Disruption of the Cosmic Design With its ominous black body and blood-red markings, the black widow spider emanates an air of evil. The widow, notorious for its excessively lethal bite and vicious, voracious nature, has mystified scientists for years. Inspired by a fascinating, frightening childhood encounter with a black widow, essayist Gordon Grice discusses his lifelong fascination with the spider and explores the enigma surrounding it in his work “Caught in the Widow’s Web.” With a tone of malice and abhorrence, Grice focuses on the widow’s unnecessarily potent venom, a physical trait that seems to defy reason, evolution, and even the cosmic design. Through his use of the process and narrative modes of writing, diction with a tone of malice, …show more content…
Grice recounts a time when his mother demonstrated the proper way to kill a widow, which involved an intense, momentous ceremony. In describing this ceremony, the author claims that the black widow is “worthy of ritual disposition, like an enemy whose death is not sufficient but must be followed by the murder of his children” (para. 8). In other words, Grice’s childhood experiences with black widows convinced him of the malevolence of the black widow and its embodiment of evil. By emphasizing the unwanted presence of the spider, a symbolic evil, Grice convinces his audience of the needlessness of …show more content…
For instance, after his initial encounter with a black widow as a child, Grice darkly describes the arachnid as “actively malevolent,” an “enemy” who “wait[s] in dark places to ambush” its prey (para. 8). Furthermore, the author depicts the widow’s ominous physique as having a black body covered with “red markings [that] suggest blood” (para. 10). Grice even claims that “women with bouffant hairdos have died of widow infestation” (para. 9). To the audience, these carefully crafted words and phrases connote a sense of unwelcome malignance; the reader associates the black widow with the concept of evil. By specifically choosing words that show the evil, inimical presence of the black widow, Grice demonstrates the pointlessness of evil in the world; the widow has no purpose to mankind, a parallel to the purposeless nature of
On the surface, a beautiful, poisonous girl and a preacher shadowed by a black veil share no similar characteristics. However, in the works of Nathaniel Hawthorne, these characters share two remarkably comparable stories. The Minister’s Black Veil and Rappaccini's Daughter both share the symbolic use of colors, yet the characters’ relation to the outside world deviates. Hawthorne expertly contrasts colors to illustrate the battle of good against evil. In The Minister’s Black Veil, Mr. Hooper’s black veil contrasts sharply against the pale-faced congregation, just as Beatrice’s likeness to the purple flowers, described as being able to, “...illuminate the garden,” contrasts the darkness of Dr Rappaccini’s black clothing. These clashes of colors
While literature often follows some pattern and can be predictable, it is often evolving and can change in an instant depending on the author. In most Gothic literature, a derivative of Romanticism, there is a gothic space in the work – a limited space in which anything can happen in contrast to the normal world in the work. In addition, normally, order is restored at the end of Gothic literature – the good is rewarded and the bad is punished. In his Gothic novella, The Terrible Vengeance (1981), Nicolai Gogol decided to expand the ‘normal’ idea of Gothic literature by, in the work, transforming the traditional Gothic space to encompass anything and everything; in addition to the use of space, through the ending in which there is no reward, Gogol conveyed the idea that evil is prevalent everywhere and in everyone.
Grice uses symbolism to show how the black widow spider represents evil in our world. “The widow’s venom is, of course, a sound reason for fear . . . It produces sweats, vomiting, swelling, convulsions” (para. 11). This quote shows evil through the widows poisonous venom, which is deadly. Grice also states in the essay that “the female’s habit of eating her lovers invites a strangely sexual discomfort; the widow becomes an emblem for a man’s fear of extending himself into the blood and darkness of a woman” (para. 10). Grice uses imagery throughout the essay to convey to readers his view of the black widow spider. Grice also uses metaphors in his essay to explain the life of a black widow spider “performing a gustatory act of that magnitude, but I have seen them eat scarab beetles heavy as pecans” (para. 4). This metaphor explains the black widows capabilities in comparison with something everyone
When an author romanticizes a piece of literature, he or she has the power to convey any message he or she wishes to send to the reader. Authors can make even the most horrible actions, such as Dustan murdering ten savages in their sleep and justify it; somehow, from both the type of mood/tone set in this piece of literature, along with the powerful word choice he used, Whittier had the ability to actually turn the tables on to the victim (i.e. the ten “savages” who were murdered in their sleep). “A Mother’s Revenge” by John Greenleaf Whittier, is a prime example of how authors can romanticize any situation into how they want to convey their message.
Sherwood Anderson depicts all the characters throughout his 24 short stories as a grotesque. He prefaces most of the stories with the old writer’s definition of what it means to be a grotesque. This definition frames how the book is to be interpreted throughout the different stories. Anderson paints every character as a grotesque. However, he does not paint them in the same light. What may make one person a grotesque may not make another person a grote...
Grave and somewhat solid in his tone, he is overflowing with purpose. The danger he takes in disclosing his contention's potential defects and testing the readers judgments will yield the uneasiness that penetrates his exposition, as well as additionally individuals' personalities. His dialect and tone, withdrawing from the scholastic investigation of monsters, exhibits a genuine yet energetically inciting demeanor to the group of onlookers. We see the modest, unexpected comical inclination that he has well covered up under the earnestness and details of a
Louise Gluck’s, “Gretel in darkness” is a haunting poem about the horrors the speaker, Gretel, faces and tries so hard to forget. The poem takes place after the witch’s death and Gretel has saved her brother and herself from her torment. Everything should be fine, Gretel says, “This is the world we wanted. All who would have seen us dead are dead.” This is suggestive of a dream that is achieved and portraying a character that is full of urgency, bitterness and violence. This contradicts with the title, “in darkness”, giving it an ironic tone. Although she feels regret for this unimaginable act, she originally did it for her brother. On the other hand it also seems Gretel is unsatisfied since she feels all this guilt and is haunted by the death of the witch, the witch Gretel killed. “I hear the witch’s cry,” Gretel states.
The following response will discuss how the elements of drama: mood and atmosphere, symbol and tension are utilized to create meaning in the clip titled “Charlotte’s Web: Saving the runt” (http://www.wingclips.com/movie-clips/charlottes-web/saving-the-runt.).
This [violence] is explained by the nature of Mrs. Stowe's subject matter, her laudable determination to flinch from nothing in presenting the complete picture; an explanation which falters only if we pause to ask whether or not her picture is indeed complete; and what construction . . . forced her to so depend on the description of brutality - unmotivated, senseless - and to leave unanswered and unnoticed the only important question: what it was, after all, that moved her people to such deeds. (1654)
Stories have an opportunity to leave the reader with many different impressions. When you look a different characters within the stories the ones that leave the greatest impressions are the ones that tend to scare us. The figures in Bob Dylar’s “Where Are You Going, Where Have you been?”, in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown”, and Stephen King’s “The Man in the Black Suite” all instill a bit of fear in the reader. They are symbols that represent the devil or devil like attributes in people and the uncertainties of human nature.
When describing the spider, Grice uses words with negative connotations. “… [V]oracious carnivore… motiveless evil in nature… dangerous creature…” are all examples of words that have a negative connotation to them. The reason he uses such sophisticated words is to give more gravity to the situation. Also, he explains the venom of the spider provides “no evolutionary advantages” (para. 13). In fact, the venom is actually “thousands of times more virulent than necessary” (para. 12). When reading about this spider, it is made clear that the spider is harmful and should not be sought
Imagery is a powerful tool for Koontz because it creates such an immersive experience while reading. His descriptive words can affect readers sensually [smell, touch, taste, etc.], emotionally, and possibly even invoke physical reactions. Sinister locations and descriptions display evil like the Watchers excerpt “He dragged the unconscious man out of the Ford, through a gap in the brush, and deep under the trees, until he found a shady clearing floored with hairy moss. Cawing and trilling birds fell silent, and unknown animals with peculiar voices moved off through the underbrush. Large insects, including a beetle as big as Vince’s hand, scuttled out of the way, and lizards scampered up tree trunks” (Koontz 88). Koontz use of extremely mysterious details pertaining to the darkness lead readers to speculate the evils that lie within it, once again supporting the good versus evil theme, by showing the evil, using Koontz’s frequently obscure
While the monsters of the poem are the antagonists of the poem, the author still manages to make the reader feel traces of sympathy for them. Grendel’s human depiction, exile and misery tugs at the heart of readers and indeed shows a genuine side to the figure, while Grendel’s mother and the dragon are sympathetic mainly because they were provoked into being attacked over things they both had a deep affection for. Their actions make us question whether they are as evil as they seem.
Edgar Allan Poe has a unique writing style that uses several different elements of literary structure. He uses intrigue vocabulary, repetition, and imagery to better capture the reader’s attention and place them in the story. Edgar Allan Poe’s style is dark, and his is mysterious style of writing appeals to emotion and drama. What might be Poe’s greatest fictitious stories are gothic tend to have the same recurring theme of either death, lost love, or both. His choice of word draws the reader in to engage them to understand the author’s message more clearly. Authors who have a vague short lexicon tend to not engage the reader as much.
... Nature, including human beings, is `red in tooth and claw'; we are all `killers' in one way or another. Also, the fear which inhabits both human and snake (allowing us, generally, to avoid each other), and which acts as the catalyst for this poem, also precipitates retaliation. Instinct, it seems, won't be gainsaid by morality; as in war, our confrontation with Nature has its origins in some irrational `logic' of the soul. The intangibility of fear, as expressed in the imagery of the poem, is seen by the poet to spring from the same source as the snake, namely the earth - or, rather, what the earth symbolizes, our primitive past embedded in our subconsciouness. By revealing the kinship of feelings that permeates all Nature, Judith Wright universalises the experience of this poem.