The Impossible Knife of Memory by Laurie Halse Anderson For my independent reading project, I chose to read The Impossible Knife of Memory by Laurie Halse Anderson. Anderson was born on October 23, 1961 in Potsdam, New York. Through her early life, Anderson struggled with emotional stress stemming from the divorce of her parents. This struggle played out in her adult life, as Anderson divorced her first husband, Greg Anderson, and consequently suffered from psychological trauma. Despite this, upon meeting and marrying her childhood sweetheart, Scot Larrabee, Anderson channeled her emotions into novels.
Meanwhile, that happened at home, he also struggled financially and as an author whose fame was so limited. The familiar stories he wrote: “The Manuscript Found in a Bottle,” “Ligiea,” “The Haunted Palace,” “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” “The Gold Bug,” “The Fall of the House of Usher,” and the most recognized is “The Raven,” were not discovered as often till after his death. At the age of 40, Poe was found unconscious, and was rushed to the hospital in early October. His death is unknown and unsettling but his spirit lives on in his writing of Gothic literature and
Edgar Allan Poe’s life was filled with many tragedies which heavily influenced his most popular work from the Gothic genre. It all began at the ripe age of two, when Edgar’s mother died of tuberculosis, causing himself and his brother and sister to be orphaned. The three children were split apart, and Edgar was taken into the foster home of John Allan and Frances Keeling Valentine Allan. Each parent provided a different experience for Poe; his foster father was an abusive alcoholic, while his foster mother would educate and try protecting him from her husband when possible. The death of his foster mother was very difficult for him to handle, and he enlisted himself in the army to get away from the abuse at his foster home.
I have lost someone close to me and I know that darkness falls and it can bring you to a very depressed state, which is where Edgar had fallen. He didn’t have his mother there to help his deal with the stresses of life and knowing his father didn’t want to be with him had left him empty and alone. In the poem he mentions heaven and how nothing more had come from
A genius writer. A troubled life. One of the greatest minds in classical literature. Edgar Allen Poe’s struggles and triumphs produced a lot of the beloved stories are still read and studied throughout the world today. Edgar Allen Poe was born to English actress Elizabeth Arnold Poe, and David Poe Junior, an actor from Baltimore, on January 18, 1809 in Boston, Massachusetts.
Mary Shelley was born in London in 1797 to intelligent parents. When Mary Shelley was 16 years old she decided to elope with a man named Percy Shelley who was a romantic poet. After a few years death had began to storm into her life, first she had a few miscarriages. Her only living child had also died and so did her half sister, and lastly Percy's first wife had died to suicide. When she went to vacation at Lord Byron's house, she and her colleagues would talk about different scientific things and the possiblitiy of reanimating the dead.
Poe then tried to live off of writing alone, which was extremely difficult to do at that point in time. Over time he married his 13 year old cousin, Virginia Clemm, and went through a variety of jobs such as writing and editing for newspapers of the time, while still doing his own poetry. He released his third and fourth books during this time, The narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, and Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque, which received varied reviews and small success. Over time, Virginia died of tuberculosis, and Poes poetry took a much darker turn. It was during this point in time that Poe wrote poetry such as The Raven, which made Poe extremely popular and was reprinted in several newspapers.
They tried to convince me that the littlest things were really signs. My aunt asked me, “Meghan, do you remember the butterfly story? Then just look around and you will find your own sign for him.” The butterfly story is my aunt’s sign for her daughter who was killed by a drunk driver. My aunt went to her grave and prayed and asked God to tell her that Dana, my cousin, her daughter, was alright. She says that right after that a black butterfly with blue trim (the same colors of Dana’s favorite dress) landed on Dana’s grave, and she knew right then and there that Dana was in heaven and that she was alright.
Poe’s writing style demonstrated the knowledge of the human mind, the fears that haunt human being, and the work of literary genius. Poe’s work “The Tell-Tale Heart” showed each one of the characteristics. Edgar Poe was born on January 19, 1809 to Elizabeth Hopkins and David Poe. A year after his birth, his mother died of tuberculosis, and his father abandoned
Once they understand that death is part of a life, and then they will accept it and have a new experience. Frankenstein is a fiction full of portray of death. Throughout the course of the fiction, there are some deaths, for instance, the death of Beaufort, Justine's relatives, Justine, William, Caroline Beaufort, Elizabeth, Clerval, Frankenstein himself and finally the Creature. "Her father died in her arms, leaving her an orphan and a beggar... she knelt by his coffin, weeping bitterly." (Shelley, 2008, p.19) The first death is Frankenstein's friend, Beaufort, dies, and his daughter, Caroline, is delirious.