'ze play's the thing!

Snug. "Have you the lion's part written? Pray you, if it be, give it me, for I am slow of study.
Quince. "You may do it extempore, for it is nothing but roaring."

A Midsummer Night's Dream, I. ii.66-69

This epigraph introduces one of the most surreal moments in the book; Heyward is attending to a sick Huron woman under the pretense of being a "healer," while David and an oddly tame bear harmonize. The strange comedy of this scene --- where Duncan is eventually left alone with the "helpless invalid" and the "fierce and dangerous brute --- comes after a chapter of unbearable suspense, where Duncan watches while Uncas is kidnapped and threatened repeatedly. The surreality only continues when it turns out that the bear was actually Hawk-eye in a bear's costume, a feat that seems laughably improbable, especially in the 19th-century.

In the epigraph to this chapter, a snippet of dialogue from A Midsummer Night's Dream, we are introduced to The Mechanicals, an acting troupe that is known for its less-than-presentable plays and dramatizations. Snug, a member of the troupe, wants to play all the parts of the play Pyramus and Thisbe and Quince, the troupe's leader, snidely comments on his questionable acting talents. The acting troupe serves as a comic subplot, one that brings another meta-level to the play, quite literally, a play-within-a-play. Thus, we must look at this chapter similarly. There is a sense that both Duncan and Hawk-eye are playing; that, once in their respective disguises, they are able to forget that they are actually being pursued by Hurons, but that they are participating in a role-play, that they are the source of amusement for some unseen audience. Cooper is playing as well, with his choice of this epigraph. By aligning Hawk-eye and Duncan with Snug and Quince, Cooper is essentially acknowledging that, while their personal stories are interesting, and while their characteristics offer vitality and structure to the plot, they remain a subplot to the larger story, that of the war and the opposing forces fighting it.

the importance of cougars

"My trepidations were not speedily quieted. I looked back with wonder on my hair-breadth escape, and on that singular concurrence of events, which had placed me, in so short a period, in absolute security. Had the trunk fallen a moment earlier, I should have been imprisoned on the hill or thrown headlong. Had its fall been delayed another moment I should have been pursued; for the beast now issued from his den, and testified his surprise and disappointment by tokens the sight of which made my blood run cold."
-pg. 121

This passage comes at the end of Edgar's near miss with the "grey Cougar," immediately following the cougar's surprising fall into the pit. Here, Brown is using the cougar as a neat symbol for the misty, foreboding qualities of the wilderness. We get little description of the cougar itself (on page 118, we are given a physical sketch, as Edgar says the cougar had a "grey coat, extended claws, fiery eyes"), and Edgar seems more frightened in the passage above than in the scene where the cougar is pursuing him. In this passage, Edgar is consumed by what could have been (feeling terror, as opposed to horror, as I examined in my previous post). We understand his panic because we can relate, perhaps more empathetically than if Brown had described each snarl of the cougar, and each misstep that Edgar took. This passage is also a fine example of how solidly the wilderness has cemented itself in Edgar's consciousness. Whereas, in the early chapters of the book, Edgar would be fine with following Clithero through dark passages and into caves, Edgar now spends more time thinking than acting.

Brown manages to bring the reader into Edgar's mindset primarily through sentence structure and word choice. The sentences, replete with repetition, are long and seem to mimic breathlessness. Read aloud, they seem to be straight from the center of a panic attack, when ones syntax is of little importance. Also interesting is Brown's (apparently marked) lack of specificity. For a moment, when Edgar remarks about the "beast issued from his den," we forget whether we are supposed to be reading about the cougar, or about Clithero, holed away in his mountain cave.

post #1

In my opinion, the difference between terror and horror is nearly identical to the difference between knowing and seeing. When we feel terror, we fear less what is truly endangering us, and more what the mind assumes will come of a certain situation.
Terror is what one might feel when walking through a dark, unfamiliar hallway; the chance of anything harmful occuring is unlikely, but the mind will immediately jump to the worst-case scenario, wreaking havoc on one’s rational thought patterns. When you say you know something, your favourite restaurant’s specials, for example, you truly believe that you know it. However, the restaurant could be deciding to close down at that same moment, altering momentarily the veracity of what you know and what you think you know. Terror is the same; although that hallway may be completely innocuous, the terror one feels is no less real. Horror, I believe, is quite the opposite. It is the seeing without knowing, the fear impulse that (quite rightly) takes over our rational thought process.
Whereas terror is often characterized by anxious ruminating (What will happen if I go around this corner? If I die, who will clean my hamster’s cage?), horror is often devoid of any thought process at all. It is characterized by the start, the jump, the moment when you see your first roadkill from the backseat window.
Mad Men, a popular drama that many would say is as far from horror/terror as possible, is a good vehicule for the comparaison I’ve set up. There is a scene in the 3rd season where a business man has his leg severed by a tractor. The director decided to show this, blood spatter and all, hoping to get horrified reactions from his audience. However, something that he is perhaps not as conscious of, is the amount of terror in the show. The sparse dialogue, shadowed lighting and allusions to future events create a tense sort of paranoia, one that invites the viewer’s mind to complete its thoughts.

my name's michelle and i like english

these are two things that i like:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xq9QJVKR_1Q


and