The (Dark) House of Wall

The year was 2011, and that fact alone left me wonting. I was surrounded by sharp, pronounced structures silhoutted by the myriad of streetlights which shone bright white. "These lights cast a formidable glare upon the lenses which rest upon my face," my contemporary remarked, "my face is one that has been darkened by a night which for years has protruded from my dark heart- these lights are too bright."

I replied, "Your formulation is correct, I much prefer lights lights which give only an amber glow, such as the glow of the moon seen in the reflection of murky water filled with dust freshly fallen from a window sill upon which many maidservants once leant upon to glance upon barren fields beyond which lay the freedom which they dreamt they might behold one day." It had become my duty to keep my colleague attentive to the task at hand, "Make haste," I said, "we haven't much time." 

The lights were the property of Sam Walton, and the dark pavement upon which we trod was the foreground of the House of Wall, naturally the hour was late, and the matter at hand could only lead one to this most renown estate. A few sounds rang out that night, they rang out like the sound of two men walking in unintentional unison, in the same way that two clocks accented with cobwebs which can be heard simultaneously might tick- and tock- tick - tock -and tick at the same time on a dark night. The reason the sound of two men walking in unison rang out at that particular time was because my colleague and I were walking in unison towards the doors on the house. We had both been their before, and we knew without a shadow of a doubt that the doors would be opening with the assistance of no man. The sound of the sliding doors was muffled by the subtle sound of distant byways- it opened.

A ball of dust crept out from beneath a shelf full of books, we became occupied with a dialogue regarding the content and quality of the books which we're printed with cold impersonal efficiency, our uncertainty was not subsided- we had not slightest idea who was calling for the creation of such publications. We had divulged only a few brief moments before our engagement ceased in leu of a rattling noise which we both knew meant we weren't alone in the House of Wall on this night. I turned and identified the source of the rattle, but it wasn't that which held my attention, above and beyond the cart was a sign which hanging down from the ceiling which had no recesses. I could only stare for so long before my eyes began to twitch, the lights were flickering- my speculations were confirmed again, I knew the flourescent lights would flicker tonight as the have done so many nights prior. The sign read, "ELECTRONICS," the font was black. We knew we would get what we came for that night, our prize was Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, we had the means of knowing it would be available at midnight and we had no intentions of obtaining a purloined copy of the game - we would be buying it. Naturally we were waiting at The House of Wall by 11:45.

Commentary:

This is a parody of Edgar Allen Poe's style of writing in particular and the gothic style in general. The parody draws from both of the Poe stories that we read The Fall of The House of Usher and The Purloined Letter. It follows the form of a detective tale in that there are two characters joined together to tackle to task, which is not totally revealed until later in the story. One character, who is narrating first person, could be classified as the "master" (Creel) while his colleague would fall under the classification of "amateur sleuth" (Creel). The parody employs the use of a persona through whom I was able to write in the first person as Poe did in The Purloined Letter. The editors of The Norton Anthology of English Literature state that, "The Gothic featured accounts of terrifying experiences in ancient castles — experiences connected with subterranean dungeons, secret passageways, flickering lamps, screams, moans, bloody hands, ghosts, graveyards, and the rest" (The Gothic: Overview). I tried to focus as much as possible on the setting and the nature that surrounded the characters as is reflective of romantic literature in general, but I especially sought to highlight the lights and the darker aspects to give it a more gothic feel, at almost every possible opportunity I described things as being "dark". The descriptions of The House of Wall are meant to parody Poe's description of The House of Usher, he describes the house by saying that, "Minute fungi overspread the whole exterior, hanging in a fine tangled web-work from the eaves" (Poe, par. 5), I tried to imitate this type of description by using a metaphor of clocks ticking in unison and then mentioning the webs that "accented" the clocks. Poe also described the light in the house by saying, "Feeble gleams of encrimsoned light made their way through the trellised panes, and served to render sufficiently distinct the more prominent objects around; the eye, however, struggled in vain to reach the remoter angles of the chamber, or the recesses of the vaulted and fretted ceiling" (Poe, par. 7). I tried to parody his description of the lights on a few occasions and particular mentioned that the florescent lights "flickered" as the Norton Anthology page had mentioned that flickering lights were characteristic of Gothic literature. The dialogue was meant to be sharp and quick like in The Purloined Letter.

Brief Lines

I am writing short, brief lines- you should read them quick

then you'll have to re-read

     to get the meaning- if there is one.

My life be vain boring to purple and white,

     boards form a Cage around the Cardinal-to see through the cracks is to see his red Feathers.I just made profound point.

Soon i'll be gone

     read these words then.

A seed must be trodden underfoot then it will bear much fruit.

Commentary:

This Poem is a parody of the work of Emily Dickinson. When I first wrote this it was twelve lines but then I decided to scatter them all around to make it seem more like Dickinson's poem's were originally written because it was said that, "Dickinson neither completed many poems nor prepared them for publication. She wrote her drafts on scraps of paper, grocery lists, and the backs of recipes and used envelopes. Early editors of her poems took the liberty of making them more accessible to nineteenth-century readers when several volumes of selected poems were published in the 1890s" (Woodlief). The poem is meant to be reflective of the way that Dickinson often described her state as one of a sort of captivity or her choosing to be excluded from everyone else, this theme is seen in "The Soul Selects Her Own Society," the stanza lines is,  "The soul selects her own society/ Then shuts the door/ On her divine majority/ Obtrude no more" (Dickinson). Because of this I wrote the poem as if the author knew that no one would really be reading it for a long while, for Dickinson her poetry was probably not widely distributed while she was alive because of her intentional withdrawal from society. The line "boards form a cage around the cardinal/ to see through the cracks is to see his red feathers," is meant to be a metaphor for Dickinson who was not see by many people and they may have not know her true colors, and that her writing and life would later be seen as seen as something substantial and valuable, her success (which she had opinions on) is the red feathers of the cardinal that someone would need to look the "boards" in order to see. I intentionally used "be instead of "is" because, "[Dickinson] frequently uses be instead of is or are" (Melani), and I capitalized a few nouns because, "[Dickinson] tends to capitalize nouns, for no apparent reason other than that they are nouns" (Melani). The line "My life be vain boring to purple and white," is meant to be reflective of Dickinson's using purple to denote royalty, white denotes the white collar "conventional' world, which Dickinson did not live according to, people might have seen her living at her Father's house with no kids or husband or anything as boring and meaningless. And the last line is something that Jesus said, I included this because Dickinson was said to draw from her biblical knowledge (Woodlief). The title is taken from the first line because that is the way that titles were given to most of Dickinson's poems.