Korsmeyer, Part Five – through Chapter 28 (pp 244 - 273);

I found this set of readings a little hard to digest, and I am not sure I completely understood them. I did enjoy Edgar Allan Poe's "A Decent into the Maelstrom." I found I liked it because of it's short story persona. It was written in more of a tone that you could imagine with, instead of opinions and people's feelings. He talks about getting old, and how he thinks he is "getting old," but in reality he's not that old. Kind of makes me think about my own birthday and how my whole life it's seemed like all I wanted was to be older, get older, and be in an older part of my life. Although now that I am about to turn 20 on friday, I find myself thinking "woah where did the last 20 years go?" all of the sudden I feel Old, but im "not really old" at all!
He then goes on to talk about how he went to the ocean in Maelstrom. While there he is caught in a whirlpool and escapes it. After this ordeal he changes his tone in the story from first person to that what seems to be the view of another character in the book. Like suddenly he detaches himself from his story. Yet he still brings the aesthetic experience to his story. Giving his reader the liberty to take what they can from the story itself. This is somewhat the same in Burke's article about tragedy, he says pain and pleasure are simple ideas incapable of thier definition. He says that people have thier own opinioins about pain and where it comes from and what things cause it.