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Name: __________________________________________________________ Date____________ English 10 Speed Dating
First Choice: __________________________________________________________Second Choice: __________________________________________________________Short Story Title
and AuthorGenre/Type
(Romance, Drama, Realistic Fiction, Mystery, Horror, Non-fiction, Action, etc.)
Your Ranking/Why? (On a scale of 1-10, 10
being great and 1 being horrible)
Topics, themes, characters, events within
this story, conlifct, etc.
“The Fall of the House of Usher”
An unnamed narrator approaches the house of Usher on a “dull, dark, and soundless day.” This house—the
estate of his boyhood friend, Roderick Usher—is gloomy and mysterious. The narrator observes that the house
seems to have absorbed an evil and diseased atmosphere from the decaying trees and murky ponds around it.
“The Black Cat”
The more he hates the cat, the more the cat likes him. The narrator cannot
bring himself to hurt the cat because he is afraid of it. The white shape on
its chest morphs into a gallows, a direct reminder of his crime against
Pluto. Eventually, the narrator is driven so mad that he tries to kill the cat
with an axe.
"The Black Cat," which first appeared in the United States Saturday Post (The Saturday Evening Post) on
August 19, 1843, serves as a reminder for all of us. The capacity for violence and horror lies within each of us,
no matter how docile and humane our dispositions might appear.
- By Martha Womack
“The Pit and the Pendulum”
Imagine being sentenced to a torturous death without any insight into when or how it is going to happen. In
Edgar Allan Poe's 'The Pit and the Pendulum', the unnamed narrator finds himself in a terrifying situation
after 'the robed judges' sentence him. During the Spanish Inquisition, heresy often resulted in execution in
extremely public and painful ways. This story describes the experience of a man who has been sentenced to
death.
Pit and the Pendulum” (1843)An unnamed narrator opens the story by revealing that he has been sentenced to death during the time of the
Inquisition—an institution of the Catholic government in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Spain that persecuted
all Protestants and heretical Catholics. Upon receiving his death sentence, the narrator swoons, losing
consciousness. When he wakes, he faces complete darkness. He is confused because he knows that the usual
fate of Inquisition victims is a public auto-da-fé, or “act of faith”—an execution normally taking the form of a
hanging. He is afraid that he has been locked in a tomb, but he gets up and walks a few paces. This mobility
then leads him to surmise that he is not in a tomb, but perhaps in one of the dungeons at Toledo, an infamous
Inquisition prison. He decides to explore. Ripping off a piece of the hem from his robe, he places it against the
wall so that he can count the number of steps required to walk the perimeter of the cell. However, he soon
stumbles and collapses to the ground, where he falls asleep, then…
“The Oblong Box”
The story opens with the narrator (first person) recounting a summer sea voyage from Charleston, South
Carolina to New York City aboard the ship Independence. The narrator learns that his old college friend
Cornelius Wyatt is aboard with his wife and two sisters, though he has reserved three state-rooms. After
conjecturing the extra room was for a servant or extra baggage, he learns his friend has brought on board an
oblong pine box: "It was about six feet in length by two and a half in breadth." The narrator notes its peculiar
shape and especially an odd odor coming from it…
A film (1969) was made based on the story, though it does not
follow it exactly. Julian (Vincent Price) hides his horrendously
disfigured brother, Sir Edward Markham (Alister Williamson), in a
tower where he is kept in chains. Anxious for freedom, Edward
fakes his death with the aid of an immoral attorney, Trench (Peter
Arne), and a pill that puts him into a catatonic state. But the escape
plan takes a treacherous turn when Julian unwittingly buries his
brother alive -- and he's later unearthed by grave robbers under the
employ of malevolent Dr. Neuhardt (Christopher Lee).
“The Oval Portrait” by Edgar Allan Poe
It takes Poe's theory that poetry as art is the rhythmical creation of beauty, and
that the most poetical topic in the world is the death of a beautiful woman.
"The Oval Portrait" suggests that the woman's beauty condemns her to death.
View the animated short: "The Oval Portrait"