Gothic Literature-Gothic Literature, Romanticism, Transcendentalism

Gothic Literature: is a genre of literature that combines elements of both horror and romance. As a genre, it is generally believed to have been invented by the English author Horace Walpole with his 1764 novel The Castle of Otranto. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gothic_fiction)
Melodrama and parody were also some of the features that Horace wanted to have readers get across in his novels.
Prominent features of Gothic fiction include terror (both psychological and physical), mystery, the supernatural, ghosts, haunted houses and Gothic Arc., castles, darkness, death, decay, etc.
Characters of Gothic fiction include tyrants, villains,bandits, maniacs, madwoman, vampires, werewolves, monsters, demons, the beauty and the beasts, and the devil.
This literary genre found its most natural settings in the very tall buildings of the Gothic style, often spelled "Gothick", to highlight their "medievalness" - castles, mansions, and monasteries, often remote, crumbling, and ruined.

(http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/cs6/rom.html)
Romanticism doesn't have much to do with the world romantic, although love may occasionally be the subject of romantic art. It is an international artistic and philosophical movement that redefined the fundamental ways in which people in Western cultures thought about themselves and about their world.
It is one of the curiosities of literary history that the strongholds of the Romantic Movement were England and Germany, not the countries of the romance languages themselves. The Romantic period, began in 1798, the year of the first edition of Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge and of the composition of Hymns to the Night by Novalis, and ending in 1832, the year which marked the deaths of both Sir Walter Scott and Goethe.

(http://www.themystica.com/mystica/articles/t/transcendentalism.html)

Transcendentalism was a group of new ideas from the literature, religion, culture, and philosophy that emerged in New England in the early to middle 19th century.
Transcendentalists are understood by what they were rebelling against, what they saw as the current situation and therefore as what they were trying to be different from.In America "transcendentalism" was mostly used in a literary form having a semireligious nature.
The formation of the movement was in 1836 with the establishment of the Transcendental Club of Boston, Massachusetts. The early transcendentalists included the essayist and poet Ralph Waldo Emerson, the feminist, s ocial reformer, and author Margaret Fuller, a minister Theodore Parker, and the naturalist and author Henry David Thoreau.

ACT 4: Darforth and Hawtorn visit Parris in the jail and ask why Hale has come back to Salem. He says that Hale just wants to have the girls confess that what they've done is wrong and that nothing here is witchcraft. Abigail and Mercy have run away from Salem after robbing him. A lot of the houses in Salem has gone to nothing because many of their home owners are in jail. Now everyone lives in fear because they are all scared that they will get accused of being a witch. Elizabeth tries and gets John to confess and tells him that 100 people have confessed of being a part of witchcraft and that Giles got killed by being crushed by stones, even though he never confessed he was guilty or not. It was either he confessed and got hung or didn't and got killed anyway. So when you got accused you were either put in jail for sometime or hung. After thinking for sometime if John should confess. He decided that he will confess. They grab the paper for him to sign and he asks why he has to sign a paper and they tell him it will be hung on the church door. They try and get him to speak out if he saw anyone else there and he says that he will not say anyone else but his own sins. He doesn't want to sign the paper but under pressure he knows he has to so he gets the paper. John tells him he doesn't want his name hung on the church door. They start arguing and John grabs the paper and rips it into 2. John and 7 others get led into the gallows and gets killed. Later, Parris is voted out of office and has to leave Salem. It was heard that Abigail became a prositute in Boston. A few years later Elizabeth remarries.

ACT 3: They are all in court now and John and Mary enter the room saying that the girls have all been faking it and they haven't seen anything or done anything to anyone. They just think that John is trying to overrun the court but all John wants to do is set his wife free. But Darthforth just thinks that he is still trying to take over and that he yelled at Hale about accusing his wife. So they question him about his religous beliefs again and that he only attends church once a year. Also that he plows on Sundays, which is a big no no in Salem. Elizabeth claims that she is pregnant so they know that she can't get hung or put in jail. Abigail denys everything that Mary has told the court. And then Proctor jumps at Abigail and calls her a whore. He confesses to the court that he had sexual relations with Abigail. Proctor claims that Abigail is saying this and trying to get her hung because she wants to take Elizabeths place in their home. Abigail wants John all to herself. Danforth tells Abigail and John to turn their backs and he sents in Elizabeth. He asks her if John and Abigail had had any sexual relations. Elizabeth tries and looks at John but Danforth keeps telling her to look at him. She says No trying to save John but she did the wrong thing. John always says that Elizabeth never lies. They take him out because he starts yelling that he confessed his sins! Right then Abigail and all the girls start screaming that Mary's spirit is up on the rafters and its hurting them. Mary tells them to stop and they start mimiking her. Mary gets hysterical and starts screaming with them. She confesses that she was with the Devil and that that he made her do all these things and to please forgive her. Hale then says that he is quitting the court.

ACT 2: John and his wife sits down while their servant is at the trials. Now there is about 14 people in jail now so it is getting very out of hand! Whatever witch doesn't confess, they will get hanged. Abigail is trying to accuss Elizabeth of being a witch by setting her up and trying to make it look like she is a witch. Elizabeth hears about what John and Abigail did while they were alone in their house. When Mary returns home, she gives Elizabeth a doll. What Elizabeth doesn't know is that it had a needle stuck in its stomach. John and Elizabeth had a fight over whether to have Mary keep attending the trials and when John was about to whip her, Mary cries out that she saved Elizabeth. Elizabeths name was said that day in the trial and Mary spoke out. Hale then comes to the Proctor house because he goes to all of the houses that a witch has been accused. John says there is no such thing, but then Hale accuses John of not going to church and not being very christian like. John responds of not liking Parris so he doesn't attend. The Marshal then arrives and takes Elizabeth under arrest for witchcraft. Cheever asks if she owns any dolls and she said she hasn't since she was a little girl. He then sees the doll Mary gave her and she was like " Ya Mary gave that to me as a gift. " and he lifted under the shirt and there was a needle stuck in her stomach. Earlier that day Abigail came into the house and had a needle stuck 2 inches into her stomach. So right then he came and took Elizabeth away saying that she did that. When they are taking Elizabeth away John gets very mad and starts yelling at Hale saying why is it that the accusers arent ever guily. After that Hale starts to think more and more that this isn't true but he really can't do anything about it, beings there are 30 some in jail and some dead. He can't get those back. John tells Mary that he needs to go to the trail and tell that Abigail put the needle in and that she is faking all of this. Mary says that Abigail will kill her if she goes up against her in trial.

The Crucible

ACT 1: Salem, Mass. 1692; The church and religion is pretty much what Salem is about. Reverned Parris daughter, Betty, is in bed unmoving and is very sick. No one knows what her sickness is but they all assume that it is witchcraft. Parris wants to know what her problem is so he sends for John Hale, another reverend who is specialized in witchcraft, to come and see if that is her problem. Abigial Williams, his niece was also seen dancing in the woods with the girls, and Parris' slave Tituba. Abigial keeps denying that she is involved in any witchcraft, but she is the leader of it all. She tells Parris what Betty faints in shock when Parris spots them.

Elizabeth Proctor once had Abigail work for her in her house, but fired her because of weird stuff going on. Elizabeth hasn't been coming to church and Parris is wondering why. He is afraid that all of this talk of witchcraft will have people run him out of his ministry.
Thomas Putnam comes in with his wife and they tell Parris that their daughter Ruth is just as lifeless and unmoving as Betty is. Mrs. Putnam also claims that someone had told her that they saw Betty flying over a neighbors barn. Mrs. Putnam is against a lot of this because she had 7 babies and within a day they had all died. She believes that someone used witchcraft to kill all of her babies. Right then Mercy Lewis, the Putnams servant, said that Ruth was doing better. Mary Warren, the Proctors servant came in and Abigail updated her on what is all going on. She is getting worried because it won't be long before they all get labeled witches. All the sudden Betty sits up and is crying uncontrollably for her mother, who is dead and buried. Betty is freaking out becasue she knew that Abigail didn't tell them about drinking blood to kill Elizabeth Proctor, Abigail hits Betty across the face because Abigail says JUST to tell them about the stuff that went on in the woods. Abigail tells them that she will kill them if they say anything else that she hasn't told Parris.

The Salem Witch House(1642). The Salem Witch house still stands on the corner of North and Essex Streets in Salem. They provide guided tours and tell tails of the first witchcraft trials.

Nineteen accused witches were hanged on Gallows Hill in 1692.

Bridget Bishop, Rebecca Nurse, Sarah Good, Susannah Martin, Elizabeth Howe, Sarah Wildes, George Burroughs, Martha Carrier, John Willard, George Jacobs, Sr. John Proctor, Martha Corey, Mary Eastey, Ann Pudeator, Alice Parker, Mary Parker, Wilmott Redd, Margaret Scott, Samuel Wardwell.

This is Bridget Bishop's gravestone. An accused witch that got hung June 10, 1692.

This is what she said:

Bridget Bishop

"I am no witch.
I am innocent.
I know nothing of it."


The early Puritans aim was to purify the church, not to separate from it.
The Puritans got a great amount of acceptance in the early years of Queen Elizabeth's reign.
The Puritans considered religion a complex, subtle, and a highly intellectual affair. The Puritans believed that there was nothing one could do about the condition of one's soul but try to act as one would expect a heaven-bound soul to act.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/46/Devils_Tower_CROP.jpg
The Devils Tower is significant in the story The Way to Rainy Mountain because their grandmother had a legend there that she would tell her grand-daughter.





http://www.crystalinks.com/sundance2.jpg

The Indians worshiped a sun dance doll call the Tai-me. That was the subject of their worship, and so shared in the divinity of the sun.

http://www.med.uc.edu/departme/cellbiol/Image7.gif
Scurvy infected many of the travelers in the months of January and February, being the depth of winter. It killed around 2 to 3 people each day. Scurvy is a disease caused by lack of vitamin C.

http://www.beavton.k12.or.us/jacob_wismer/fourth/colonies/images/pilgrims.jpg

The Pilgrims were afraid that they were going to get infected with Scurvy or other infectious diseases.













http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3633/3677467261_d5bfb060d1.jpg
The Kiowas Indians had to abandon their homes, stores, and normal lives. They had to restart there lives fresh. It was a very tragic time.

The Way to Rainy Mountain

Geographical:
" Yellowstone, it seemed to me, was the top of the world, a region of deep lakes and dark timber, canyons and waterfalls." (p.58)
"A dark mist lay over the Black Hills, and the land was like iron." (p.59)
Historical
"For more than 100 years they had controlled the open range from the Smoky Hill river to the red.." (p.57)
"...the Kiowas backed down away forever from the medicine tree. That was July 20, 1890, at the Great Bend of the Washita." (p.59-60)
Personal
"Her forebears came down from the high country in western Montana nearly 3 centeries ago." (p.57)
"When i was a child I played with my cousins outside, where the lamp light fell upon the ground and the singing of the old people rose up around us and carried away into the darkness." (p.61)