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Blog Prompt #11: Moral of Short Stories

The Pit and the Pendulum by Edgar Allen Poe is a suspenseful short story in which an unnamed narrator is facing a death sentence during the Inquistion, wherein the Catholic Church would execute people accused of heresy. During the narrator's sentence, he arrives at his near death experience and realizes he will die by falling into a pit and by the blade of a swinging pendulum, hence the title. Luckily, he uses rats to free him from the wooden board he is attached to and General Lasalle rescues him from his fall. The moral of this short story is to have hope in situations in despair because it could turn you around and save you. For example, the narrator used his active mind to rub food around himself so that the rats would free him; he was remaining hopeful. Instead of full on giving up, he kept hopeful, and he was saved from death.

The Young King by Oscar Wilde is about a sixteen-year-old inexperienced boy who is about to become a prince because he is heir to the throne. He has three nightmares in which he learns that slaves had to work very hard so that he could wear rich clothing and jewels, so he decides to abandon social conventions and wear peasant fashion. Everyone despises his uncivilized deviance, but the ending closes with a bright scene in the church, so it was a good decision the young king made. The moral of the story is that superficial riches are not important, but the quality of human life. My history professor gave us a talk in that the collection of material items just weighs us down, it stresses us out because we buy it with our money and have no time to use it because we are always working to just accumulate more stuff. The moral of the story is that materialism is not the key to happiness. It is not the meaning of life.

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