2nd 9Wks – Wk4Unit: Theme/Style Analysis

Agenda

Background on Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlett Letter

Write a theme paragraph from choice children’s horror story (cannot choose your own book). 10 points

Homework: Read chapters 1-2 of TSL

Theme Paragraph Example

Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “The Raven” reveals to the reader that if we cannot overcome grief from loss, then it will ultimately consume us. This is evident in the speaker’s obsessive repetition over his mysterious lost love, “Lenore;” also, throughout the poem, the speaker expresses tone words that reveal his feelings: “sorrow,” “melancholy,” and “burden.” This correlation portrays a grieving narrator who has not moved on from his loss. The poem’s final lines, “And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor / Shall be lifted–nevermore,” which are stated after the Raven’s own constant bantering of “nevermore,” illustrate a broken man who is, by this point, completely absorbed in his own melancholy and defeated by the Raven, and, really, his own grief. The poem details the suffering and depression of a narrator haunted by the loss of a love and unable to move on; thus, his soul shall nevermore be lifted from its current state.