The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (1820) – Washington Irving

General

- published in 1820 in The Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon

- most famous story of the collection
- Irving’s most important story
- the story has a source in a German folktale
Summary

- Sleepy Hollow – small, quiet village from New York – Ichabod comes here
to be the schoolmaster of the village
- Ichabod Crane tries to win the heart & hand of Katrina Van Tassel
- the town has some kind of charm put on it – everything goes in slow motion,
people daydream & believe in the supernatural
- supernatural phenomenon – a ghost knows as the Headless Horseman
o a soldier who lost his head to a cannon ball during the Revolutionary
war
o most often seen riding by the church
o believed to be searching his head
o Ichabod is profoundly fascinated by this story (and supernatural in
general)
- Ichabod:
o naïve, greedy
o strict teacher
o doesn’t really earn money from teaching / makes extra by teaching
singing lessons – proud of his voice
o moves around a lot / this job arrangement => gives him the
opportunity to hear more ghost stories
o always hungry (mood)
o falls in love with one if his students – Katrina
o visits her father’s farm often in order to see her
- Katrina:
 o 18 yo
o Ichabod’s singing student
o daughter of one of the most successful farmers in the area
o charming, beautiful, rich – many men want to win her heart
o a flirt – always dresses up to show off her best features
- Brom Van Brunt (aka Brom Bones)
o notorious in his village
o energetic, prankster, great horseback riding skill
o ‘village hero’
o also in love with Katrina -> he scared off many other suitors but has a
hard time doing so with Ichabod
o pranks Ichabod – fills the school with smoke, trains a dog to chase
Ichabod + other stuff to humiliate him
o marries Katrina eventually
- Ichabod is invited to a Van Tassels’ party – appears to be the best man there
- Katrina disappoints him and he leaves crestfallen (sad)
- on his way home, Ichabod encounters the legendary Headless Horseman
- tries to run away on his decrepit (worn-out) horse -> they end up by the
church where Ichabod races to the bridge (a place supposed to make the
ghost disappear) -> it doesn’t work and the Horseman throws his detached
head at him, knocking Ichabod off
- the next day – the horse returns to its owner’ farm – no sign of Ichabod
- a search party finds horse prints, Ichabod’s hat and a pumpkin next to it
- he is never seen again – rumors say he was taken by the Headless Horseman

Analysis

- comic tale
- love story & ghost story altogether
- the name of the village (Sleepy Hollow) is not ordinary – suggests that the
people living here are so sleepy and colorless that they need ghosts & ghost
stories to keep them occupied
- makes fun of a schoolmaster who is supposed to be one of the smartest
people in town and yet believes in ghosts & is easily scared and pranked
- themes:
o veracity
 the old gentleman who firstly told this story claimed to not have
believed even half of it himself
 Irving gives us reasons to doubt everything even though the
story is told which much confidence
 we become critical readers – unlike Ichabod Crane, who
believes the ghost stories he reads/hears
 the point of telling the story is simply the enjoyment of the tale
– since it’s been passed from one person to another
o the power of imagination
 Ichabod’s strength of his imagination which leads to his
downfall
 Ichabod’s primary enjoyment – reading/hearing stories about
ghosts, demons or witches and actually believing them => naïve
 he is so anchored in his beliefs, his imagination is so powerful
that he always has frights walking home at night
 he doesn’t live in reality anymore
 Ichabod always imagines his future life with Katrina and often
daydreams about it – Ichabod’s entire life is a supernatural
dream that he cannot escape (maybe it’s his strong imagination
of the effect of the village that is said to make people daydream
and act odd)
o that natural & supernatural
 Irving makes a strong contrast between the natural setting of
Sleepy Hollow & the supernatural superstitions of the villagers
 if people didn’t believe in ghosts, there would be literally no
ghosts
 much of the tale is focused on the natural setting – birds, trees,
flora, fauna, water – beautiful descriptions
 was Ichabod hit by a ghostly head or a natural pumpkin? –
second option would make more sense but despite all obvious
evidence, people are still to blame the Headless Horseman for
Ichabod’s disappearance
The Fall of the House of Usher (1839) – Edgar Allan Poe

General

- published in 1839 in Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine

- supernatural horror story
- when it was first published it was thought to be about Poe himself

Summary

- a male narrator rides to the house of Roderick Usher – a childhood friend

whom he has not seen in many years
- Roderick is mentally ill and requested the narrator’s company via a letter
- upon arriving, the narrator describes the house and its surroundings in much
detail – the house is decaying, trees & vegetation around are dying – seems
like an evil spirit has absorbed everything
- the narrator is greeted by an oddly behaving Roderick – he claims his senses
are tremendously acute: he cannot wear all kinds of clothes or eat certain
foods, his eyes are bothered by the faintest light
- Roderick seems afraid of his own house – claims that the house is
cursed/unhealthy – exactly what the narrator supposes at the beginning
- Roderick’s twin sister, Madeline – mysterious sickness (catalepsy?)
- the narrator tries to cheer Roderick up but fails
- Madeline dies – Roderick buries her temporarily below the house
o he wants to keep her in the house because he fears that doctors might
dig up her body for examination
- one night, the narrator can’t sleep and decides to read so time passes quickly
o as he reads Mad Trist by Sir Launcelot Canning – medieval romance –
he starts to hear noises that correspond to the descriptions in the story
o as they get more intense, he can no longer ignore them and goes to
check out
 - Roderick starts muttering to himself and reveals he’s been hearing these
sounds too for days
- Roderick is convinced that they buried Madeline alive and she’s trying to
escape now – yells that she is definitely standing behind the door
- he opens the door to see a dressed in bloody white robe Madeline who
attacks him eventually -> Roderick dies of fear
- the narrator leaves and as he escapes, he sees the entire house cracking and
collapsing to the ground

Analysis

- characteristics of a gothic tale – a haunted house, dreary landscape,

mysterious sickness, double personality
- vagueness
o it doesn’t tell us when the event is taking place
o the readers and the narrator find themselves alone in a haunted place
and we don’t know why
- specific to Poe – inexplicable, sudden disruptions and turn of events /
interlacing the real and the fantastic in such a way that it blurs the line
between them, creating a whole
- Poe creates a sensation of claustrophobia
o the narrator is trapped inside the house and cannot escape until the
house collapses
o characters cannot move and act freely because of the structure – the
house is a monster itself – the Gothic mastermind that controls its
inhabitants and their fate
- the term ‘house’ is metaphoric, since the author refers to the genetic line of
the Usher family, not to the house itself – the Usher family all fall into
madness and collapse completely, just as the house in the end
- the twin bond – doppelganger – Roderick & Madeline cannot develop as
free individuals
o the house as inanimate object & the Usher family line
o the upside down reflection of the house into the shallow pool – an
opposite symmetrical relationship that also characterizes the
relationship between Roderick & Madeline
 o Madeline is buried before she actually dies because her similarity to
Roderick is like a coffin that holds her identity
- well-known fact about Poe – obsessed with codes & words games
o Usher = a threshold than brings the narrator into the mortifying world
of Roderick & Madeline
- the presence of an outsider in the house, a place he doesn’t know -> could be
a factor that destroys the house
- Roderick Usher
o doppelganger of Madeline, his twin sister
o the mind to his siter’s body – suffers from the mental counterpart of
her physical illness
- Madeline Usher
o Roderick’s twin sister
o victim of catalepsy
- unnamed narrator
o first outsider to visit the mansion in many years

Young Goodman Brown (1835) – Nathaniel Hawthorne

General

- takes place in the 17th century – common setting for Hawthorne’s works
- first publishing didn’t include Hawthorne’s name, but the alias of The Gray
Champion

Summary

- takes place in Salem Village, Massachusetts

o Salem = city of witches & evil
- Goodman Brown leaves Faith, his wife, to go into the forest, despite her
wife’s pleads to stay with her
- Brown insists that his journey must be completed that night
 - he meets an older man who looks similar to him – he carries a black-serpent
shaped staff (the devil himself)
- deeper in the woods – they encounter Goody Cloyse, an older woman,
whom Young Goodman has known since childhood – she taught him
catechism
- as Brown goes deeper into the forest, he starts hearing his wife’s voice
between the trees – he calls out to her but nobody answers
- he runs towards the voices, scared that his beautiful Faith is lost somewhere
in the dark
- he then stumbles upon a big people gathering beneath the moonlight sky
where all people from his town have come
- a ceremony is taking place – a lit altar made out of rocks – Young Goodman
and his wife are brought forward – they are the only ones who have not been
initiated yet
- Goodman Brown is terrified and calls to heaven for help -> everything
suddenly vanishes into thin air
- back in Salem the next morning – Goodman is deeply shaken but what
happened, no longer feels joy, becomes suspicious of anyone around him, he
loses his Faith (double interpretation) despite living in a Christian
community, he loses faith in humanity

Analysis

- the protagonist – an allegory of the fall of man (Adam)

- Hawthorne creates a story of a man who is tempted by the devil and
succumbs because of his curiosity & weakness in his faith
- the story resembles the book of Genesis – Goodman Brown portrays Eve
and cannot help himself from wanting to know what lies behind the
mysterious forest
- just like Eve, Brown is ‘rewarded’ for his curiosity with information that
changes his life for the worse => how he perceives humanity and life after
the event
- during the ceremony, the devil tells them that they will now be opened to the
wickedness of themselves and those around them
 - just like Adam & Eve were exiled from the Garden of Eden and were forced
to bear everything humans must do, Goodman Brown returns home from the
forest ‘exiled’, to find that the joy in his life has been taken away from him
- themes:
o the inevitable loss of innocence
 Brown loses innocence – an inevitable fact, whether the events
in the forest were real or not
 instead of being corrupted by some outside force, Brown makes
a personal choice to go into the forest and meet the devil
 Brown is never certain whether the evil events are real or not
 if they were a dream – they come completely from his
head – a clear indication of his unconscious dark side
 if they were real – Brown truly sees that everyone around
him is corrupt
o the fear of wilderness
 the moment he stepped into the forest – fear of the voices
within the depth of the woods
 no good is possible in the forest from his POV – also portrayed
in real life – a forest at night is, above anything else,
tremendously terrifying
 forest = devilish, frightening, dark – Goodman Brown is
comfortable in it only after he has given in to evil

Bartleby, the Scrivener (1853) – Herman Melville

General

- first published anonymously in 2 parts

- symbolic fable of self-isolation & passive resistance to routine
- reveals the decremental extinction of a human spirit
- one of Melville’s most famous stories
- most difficult to interpret
Summary

- the narrator – a lawyer who runs a law practice on Wall Street in NY

- he employs Turkey & Nippers in order to copy legal documents by hand
- employs the 3rd employer, Bartleby, due to an increase in business
- the narrator hopes that Bartleby’s calmness will soothe the other 2
employers who are hot-headed
- at first, Bartleby is very productive – until a day, when suddenly he starts
replying with what will soon become his perpetual response: ‘I would prefer
not to’, when asked to complete a task
- Bartleby begins to perform fewer and fewer tasks, eventually getting to none
at all – all employees are irritated by his behaviour
- he spends long periods of time staring out the window at a brick wall instead
- the narrator tries to find out the reason behind this behaviour, but has never
any success – he soon finds out on a Sunday morning that Bartleby lives in
the office and is saddened by the thought of what life the young man must
have
- the narrator feels his business is threatened by Bartleby doing nothing and
decides to move the business to a different building – he feels pitiful for
Bartleby and cannot evict him
- a week or so later, the new owner of his old office comes to ask him to
remove Bartleby, but the narrator refuses, stating he’s not responsible for
Bartleby anymore
- after finally being put out, several other tenants of the narrator’s former
office building come to complain that Bartleby is still sitting on the building
stairs and sleeps in its doorway at night -> the narrator visits Bartleby to
reason with him – he suggests him several jobs, but Bartleby still replies ‘I
would prefer not to make any change’ and declines
- the narrator leaves the neighborhood for several days in order not to be
bothered by tenants anymore
- Bartleby is arrested upon narrator’s returning because the landlord has called
the police
 - the narrators visits him often to bring him food and check on him until few
days later – Bartleby is found dead of starvation, having preferred not to eat

Analysis

- at first it seems as a simple plot

- ‘I would prefer not to’ – a simple & innocent sentence which becomes a
slogan, an essential part of Bartleby’s character
- the narrator calls it ‘passive resistance’
- main source of puzzlement – Bartleby’s refusal to do anything and his
controversial sentence
- his refusal to do anything can be interpreted as a growing materialism of
American culture at that time
- the fact that the office is located on Wall Street is not ordinary – it actually is
a very intelligent and subtle move of Melville (as well as other authors, such
as Poe) to introduce in literature the importance of money and its
management in the American life -> therefore, Bartleby’s refusal to do what
he’s asked to suggests somewhat a heroic opposition to economic control
- throughout the story, Bartleby simply exists – he does do some writing, but
eventually gives that up as well in favor of staring at the wall
- some critics have stated the Lawyer is a ‘collector’ and he collects characters
of all kinds, in the form of strange scriveners: ‘I have known many of them’
-> Bartleby is the ‘prize’ of his collection
- the narrator’s treatment of Bartleby can be read both as sympathetic, pitying
or cold – depends on one’s interpretation