was. Daisy was just distraught and Gatsby had let her drive and she didn’t stop when Myrtle ran out into the road.
As Nick, Jordan and Tom drive back to Tom’s house, they see the scene of the accident. Tom breaks down when he sees that it was Myrtle’s dead body wrapped in a blanket. No one knows that it was Daisy who hit her. All anyone knows is that it was a yellow car. Tom told George who the owner of the yellow car was, and George goes off, in a fit of rage, to find Gatsby.
Back in Long Island, Nick tries to convince Gatsby to leave town for a while, just until everything blew over. He knew it would be easy for the police to track the yellow car back to Gatsby. But Gatsby wouldn’t hear of leaving Daisy, who he hadn’t even talked to since the time of the accident. Nick leaves, promising to call and check on Gatsby at noon. Gatsby goes out to swim in his pool for the first time, and George, in a fit of jealousy and rage, shoots Gatsby, and then himself.
Nick holds a funeral for Gatsby, and despite the numerous people who would attend Gatsby’s parties, no one shows up except Nick, Gatsby’s father and a man Nick had seen once before at a party of Gatsby’s. Nick is upset because he knows Gatsby was a good man and he was good to a lot of people, and Nick thought that more people should have come and paid their respects. Daisy didn’t even send flowers or even acknowledge the fact that Gatsby had died.
The story was based highly on Fitzgerald and Zelda’s lifestyle. They frequently went to parties and mingled with others who just liked to have a good time. They often drove themselves into debt by purchasing items that only the truly sophisticated owned. Without this life experience, Fitzgerald couldn’t have written the character of Gatsby with such detail as he did in The Great Gatsby.
In conclusion, life was the basis of Poe’s work, Steinbeck’s work, Thoreau’s work, Fitzgerald’s work, and anyone-else-who-has-ever-written’s work. Life is the basis of all art.
Hokay. not that anyone cares, but there is my finished term paper. I figured since i posted the other bits and pieces of it, I'd just post the whole thing. have fun reading it. lol
Hrm....I haven't really updated in like.....forever. Let's see....
I really kind hate a certain person at the moment. It sucks, because I cared so much for this person at one point in time and now it's like that never even existed. I don't want everything to end . I still want to be friends with him. but he's being the biggest asshole in the world. so moving on is my only option.
So now theres another guy that i'm kind of interested in. and its nice, because i don't feel like I have to impress him. I hate feeling like I have to impress people...it pisses me off.
But anyway....Christmas break was fantabulous! miguet came back and things were kind of rocky at first, just having to adjust to him having changed and our group being different, but then things were awesome! and then he left, and, of course, things went to shit. But, he will be back in May, meaning we'll all have lives again!!!! ha ha,. thats so sad, but so true.
Hopefully, I'll have my license soon, so I won't have to rely on anyone for rides anymore. I've almost got parallel parking down, so.....
and....um....yeah.
thats about it.
Time to go...uh...read. or something.
<3 TWB |
