Romanticism

"The Legend of Sleepy Hollow"

The story, "The Legend of the Sleepy Hollow" captures the reader's attention by using image to describe to us, what he's saying. For example "regiments of turkeys were gobbling through the farmyard." This is an example of image because we can relate to it, and also we can picture it in our minds and imagine the turkeys actually gobbling. Washington Irving is also very descriptive about everything in this story. For instance, it states, "It was one of those spacious farmhouses, with high-ridged but low-sloping roofs, built in the style handed down from the first Dutch settlers, the projecting eaves forming a piazza along the front."
It's very descriptive in the way that he describes the farmhouse. In Irving's short story, he also captures the reader's attention by not making the story sound dull all the way through, it has some action throughout. In the story it says, "All the stories of ghosts and goblins that he had heard earlier now came crowding upon his recollection." By this, he is making the reader feel tense, and keeping them wondering, which is good in any story, so it is not boring half way through.
The mysteries of the story make the reader want to keep reading. For example, when someone is reading this story, they are not going to want to stop in the middle where he goes missing.

"Swing Low, Sweet Chariot"

This song in mainly about enslaved men and women who have hope about getting set free. In the olden days, mostly everyone was about God. In this song it can either be about getting set free or going onto Heaven, "coming to carry me home" stated in the song, refers back to this, and wheher they want to go to Heaven or they want to go be with their family, they're going to end up going "home".  The enslaved people had hope and faith because they knew that eventually they would either be set free or sent to Heaven. This song is reflective of it's time period, because most enslaved people were only with part of their family or no family at all. They wanted to be with their family, so they had hope about being set free and going on home to see their families. In this time period, all they had was hope and faith, and that was all that they needed. They had hope that they would find their families again, and could be with them. All that they were really looking for was their "Safe Haven". This song relates today to many people. For example, abused, hurt, obese, and some children. Today's world is much better than back then, because all of those slaves don't have to worry about never seeing their family again, but today's world can be just as bad if not much worse. There are so many people that have been abandoned and hurt by other people, and the people that are abandoning and hurting are taking their lives for granted, because it could easily go back to like it was with the enslaved me and women. Children are abused today, and no one really thinks anything of it, before it actually gets bad. The abused, and hurt, and some of those children, are looking for the same thing as the enslaved men and women were, a "Safe Haven".