Didn't realize we had to do a blog post on In the Lake of the Woods, but having checked some of the other blogs that have done it I guess it's better to be safe than sorry.

In the Lake of the Woods is probably the greatest mystery novel Ive read, particularly because it tackles one of the greatest debated mysteries: love. The chapters named "evidence" and "hypothesis" make the reader really try to analyze what happened to Kathy and what the reader is supposed to believe of John Wade and Sorcerer's truest motives. both of these mysteries slowly unfold, yet neither really are fully revealed to us. What is revealed to us at the end of the book is that this indeed is a story about love. I personally think it is debatable whether we can believe Kathy or John really loved eachother (as evidenced in the many chapters that account for the history of the couple and the relationship and self developments, which mainly pertain to John). Their seems to be a theme that love is expressed in many ways and often the love is for the relationship and not exactly the other person (i.e - keeping secrets and the snakes eating eachother/ 1+1=0).

A Hunger Artist

This story seems to explain the feelings of all artists and how hard it can be to accept that their will be people who don't understand, don't care, or pretend to care about an artist's work. The hunger artist cannot find satisfaction in the world of food, and in that way his work is not necessarily fasting at all, rather it is the exact opposite, feasting on nothing. He is not truly disciplined in this way, and thus he cannot respect his own technique, nor can anyone else. The greater pain comes from the people who don't respect the art of fasting, even when his own art is not disciplined as the art of fasting is meant to be.

Young Goodman Brown

Inherit tendencies for humans to act evilly seems to be the theme in this short story by Nathaniel Hawthorne. The young goodman brown wanders into the forest, which would seem to be the darkness of his mind as the wood road becomes darker and darker. he eventually finds a cult consisting of everyone in his life, even his most faithful wife (Faith) is there, which would seem to show that Nathaniel Hawthorne believes that even the best of us have a dark side that we cannot avoid.

The Jewelery

This story by Maupassant takes a much more laid back approach towards its diction than The Cask of Amontillado. The irony is clearly evident when the reader (and main character) finds out that the wife's jewelery is not false jewelery. In selling this jewelery, the man decides to throw away the sacredness of his and her beloved wife's relationship for the riches that the jewelery will sell for. This choice comes at a larger price, as karma shows in the story that he remarries to a frustrating woman and looses all the happiness that the money promised to give him. the theme in this story seems to be much more pronounced than it The Cask of Amontillado as well.

The Cask of Amontillado

This story by Poe seemed surprisingly focused on its level of tension. It's no wonder why this story was chosen for our discussion of Irony, as the main character's drunkard friend ends up accidently killing himself at the end of the story in the catacombs of the dead. The diction made each sentence feel like a loaded pistol (giving me reason to reread parts in the story), but that's what gave the story it's precision in story-telling. Poe's intense style of diction reminds me of Hemmingway's intense use of symbolism and how precise each of these writer's are in their executions.