Pre-thinking Activity: Poe, Pandemic and Human Psyche

 

Dear Students,

With an anticipation that you have gone through the pre-task blog post on the stories of Edgar Allan Poe (link:- https://jaynmehta.blogspot.com/2018/09/passion-perversity-and-poe-introduction.html) I am sure you must have familiarized yourself with the world of bizarre, macabre and inexplicable acts of crime in his stories.

Gruesome acts of violence or crime are frequent in Poe's stories but why does the writer deal with such things? What actually goes in the mind of a culprit while doing atrocious acts? How can someone be so cruel? Do such things happen in real life as well? Such questions bubble up in mind when we read Poe's stories.

Literature is not all about the rosy dreams and flowery feelings. As it holds mirror to the society, even the dirtiest reality also gets mirrored in it. So is the case with the stories of Poe. We often use the terms like 'Humanity' for acts of kindness and 'Animalistic' or 'Wild' for some aggressive, rash acts but we come across absolutely paradoxical scenario in society.

Newspapers are, figuratively speaking, soaked in blood. We come across news of crimes which send a shiver down our spine. Largely due to COVID19 pandemic and the consequent lockdown, there has been a rise in the cases of domestic violence, suicide, depression etc in last six months or so. Psychiatrists have witnessed cases of mental health skyrocketing in recent times.

So is the case with the recent trends of web series on OTT. 'Sacred Games', 'Paatal Lok' and other such programs have rampant scenes of violence, sexuality, abuses and so on.

 

Every year we at Dept_Eng_MKBU attempt to learn Poe’s stories from a different perspective, this time, I think we should contextualize those themes in the COVIDIFIED world and the social upheavals faced during this absolutely unprecedented and the first of its kind LOCKDOWN that we may have seen.

Hence, what you are expected to do is:-

01. Explore AUTHENTIC print, electronic and social media, filter through various incidents that have happened in last 06 months or so.

02. Narrow down your focus to the news headlines of horrible, gruesome and shocking crime stories. (murder, suicide, brutal violence, perversity, terrorism, domestic conflicts, animal abuse and so on). For example:-

or even this...

Click photos of them, prepare a collage or ppt or whatever…

03. Note down your first impressions while they met your eyes. What thoughts they generated in you? What possible abyss of human mind did you observe that  you can even try to fathom?

04. Write a blog on the aforementioned activity and share its link as a comment to this post.

Deadline:- 12 noon, 18^th October 2020.

Please feel free to ask for any help if you need.

You can reach me at: jaysmehtas@gmail.com

Thanks.

Happy Learning…!!!

-         Dr. Jay Mehta