pent house

Lesson Seven

The Libido for the UglyThe Libido for the Ugly

What kind of writing is this one?

What does the title the libido for the ugly mean?

Why does Mencken uses such a pathological term like libido?

Who has the so-called libido for the ugly?

Who or what is the target of Mencken’s verbal attack?

Pre-Text Questions

What do you know about the author?

What kind of writing is this one?

What is the theme of this essay?

Detailed Study of the Text

About the author

Pittsburgh

Westmorland county

Steel City / Smoky City

Notice the many literary devices employed here.

What are they?

Here was the very heart of industrial America, the center of itsmost lucrative and characteristic activity, the boast and prideof the richest and grandest nation ever seen on earth—and here was a scene so dreadfully hideous, so intolerably bleakand forlorn that it reduced the whole aspiration of man to a macabre and depressing joke.

metaphor

hyperbole antithetical contrast

parallel construction

What route did the author take in this traveling?

What does Mencken describe in paragraph 1?

What is his purpose?

the U. S., the richest and grandest nation ever seen on earth, both boasts about and feels proud of this center of industrial activity

the boast and pride of the richest …on earth

that this scene makes all human endeavors to advance and improve their lot appear as a ghastly, saddening joke

it reduced the whole aspiration of man to a … joke

be reduced to begging/tears/silence/despair/obedience shadow/subjection

even homeless, mongrel cats would feel ashamed to live in

they would have disgraced a race of alley cats

What is the purpose of Mencken saying I am not speaking ofmere filth at the beginning of the second paragraph?

ugliness that caused great pain to the viewer

agonizing ugliness

transferred epithet

What literary device is used here?

How could a house insult and lacerate the eye?

that did not insult and lacerate the eye

What’s Mencken’s real intention of saying so?

What literary device is used?

they were among the most pretentious

marked by an extravagant outward show

What kind of image will be initiated in the readers’ mind by reading this clause? What effect does the author intend to produce?

one blinked before them as one blinks before a man with his face shot away

rat trap

Some of the houses remain in one’s memory and later when one pictures them in one’s mind, they still appear to be horrible

A few linger in memory, horrible even there:

What will a bare leprous hill look like?

Could you describe the church and the hill in your own words?

dormer-window

a hillside was bare and looked as repulsive as the skin of a leper

a bare leprous hill

After the colon, what does Mencken go on to say?

How many examples does he give us?

What literary device is used when describing the building?

repetition of the same structural pattern

double negatives

There was not one that was not misshapen, and there was notone that was not shabby.

What literary device is used in order to emphasize misshapenand shabby ?

an affirmative is expressed by negating its opposite

not uncomely

litotes

The country itself is pleasant to look at, despite the sooty dirt spread by the innumerable mills in this region.

The country itself is not uncomely, despite the grime of the endless mills.

It is, in form, a narrow river valley, with deep gullies running up into the hills.

solid blocks

What’s the function of the if clause?

What is Mencken’s idea of decent houses in this area?

What did he find instead?

chalet

What do the houses look like?

on their low sides they bury themselves swinishly in the mud

What are these houses compared to?

They lean this way and that, hanging … precariously.

with dead and eczematous patches of paint peeping throughthe streaks

They tilt in one direction or another, clinging to their foundation unstably.

In this phrase, what is compared to what?

All the houses are smeared with sooty dirt, and some paint which is not covered up by the soot looks like dried-up scales formed on the skin by eczema.

What kind of egg would it be which is long past all hope orcaring ?

Red brick, even in a steel town, looks quite respectable with the passing of time.

Red brick, even in a steel town, ages with some dignity.

What is the author’s suggestion about the color of houses?

patina

Now and then there is a house of brick.

What can we infer from this sentence?

But it seems that people in Westmoreland county prefer that yellow color produced by the disease uremia.

But in Westmoreland…that uremic yellow.

How many places are mentioned in the following sentences?

Pullman

malaria infested small village near the sea affected by the rise and fall of tides

the malarious tidewater hamlets

They are incomparable in color, and they are incomparablein design.

What literary device is used in this sentence?

sarcasm

The color and design were so bad that one couldn’t find any which was worse.

It is as if some genius of great power, who didn’t like to do the right things and who was an inflexible enemy of man, employed all the cleverness and skill of hell to build these ugly houses.

It is as if some titanic and aberrant genius,…the making of them.

But in the American village and small town, the drive/drawing power is always towards ugliness, and in that Westmoreland valley people have given in to this appeal eagerly or almost passionately.

sarcasm

But in the American village and small town the pull is alwaystoward ugliness,…an eagerness bordering upon passion.

What literary device is used?

What does ignorance mean here?

It is hard to believe that people built such horrible houses just because they did not know what beautiful houses were like.

It is incredible that mere ignorance should have achieved suchmasterpieces of horror.

What literary device is used?

sarcasm irony

What kind of people does Mencken mock at?

It’s clear that the horribly ugly designs on the wallpaper give real delight to a certain type of mind.

They meet, in some unfathomable way, its obscure and unintelligible demands.

Such ghastly designs, …give a genuine delight to a certaintype of mind.

These ugly designs, in incomprehensive some way, satisfy the hidden and unintelligible demands of this type of persons.

It is impossible to put down the wallpaper…to mere

inadvertence, or to the obscene humor of the manufacturers.

to attribute sth. to sth.

It is impossible to attribute the wallpaper that makes the average American home at the lower middle class look so ugly to mere oversight, or to the indecent humor of the manufacturers.

Why does Mencken call the residents in Westmoreland the honest folk and the 100% Americans ?

What kind of demands do these people have?

Why does Mencken classify their demands as obscure and unintelligible ?

What opinion does Mencken have toward theology and Edgar A. Guest’s poems?

Guest, Edgar Albert

Thus I suspect

What can we learn from this thus ?

sarcasm irony

with full understanding of what is involved with eyes open

Mencken uses this word “mellow” ironically.

What does he really mean?

to let deteriorate, to let it go from bad to worse

Parthenon

besides it, the Parthenon would no doubt offend them

They like things ugly and do not know what is beautiful. If one were to put a beautiful building like the Parthenon there, they would feel offended.

Parthenon is noted for its perfect simplicity of design and the harmony of its proportions and remains a masterpiece of Greek architecture. Why would such a building offend them?

not capable of being endured; hard to tolerate

penthouse

What rhetorical device is used in this sentence?

ridicule

they made it perfect in their own sight by putting a completelyimpossible penthouse, painted a staring yellow, on top of it.

one will feel uncomfortable as embarrassed to look at