The Imaginary: American Gothic

Annotations:

• Vocabulary -The wind blowing/howling into the windows -Chidren's voices -Music box -Children laughing -Screams -Footsteps on a creaking wooden floor

1. Pièce jointe : Mind Map sur Tell Tale Heart très bien détaillé

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   • The Tell Tale Heart Edgar Allen Poe
2. Le Cœur révélateur est un récit à la première personne dont le narrateur, anonyme, s'efforce de convaincre le lecteur de sa lucidité et de sa rationalité, mais souffre d'un mal qui « a aiguisé [ses] sens ». Le vieil homme avec lequel il vit a un « œil bleu pâle, avec une taie dessus », un œil de « vautour », qui cause tant de souffrance au narrateur qu'il décide de l'assassiner. Le narrateur insiste sur la prudence avec laquelle il a commis le meurtre pour montrer qu'il ne peut être fou. Pendant sept nuits, il ouvre la porte de la chambre du vieil homme, action qui lui prend une bonne heure. Toutefois, à chaque fois, l'œil de vautour du vieil homme demeure fermé, ce qui l'empêche « d'accomplir l'œuvre ».
   1. La huitième nuit, le vieil homme se réveille et s'assied sur son lit tandis que le narrateur effectue son rituel nocturne. Plutôt que de reculer, celui-ci décide, au bout d'un moment, d'entrouvrir sa lanterne. Un rai de lumière éclaire précisément l'œil du vieil homme, révélant qu'il est grand ouvert. Percevant alors les battements du cœur du vieil homme, animé par la terreur, il décide de frapper: il saute sur le vieil homme en poussant un hurlement, le jette sur le parquet et renverse le lit sur lui. Puis il dépèce sa victime et dissimule les morceaux sous le plancher.
      1. Toutefois, un voisin, ayant entendu un cri, a alerté la police. Le narrateur invite les trois officiers qui se présentent à sa porte à fouiller, bien convaincu qu'ils ne trouveront rien. Il leur affirme que le vieil homme est en voyage et montre que ses trésors sont toujours à leur place. Sûr de lui, il leur apporte des chaises, et chacun s'assied dans la chambre du vieil homme, juste au-dessus de l'emplacement où le corps a été enfoui.
         1. Alors qu'il se sent de plus en plus en plus à son aise, le narrateur commence à entendre un bruit faible, qui devient de plus en plus fort. Il en arrive à la conclusion que c'est le battement de cœur du vieil homme, sous les planches, plutôt que d'admettre que c'est celui de son propre cœur. Les officiers semblent ne pas avoir remarqué ce bruit. Pourtant, bouleversé par le battement constant du cœur et persuadé que les officiers l'entendent aussi bien que lui, le narrateur finit par avouer le meurtre du vieil homme et leur explique où est dissimulé le cadavre.
            1. Source: Wikipédia
   2. Résumé en Français
3. Poe uses his words economically in the “Tell-Tale Heart”—it is one of his shortest stories—to provide a study of paranoia and mental deterioration. Poe strips the story of excess detail as a way to heighten the murderer’s obsession with specific and unadorned entities: the old man’s eye, the heartbeat, and his own claim to sanity. Poe’s economic style and pointed language thus contribute to the narrative content, and perhaps this association of form and content truly exemplifies paranoia. Even Poe himself, like the beating heart, is complicit in the plot to catch the narrator in his evil game.
   1. As a study in paranoia, this story illuminates the psychological contradictions that contribute to a murderous profile. For example, the narrator admits, in the first sentence, to being dreadfully nervous, yet he is unable to comprehend why he should be thought mad. He articulates his self-defense against madness in terms of heightened sensory capacity.
      1. the narrator of “The Tell-Tale Heart” views his hypersensitivity as proof of his sanity, not a symptom of madness. This special knowledge enables the narrator to tell this tale in a precise and complete manner, and he uses the stylistic tools of narration for the purposes of his own sanity plea. However, what makes this narrator mad—and most unlike Poe—is that he fails to comprehend the coupling of narrative form and content. He masters precise form, but he unwittingly lays out a tale of murder that betrays the madness he wants to deny.
         1. Another contradiction central to the story involves the tension between the narrator’s capacities for love and hate. Poe explores here a psychological mystery—that people sometimes harm those whom they love or need in their lives. Poe examines this paradox half a century before Sigmund Freud made it a leading concept in his theories of the mind. Poe’s narrator loves the old man. He is not greedy for the old man’s wealth, nor vengeful because of any slight. The narrator thus eliminates motives that might normally inspire such a violent murder. As he proclaims his own sanity, the narrator fixates on the old man’s vulture-eye. He reduces the old man to the pale blue of his eye in obsessive fashion. He wants to separate the man from his “Evil Eye” so he can spare the man the burden of guilt that he attributes to the eye itself. The narrator fails to see that the eye is the “I” of the old man, an inherent part of his identity that cannot be isolated as the narrator perversely imagines.
            1. The murder of the old man illustrates the extent to which the narrator separates the old man’s identity from his physical eye. The narrator sees the eye as completely separate from the man, and as a result, he is capable of murdering him while maintaining that he loves him. The narrator’s desire to eradicate the man’s eye motivates his murder, but the narrator does not acknowledge that this act will end the man’s life. By dismembering his victim, the narrator further deprives the old man of his humanity. The narrator confirms his conception of the old man’s eye as separate from the man by ending the man altogether and turning him into so many parts. That strategy turns against him when his mind imagines other parts of the old man’s body working against him.
               1. The narrator’s newly heightened sensitivity to sound ultimately overcomes him, as he proves unwilling or unable to distinguish between real and imagined sounds. Because of his warped sense of reality, he obsesses over the low beats of the man’s heart yet shows little concern about the man’s shrieks, which are loud enough both to attract a neighbor’s attention and to draw the police to the scene of the crime. The police do not perform a traditional, judgmental role in this story. Ironically, they aren’t terrifying agents of authority or brutality. Poe’s interest is less in external forms of power than in the power that pathologies of the mind can hold over an individual. The narrator’s paranoia and guilt make it inevitable that he will give himself away. The police arrive on the scene to give him the opportunity to betray himself. The more the narrator proclaims his own cool manner, the more he cannot escape the beating of his own heart, which he mistakes for the beating of the old man’

                  Annotations:

                  • Source: http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/poestories/section6.rhtml
                  1. Vocabulary

                     Annotations:

                     • newly: nouvellement, récemment, fraîchement overcome: submerger unwilling: forcé, réticent, peu disposé warped: voilé, tordu shrieks: cri perçant, hurlement
                  2. Source: http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/poestories/section6.rhtml
               2. Vocabulary

                  Annotations:

                  • dismembering: dépeçage further: faire avancer, promouvoir, plus loin deprives: priver qql de qql chose altogether: en tout, complètement
            2. Vocabulary

               Annotations:

               • harm: faire du mal, blesser, nuire à... whom: duquel, qui nor: ni vengeful: vengeur slight: affront thus: par conséquence, ainsi burden: charge, fardeau inherent: inhérent, intrinsèque
         2. Vocabulary

            Annotations:

            • knowledge: connaissance enables: permet plea: plaider, défense comprehend: comprendre, saisir coupling: couplage to master: maîtriser unwittingly: unvolontairement, sans le faire exprès lays out: arranger, disposer
      2. Vocabulary

         Annotations:

         • dreadfully: atrocement, terriblement articulates: s'exprimer clairement
   2. Vocabulary

      Annotations:

      • to provide: produire, apporter, fournir to strips: dépouiller to heighten: rehausser unadorned: simple, sans ornements entities: entité, créature, être exempliphies: illustrer

1. The sunlight illuminating House by the Railroad is bright enough to cast deep shadows on the stately Victorian mansion, but not to chase away an air of sadness. The dull gray color of the house, its deep shadow, windows with nothing visible inside, empty porch, and lack of vegetation all contribute to the lonely mood. Even the railroad track separates the viewers from the house, hiding the steps to the porch and making it s eem even less accessible. The painting expresses Edward Hopper’s central theme: the alienation modern life. It embodies a key theme in American art during the first half of the twentieth century: the clash between rapid modernization and an older way of life, based in rural traditions
   1. . Instead of happy, anecdotal pictures celebrating the energy and pros- perity of the Roaring Twenties, Hopper portrayed modern life with unsentimental scenes of either physical or psychological isolation. Most are set in the city, where people often look uncomfortable and out of place. Others, like House by the Railroad, picture solitary buildings in commonplace landscapes. Hopper’s House by the Railroad is symbolic of the loss that is felt when modern progress leaves an society behind.
      1. By the early twentieth century, railroads crisscrossed the entire nation, allowing for easy travel and exchange of goods. Hopper painted the tracks from a vantage point so they appear to slice off the bottom of the house. A train running across these tracks would obscure it entirely. Hopper studied modern life and captured its anxieties and uncertainties. But he remained committed to realism. Here he is reading from an essay he wrote in 1953.
         1. The obvious architectural similarities are easy to spot. But so what? Clearly, Hitchcock saw more than just that in the painting. For instance, as evidenced by the railroad tracks running in front of it, Hopper’s house has been left behind by progress, just as the Bates estate has been bypassed by the new Interstate Highway, courtesy of President Eisenhower.
            1. Hopper also provided inspiration for the development of Norman Bates. Said Psycho screenwriter Joseph Stefano, “I told [Anthony Perkins] that I felt that Norman Bates, if he were a painting, would be painted by Hopper, and he agreed. So we had that kind of discussion, writer and actor, about the character. He had an incredible grasp on Norman Bates and the situation that he was in. I think Tony Perkins must have known what it was like to be trapped.”
               1. When Hopper included people in his paintings, they are almost always alone, clamped into their "private traps," as Norman would describe them.

1. The Simpsons: "The Telltale Head"
   1. Illustration by Harry Clarke