Click to read the passage from "The Black Cat," by Edgar Allan Poe. Then answer the question.
What is the effect of beginning a story this way?

frances ellen watkins harper writing was influenced by: b. the education she received growing up in the north.

she was born in baltimore, maryland, on september 24, 1825. after the death of her parents, her uncle reverend william watkins, a teacher at the academy for negro youth, raised and educated her. she also continued educating herself by accessing a library of the family she worked for, beginning writing poetry afterwards. as a civil rights activist and abolitionist, watkins greatly influenced her life and work.

what is the question?

first of all the mood needs to be defined: it is obviously a mood of deceitful relief and serenity. why? because the cape horn is one of the most violent maritime regions of earth and although it has been left behind, it is a personification of ahab’s delirium and the fact that the end of the passage speaks about it about being “hidden” but “raving” immediately conveys the feeling the calm is not permanent but fleeting.

furthermore, the oxymoron “mild stun'sails” is the first instance of such feeling as the adjective “mild” is associated with “stunned” underscoring the fleeting nature of this “tranquil” moment. and the contrasts keep piling up, with the opposition between “dark den” and “blessed light and air” to end with the final conclusion that leaves the reader with the uneasy knowledge that this is just a reprieve.