The Tell Tale Heart

I haven't read Edgar Allan Poe since probably middle school yet I remember it different from this reading. I remember it to be 'scary', and 'dark', and that he was probably the least favorite of my writers because of that. However reading this now, I enjoyed it. I love how his actually writing in itself makes the reader nervous; as if the exclamation points  and dashes were going to jump off the page and attack you. The way he narrated the story was perfect for the calculated insanity the character was supposed to possess. Especially the use of sensory descriptions like the creaking of the floor boards. "Many a night, just at midnight, when all the world slept, it has welled up from my own bosom, deepening, with its dreadful echo, the terrors that distracted me", "So I opened it - you cannot imagine how stealthily, stealthily-until, at length, a single dim ray, like the thread of the spider, shot from out the crevice and fell full upon the vulture eye". I think when I first read Poe I couldn't appreciate how he used language as his partner in crime to create a murder. By the end of the reader I was nervous reading it.

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

It never occured to me the importance and the self-identity that relates to knowing one's birthday. I was surprised by how the lack of that basic knowledge affected me just by reading the text. I think knowing your age makes up a good part of your self-identity. In this narrative Frederick Douglass is treated very much like an animal that is taken from its mother after a few months and is almost completely devoid of maternal attachment. How would that affect the psychological development of a child? I suppose since Douglass was raised by another woman he might've just attached to her as a mother figure. I think I read somewhere that if a child doesn't receive an adequate amount of attention and affection in early life it affects their development of personality... So I was surprised that Douglass seemed to grow into a normal person. Also, I appreciate how this text was written - It was very easy to read as a story.