When I read “The Furnished room” by
O. Henry, it showed how one of this week’s theme was set into this ordinary yet
supernatural story about lost love. How ironic it must have been to die in the
same room of your lost love in which you have been looking for. Was it fate
that brought him to that room or was it a place he was supposed to be with his
undoing brought upon him? This story shows the true meaning of what it meant
for coincidences and fate to be combined together. The truth being told towards the end gave it a
completely different view on this story.
As always, Edgar Allan Poe leaves
us in a trance of mixed emotions in his stories. In his story
Berenice, it is full with darkness and
madness. The narrator becomes obsessed with wanting to take Berenice teeth out
and that is exactly what he did. There is no love in this story, as we would
see before in other stories or poems of Poe’s. Marrying your cousin to us may
seem like biting from the forbidden fruit but back in the old day’s people
would do so to keep their family bloodlines pure, in this case, he just marries
his cousin for she is the only one in the home. There is envy in the story with
Egaeus towards Berenice, she is beautiful and is fascinated to be able to look
at someone so pure and filled with beauty, is that why he marries her?
The
Boarded Window by Ambrose Bierce was an interesting story. The way the
author made the narrator start the story one way and then dive into the story
in a completely different way was a good touch. It made it seem, as the old man
was heartless and did not care that his wife died, but he did not know how to
feel or let his emotions set in. Towards the end when he was scared for his
life and did not know what was in his home, it showed that what he feared the
most was burying his wife and she still being alive. I felt sorry for the old
man and was not scared but wanted to know more of why he was the way he was and
the true meaning behind that boarded window.
In "The Boarded Window" I felt like another possibly for why the husband did not show grief was because he still hoped that she was in fact alive and suffering from a trance like or unconscious state that was so common during that era. Burying his beloved would in fact be the final step into accepting her being gone for good and he was not ready to take that step. I don't think I would be either, especially if there was a chance she could be alive, if there is even a little hope we always follow it.
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