Freshman Lit 2022
Aim: How does Edgar Allan Poe's “The Bells” convey and reinforce the meaning of the life cycle through his choice of poetic sound devices?
Do now: Team activity:
Name all the type of bells that you can think of
Examples of answers include:
Church bells, Sleigh bells, School bells, Cowbells, orchestral bells, etc.
We went on to read an Excerpt from the book, “How They Croaked”, named “Oh Woe Is Poe”. This details Some of Poe’s tragic life, and also thoroughly details of how he may have possibly died.
Tragedies of Poe included with his parents divorcing, and him leaving with his mom. His mom then passed away with tuberculosis.
He then was part of a foster family, where the mother was more caring of Poe than the father. Then, he suffered more deaths of his foster mother and girlfriend, who both died of tuberculosis. He also moved to live with his cousins, married his cousin, Virginia, who also died of tuberculosis.
Afterwards, he had to resort to asking relatives for money, and he eventually resorted to drinking to solve his problems. He eventually ended up in a hospital, where he seemed to be drunk. After 4 days of acting drunk and accepting no water, he died.
Doctors at the time believed he died due to alcohol poisoning, but it's possible he died of rabies, since inability to drink water and acting drunk were both symptoms of rabies.
He may have also participated in a voting fraud system in order to get free alcohol. When he was in the hospital, it was noticed he was wearing someone else’s clothes, and kept repeating the name, “Reynolds”. Voting fraud was common, as they had no way of tracking who voted. They would get men to change into different clothes, and send them into different booths to vote for a candidate.
We also reviewed some literary devices: Recapped below:
Cacophony: Words that are harsh to the ear, and not very pleasant to hear.
Example: “Beware the Jabberwock, my son! The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!” (“The Jabberwocky” by Lewis Carroll
Euphony:
Example: “While the stars that oversprinkle/All the heavens seem to twinkle” (“The Bells” - Edgar Allen Poe)
Reflection: Edgar Allen Poe lived a very tragic life, which influenced the writing style. We will be analyzing his writing next class, and we can use this knowledge of his history in order to determine why he wrote the following poem, “The Bells”.
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