For the most wild, yet most homely narrative which I am about to pen, I neither expect nor solicit belief. Mad indeed would I be to expect it, in a case where my very senses reject their own evidence. Yet, mad am I not - and very surely do I not dream. But tomorrow I die, and today I would unburthen my soul. My purpose is to place before the world, plainly, succinctly, and without comment, a series of mere household events. In their consequences, these events have terrified - have tortured - have destroyed me. Yet I will not attempt to expound them.To me, they have presented little but horror - to many they will seem less terrible than barroques. Hereafter, perhaps, some intellect may be found which will reduce my phantasm to the common-place - some intellect more calm, more logical, and far less excitable than my own, which will perceive, in the circumstances I detail with awe, nothing more than an ordinary succession of very natural causes and effects.

     This is the opening paragraph for The Black Cat, by Edgar Allen Poe. I chose this passage because of the technique Poe used to draw in the reader. He starts by introducing the character on the night before he is to executed. Just like in the Tell-tale Heart the character begins by stating the fact that he is not crazy, but perfectly sane. From that point on you know the guy went insane, even if it was briefly. That gets the reader interested immediately, and makes them want read more to find out the cause of his temporary insanity. The character explains that he is writing this so that some day someone will be able to understand the reasoning he went through, because he cannot.  To me this is a very effective way to start the story, with a psychopath claiming he is not, and trying to explain way he is not. It makes for an intriguing start to a story.

                                                  D.J. Due 01/07/13

     The "Red Death" had long devastated the country. No pestilence had ever been so fatal, or so hideous. Blood was its Avator and its seal - the redness and the horror of blood. There were sharp pains, and sudden dizziness, and then profuse bleeding at the pores, with dissolution. The scarlet stains upon the body and especially upon the face of the victim, were the pest ban which shut him out from the aid and from the sympathy of his fellow-men. And the whole world seizure,  progress and termination of the disease, were the incidents of half an hour.

     This is the opening to The Masque Of The Red Death, by Edgar Allen Poe. Just from the opening paragraph we can see what this story is about, The Red Death disease. It is a very descriptive opening as well as graphic. It describes the symptoms of the outbreak in great detail, such as 'there were sharp pains and sudden dizziness, and then profuse bleeding from the pores', it may not seem to detailed, but by adding such adverbs as 'profuse', 'sudden', and 'sharp', the violence and enormity of the plague come to light. Poe continues to describe the duration of the disease and the social status of it. He explains it as a mark of the leopards, a thing that is cause for desertion. He then ends the paragraph by giving a time frame for the disease of just half an hour.  

From childhood's hour I have not been
As others were--I have not seen
As others saw--I could not bring
My passions from a common spring--
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow -- I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone--
And all I lov'd -- alone --
Then -- in my childhood -- in the dawn
Of a most stormy life -- was drawn
From ev'ry depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still --
From the torrent, or the fountain --
From the red cliff of the mountain --
From the sun that 'round me roll'd
In its autumn tint of gold --
From the lightning in the sky
As it pass'd me flying by --
From the thunder, and the storm --
And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view --

     In this poem Alone, by Edgar Allen Poe, he describes the reason for his more twisted sense of story telling. He explains that as a child he never saw things the same as other people, that his sense of perception was altered. Through the use of the analogy of a storm, he describes his childhood as unpleasant and rocky. Because of this hard childhood he cannot see things in different lights, only in unpleasant and graphic frame of mind.

     Now, at last, I thrust our stake in a bed of embers to get it red-hot and rallied all my comrades: 'Courage no panic, no one hold back now!' And green as it was, just as the olive stake was about to catch fire- the glow terrific yes- I dragged it from the flames, my men clustering round as some god breathed enormous courage through us all. Hoisting high that olive stake with its stabbing point, straight into the monster's eye they rammed it hard- I drove my weight on it from above and bored it home as a shipwright bores his beam with a shipwright's drill that men below, whipping the strap back and forth, whirl and the drill keeps twisting faster, never stopping- So we seized our stake with its fiery tip and bored it round and round in the giants eye till blood came boiling up around that smoking shaft and the hot blast singed his brow and eyelids around the core and the broiling eyeball burst.

     This passage from the Odyssey is from the cyclops' layer, during Odysseus's escape. The short story of the escape in its self  is well known. I believe one of  the reasons for this is because of the imagery that Homer uses through Odysseus's character. This small scene from the much greater text being one of the most case-making passages. The poetry used to paint the vivid picture of the cyclops going blind is so well crafted that the reader gets such a life-like image some become ill from the thoughts of the scene. Using such descriptions as "thrust the stake in a bed of embers to make it red-hot" and "I drove my weight on it from above and bored it home..." creates such an intense scene that it is hard not to get wrapped up in the brutality of the encounter. As if to make it harder to turn your eyes from the scene, Homer integrates a hint of Odysseus's madness into the scene by adding small lines like 'the glow terrific yes' and 'we seized our stake... and bore it round and round in the giants eye till... the eye burst'. Adding these small lines into Odysseus's speech, mixed with the intensity moment makes the whole process seem wonderfully mad.