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"