How to Read_the Heart

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How to Read_the Heart Disease
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Heart Disease

• Heart the symbolic repository of emotion
• Being stabbed in the heart literally or
  figuratively a broken heart
• The Story of An Hour by Kate Chopin a woman
  has heart trouble because of a stifling
  relationship and dies of the joy that kills
• Types of hearts the heart of stone strength
  of heart- a fragile heart - a bad heartall have
  interesting possibilities
• When characters have difficulties of the heart
  we wont be too surprised when emotional trouble
  becomes the physical ailment.

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and more disease

• Ponder these thoughts
• Not all diseases are created equal TB
  (consumption) is on the literary frequency list
  rather than cholera- even though cholera was more
  frequent among the Victorians but and ugly
  horrible smelly violent death. Except for Ibsen
  in A Dolls House (AHEM) - Syphilis was not used
  (because of its association with prostitutes).
• It is usually picturesque or mysterious and
  surprise it has metaphorical or symbolic
  opportunities. TB is a wasting disease - so the
  suffers were delicate and fragile.
• Plagues can make a statement about a whole city
  or country -as in Oedipus or Henry James Daisy
  Miller who dies of Roman fever a true illness
  but also indicative of the bad air she created
  with gossip. Aids is the mother lode of symbol
  and metaphor since it lies dormant and also
  because unknowing or knowing characters can
  infect others.
• Post traumatic stress especially in war stories
  is a disease of the mind and has resonance
  especially now. The Things They Carried and
  Sorrow of War address this in many ways.

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Its Never Just Heart Disease

• Pump that keeps us alivesymbolic repository of
  emotion
• What shape were your childhood Valentines cards?
  Last year?
• Fall in lovewe feel it on our hearts
• Lose a loveheartbroken
• Overwhelmed by emotionour hearts are full to
  bursting

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Bad heart

• Bad love
• Loneliness
• Cruelty
• Disloyalty
• Cowardice
• Lack of determination
• Something seriously amiss at the heart of things

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Diseases

• Not all diseases are created equal
• Cholera unsightly, painful, smelly, violent
• TB picturesque (Poe The Masque of the Red
  Death)
• Syphilis, gonorrhea near epidemic late 19th
  century Henrik Ibsen put STDs on the map
• STD Moral corruption
• Diseases could be mysterious
• Plague social devastation champion

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AIDS

• Picturesque?
• Mysterious?
• Symbolic?
• Political angle?