Final Project Choice #1

     For my final project, I have chosen to use option 1. I chose option 1 because it gives me the opportunity to use one of my most favorite authors, Edgar Allen Poe. For this essay I will be using my personal copy of “The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allen Poe”. When I chose to write this essay, I did not have any particular idea of what I wanted to accomplish in writing it other than trying to get an A on my paper. I was then faced with this (accomplish) question for my blog post. Honestly I could not think of anything. So far my focus has been on my grades and not much more. Then my oldest daughter asked me what I was doing, and I explained to her that I was intently trying to figure out what I wanted to accomplish with my essay. She looked over the outline for option one and asked me what I thought Poe’s hang ups in his poems and stories. My reply was death and heartbreak. My daughter then said, “So you are trying to show a correlation between the death and heartbreak in Poe’s stories to his life”. After she said this I just kind of sat there feeling a bit dumb. I spent most of this week trying to figure out what I wanted to accomplish, and my seventeen year old daughter answered this question for me in less than ten minutes. I might have felt stupid, but the whole “Child is Smarter than the Parent” scenario was quite comical, especially when she danced away singing, “I’m smarter than mommy”. I felt a tiny bit smarter about a half an hour later.  This is when I figured that maybe one of my accomplishments with this essay could be trying to inspire others to read Poe, and see that even in all the death and depression of his writing, there is a real sense of dark beauty in his writings. As far as my research goes, I will be using the college library databases for this. I have used them in the past, and have had a lot of success with them. I might also use other book, but I am not sure yet. Overall I am excited about this project, and have really enjoyed reading something that I like (unlike Frankenstein). 

Image source: http://www.youdopia.com/2010/06/08/basement-cat-loves-the-work-of-edgar-allen-poe-a-classic-lolcat/
 Here is a link for more Edgar Allen Poe