This blog is a place where you and your fellow ENG101 classmates can share your work. Feel free to post any of your brainstorm ideas or your essay drafts - anything from your first to final drafts. Pay attention to each other, make thoughtful contributions, ask plenty of questions, and most importantly, enjoy each other!
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
The Pit and the Pendulum by Edgar Allan Poe: Noah J.
What if Poe changed the point of view that it was written, do you think it would be less terrifying or even more?
No, I don't believe changing the point of view would make it more scary. I think that knowing you where in the state of mind to let rats nibble at you willingly and desiring it would be more scary that watching someone else do so. It also would lose a lot of its power to make you react if it was from an observers perspective. It doesn't put you into the mind set that the desperate man is in, though it would be interesting to be the man who walked in at the last second at the end... that might be an interesting perspective, though not as effective.
It's hard to say what changing the point of view would do. The current perspective shows the deep 'scary' feeling. If you were to change the point of view it would still be disturbing to a degree, but not as much so as from the current perspective.
I think that changing the perspective to an outside party would defiantly take away from the sheer terror and horrifically eerie feeling of knowing what the man was thinking.. But I can't say I liked it, mostly because I felt it was a bit disturbing, and almost thick with the rank smell of torture. Of course it would still be equally disturbing if through someone else's eyes-- but only if that person was fairly sadistic. Otherwise, a sympathetic feel would fall flat.
I don't believe that it could have been any more scary with a different point of view. He made you feel like you were the one wandering around the cell in the dark, and being bound down, waiting for a pendulum to cut you in half. He showed he how being desperate and anguished feels with this story, and he could not have described that with any other point of view but his own if he were in that tomb.
I don't think that if he changed the perspective it would convey the "scary" very well. While I was reading it, it didn't seem all that creepy but then again, writing doesn't really phase me. I think it would have been sadistic and stupid if Poe wrote it from the view point of his captors. It'd be like a pitiful crime novel where the bad guy gets punished and all that fun crap.
If the story was written in a different point of view it would not have nearly the same effects of horror. I think that by writing the narrator in first person Poe captured absolute despair. The internal monologue, which we wouldn't have seen if it was told from a different viewpoint, revealed so much about death and helplessness. We knew what was going on in the narrator's head in what we thought were going to be his last moments of life, which was beyond powerful. Also, the internal monologue showed his loss of sanity which could not have been revealed mentally by another viewpoint. A different viewpoint would have captured terror in a visual way, but by reading the changes and happenings of the mind of the prisoner the horror was truly examined.
Let's look at a horror movie to see what different types of perspectives do. What are the scenes that you jump at the most? Are they the scenes where the camera is hovering above all of the action and incorporating all of the action in the shot before it happens, or is it the scene where the main actress is walking through a hallway and something jumps out directly at her? For the most part I jump at first person scenes, and I think it's the same for Poe's writings.
By putting the reader in the shoes of the victim it also lets the reader get into the subjects mind. It's much more chilling to be described as "I was being eaten by rats" than "Michelle was being eaten by rats".
To answer the question though, I think changing the point of view to a third or second person would take away a lot of the sheer horror, and take away some of the quality.
Changing the point of view would not have much effect. I mean, the story is scary, that's what makes it good. Why change it? It wouldn't make the reading as effective and interesting as it already is.
I think that if Poe would have changed the point of view of the story it would have completely changed the entire story. The main character is telling this story and it is pretty terrifying by the way that he's telling it. I think that if Poe had changed the point of view it might not have been as scarey and that just wouldn't have been the stylings of Poe.
10 comments:
No, I don't believe changing the point of view would make it more scary. I think that knowing you where in the state of mind to let rats nibble at you willingly and desiring it would be more scary that watching someone else do so. It also would lose a lot of its power to make you react if it was from an observers perspective. It doesn't put you into the mind set that the desperate man is in, though it would be interesting to be the man who walked in at the last second at the end... that might be an interesting perspective, though not as effective.
It's hard to say what changing the point of view would do. The current perspective shows the deep 'scary' feeling. If you were to change the point of view it would still be disturbing to a degree, but not as much so as from the current perspective.
I think that changing the perspective to an outside party would defiantly take away from the sheer terror and horrifically eerie feeling of knowing what the man was thinking.. But I can't say I liked it, mostly because I felt it was a bit disturbing, and almost thick with the rank smell of torture.
Of course it would still be equally disturbing if through someone else's eyes-- but only if that person was fairly sadistic. Otherwise, a sympathetic feel would fall flat.
I don't believe that it could have been any more scary with a different point of view. He made you feel like you were the one wandering around the cell in the dark, and being bound down, waiting for a pendulum to cut you in half. He showed he how being desperate and anguished feels with this story, and he could not have described that with any other point of view but his own if he were in that tomb.
I don't think that if he changed the perspective it would convey the "scary" very well. While I was reading it, it didn't seem all that creepy but then again, writing doesn't really phase me. I think it would have been sadistic and stupid if Poe wrote it from the view point of his captors. It'd be like a pitiful crime novel where the bad guy gets punished and all that fun crap.
If the story was written in a different point of view it would not have nearly the same effects of horror. I think that by writing the narrator in first person Poe captured absolute despair. The internal monologue, which we wouldn't have seen if it was told from a different viewpoint, revealed so much about death and helplessness. We knew what was going on in the narrator's head in what we thought were going to be his last moments of life, which was beyond powerful. Also, the internal monologue showed his loss of sanity which could not have been revealed mentally by another viewpoint. A different viewpoint would have captured terror in a visual way, but by reading the changes and happenings of the mind of the prisoner the horror was truly examined.
Let's look at a horror movie to see what different types of perspectives do. What are the scenes that you jump at the most? Are they the scenes where the camera is hovering above all of the action and incorporating all of the action in the shot before it happens, or is it the scene where the main actress is walking through a hallway and something jumps out directly at her? For the most part I jump at first person scenes, and I think it's the same for Poe's writings.
By putting the reader in the shoes of the victim it also lets the reader get into the subjects mind. It's much more chilling to be described as "I was being eaten by rats" than "Michelle was being eaten by rats".
To answer the question though, I think changing the point of view to a third or second person would take away a lot of the sheer horror, and take away some of the quality.
Changing the point of view would not have much effect. I mean, the story is scary, that's what makes it good. Why change it? It wouldn't make the reading as effective and interesting as it already is.
I think that if Poe would have changed the point of view of the story it would have completely changed the entire story. The main character is telling this story and it is pretty terrifying by the way that he's telling it. I think that if Poe had changed the point of view it might not have been as scarey and that just wouldn't have been the stylings of Poe.
its hard to say if it would change. but i actually believe if changing the point of view it wouldnt be more or less scary.
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