Jeremias Gotthelf ‘s novella, “The Black Spider” is a highly ideological story of an evil poisonous black spider that wreaks havoc and death upon the villagers. It begins with a picturesque framework of a christening party on a farm, during which a guest notices and inquires about an incongruous black post on a newly built house. The grandfather then tells a story about a tyrannical knight by the name of Hans von Stoffeln who imposed impossible burdens upon the villagers and of the devil that appears as a huntsman to be their savior. One villager, Christine, agrees to the devils proposal, thinking she can outwit him. However, her betrayal unleashes an uncontainable and perpetual evil upon their town.
There is a certain order to the way things are done, and when that balance is interrupted or offset, things start to go awry. One of the main disturbances is the lack of paternal responsibility and leadership in their town. The first out of order-ness begins with the swap in gender roles. When the men run from the devil, one of their wives, Christine, intervenes and makes the deal herself; taking over the supposed paternal role. During this point in time women were seen as the lesser gender whose place was in the house preparing meals for her family and staying out of affairs they had no business in. It was the duty of the men to make sure it stayed this way. When Christine intervened in their problems and made the deal with the devil, everything slowly began to unravel.
Due to Christine’s lack of judgment and betrayal to the devil, the black spider, a forceful and deadly evil was unleashed upon their town. This poisonous spider emerges from her cheek, birthing this sin upon their town. It inflicts a complete and utter disaster upon...
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...ted to make a child unhappy; for as soon as a godmother asked about a child’s name, this child would become inquisitive for his whole life” (Gotthelf). There is a certain importance of naming and once the babies received their name they were free and safe from the devils grasp; everything is in order as it should be.
There is always a certain balance in life that people either knowingly or unknowingly abide by. In this tale, there was a lack of paternal instinct, as well as a lack of the people’s faith in God, both of which led to the birth and rebirth of the black spider. The poisonous black spider was a result of the imbalance of order and as a way to make the villagers pay for their sins. The people need to tell the story of the spider because it serves as a reminder and a lesson to be humble, to put ones trust and faith in God as well as to resist temptation.
The novel ‘The gathering’ by Isobelle Carmody doesn’t just explore good vs evil like most fantasy novels but also the evil of human nature and how it can be used against us. Cheshunt where this novel is based within is not only a place of harboured evil but a choosing to be evil and the consequences of this for mankind. Within this novel it seems like evil has a way of repeating itself, “These witches were supposed to have stolen people’s pets and sacrificed them to the devil” (p.9). The readers were told about these witches so briefly as a part of the evil history of Cheshunt. Towards the end of the novel the same thing happens to Nathanial “I cuddled his limp, gruesome body to my chest, rocking backwards and forwards.” However it wasn’t the witches at this time but ordinary kids doing evils work, using something Nathanial loved and cared so deeply about and taking it so gruesomely away to make him fall into place in society.
Paul Santilli’s “Culture, Evil, and Horror” gives us several ideas of what horror means. Horror is a type of cultural breakdown. There is also a type of horror called Ontological Horror: “It is characterized as a disturbance before an indefinite and unnamed presence” (180). In the story “The Spider”, the men all suffered an ineluctable death. This story demonstrates an unnamed presence causing the loss of control.
While working, there were people who would come from remote areas and watch her weave skillfully. On page 19, the text says, “If Athene herself were to come were to come down and compete with me, she could do no better than I.” Her bold action was challenging Athene, a goddess, to a weaving competition. Additionally, on page 19, “Arachne herself flushed red for a moment, for she had really believed that the goddess would hear her.” Arachne took an action that could possibly embarrass herself. During their competition, Arachne had designed “a pattern of which showed evil or unworthy actions of the gods, how they had deceived fair maidens, resorted to trickery, and appeared on earth from time to time in the form poor and humble people.” and Athene had designed “a border of twined branches of the olive, Athene’s favorite tree, while in the middle, figures began to appear. As they looked at the glowing colors, the spectators realized that Athene was weaving into her pattern a last warning to Arachne.” Athene had created that embroidery to warn Arachne, and Arachne made an embroidery to disgrace the goddess. Arachne’s bold action caused Athene to be angry and then turned Arachne into a spider. Arachne’s consequence for her bold action was her descendants and herself to turn into
I had been in the village for all but a week when I realized there was something... wrong. There seemed to be an underlying atmosphere of fear and animosity. Of course, with my wide-eyed, innocent thinking at the time, I assumed the presence of Satan had damaged the townspeople 's trust of one another. Again, I blissfully accepted this, and I was wrong.
The major idea I want to write about has to do with the way Mrs. Hale stands behind Mrs. Wright even though it seems like everyone else especially (the men) would rather lock her up and throw away the key. We see this right away when she gets on the County Attorney for putting down Mrs. Wright’s house keeping. I find this to be wonderfully symbolic in that most women of this time usually allowed the men to say whatever they wanted about their sex, never standing up for themselves or each other
What if we lived in a world where a small piece of paper was considered the Angel of Death? Where your neighbors would turn on you in an instance because a small black box “prophesized” them to? When true human nature is shown before you are cast into the blackness of death? Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” is a short story in which villagers gather once a year with a black box to perform a lottery that decides just that. The head male of each family must draw till someone has the black dot that decides which family will draw next. The “winner” in that family is then stoned to death by everyone in the village, including their own family. The story has multiple hidden messages that are hard to distinguish from the text. Each message shows a side of human nature that most people believe they do not have. By using literary analysis, Shirley Jackson’s messages become
…the world is like an enormous spider web and if you touch it, however lightly, at any point the vibration ripples to the remotest perimeter and the drowsy spider feels the tingle and is drowsy no more but springs out to fling the gossamer coils about you who have touched the web and then inject the black, numbing poison under your hide.(188-89)
Goodman Brown heads down a “dreary road...” (311). He is then approached by his fellow traveler, who happens to be the devil. The devil had with him “a staff that bore the likeness of a great black snake" (312). The devil tries to convince Goodman
The next theme used by the author to inspire a feeling of despair in this story is the randomness of persecution. By making the villagers draw these slips of paper once a year would provoke a feeling of hopelessness. Because they know that no matter what they do one day they may be subjected to this brutal death. And it woul...
“Young Goodman Brown”, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, delves into the classic battle between good and evil; taking the protagonist, Goodman Brown, on a journey to test the resolve of his faith. Goodman ventures out on his expedition deep into the sinister forest, in order to repudiate the attempt of the devil to sway him from Christianity; a test he believes his devout faith is prepared to confront. Goodman Brown is forever altered in ways unforeseeable by taking a stroll with the ultimate antagonist, the devil himself. The prevailing theme in this literary work, which is common in Hawthorne’s gothic writing, is the realization that evil can infect people who seem perfectly respectable. Throughout the course of his journey, Goodman Brown discovers that even highly reputable people of Salem are vulnerable to the forces of darkness.
How would one feel if one came face to face with the Devil himself? Would one run away screaming or would one let the Devil change their views of the world? Gary and Goodman Brown both had different experiences with the Devil resulting in some of the best works of fiction ever wrote. Gary met the Devil as a young boy who feared him unrelentingly, but Goodman Brown talked to the Devil and let the Devil change his life and the viewpoints of people he knows. I plan to discuss on how Gary, from the short story “The Man in the Black Suit”, and Goodman Brown, from “Young Goodman Brown”, dealt with the Devil and compare their encounters together.
The speaker exactly where the spider stands and pays attention to its isolation. Whitman helps us out here by essentially using the word “isolated”. Remember how that spider "stood isolated" in line 2? The writer creates a huge deal about how the soul is also cut-off from other substances and the external world. A reaction of isolation might be the major emotional component of this poem. In addition, the speaker writes how the spider accomplished exploration, and the speaker is almost jealous, wondering how he can imitate it. All that the speaker can do is jot down: “how to explore the vacant vast surrounding” that the spider is so capable of. The theme "Exploration" is easy to point out, since the spider and the soul together explore. This helps us to understand the more positive pieces of the poem. There is a encouraging note here, remarkably at the end. Eventually the spider will begin his web, and the soul will make connection with something throughout that vast ocean. Exploration is thrilling, full of guarantee and hopefulness – although it can also be dreary, terrifying, and
Furthermore, understanding the fact of how the villagers in that village practiced and participated in such a barbaric ritual and archaic event were not accepted by people. In addition, people who read the story commented that the modest people of the Midwest are superstitious and backward. Here, Jackson conveyed successfully with her subtle writing style that something is about to happen. She also used a third person point of view when writing this short story. The third person point of view permitted the author to keep the outcome of the story an exposure. This therefore led to the reader to consider everything is well but actually there is something wrong somewhere. Furthermore, what could be seen from the story is people were different compared to present, there is a huge difference in cultural practices. Therefore the actions of the story go in the opposite direction of people’s opinion in the present in terms of value of life, violence and the development of respect in a family.
In Egypt, the spider is tied to the god, Neith. She was the spinner and weaver of destiny. They would pray and look at the spider as a god and treat it as such. In Rome, and Greece they have culture and folklore closely tied together. They had a story about a spider princess named Arachne. The story talks about how the spider became so good at weaving that she challenged the god Athena. Arachne won,l but Athena was so mad that she was better that
Regarding the connection between the aunts and angels, the woman talks about them being her family, and at first you see them as guardians but straight afterwards they are portrayed as prison guards with harmful weapons. This irony plays a strong part in who is meant to play the good guys and who the bad.