What We’re Reading

Edgar Allan Poe, “The Tell-Tale Heart.” Perhaps there is an American “Crime and Punishment” in Edgar Allan Poe, that master writer of Gothic horror that centered on guilt and dread terror. In “The Tell-Tale Heart,” we see the weakness of conviction (though not rationalized like Raskolnikov) and how the guilt of an evil act consumers the murderer. Poe was certainly on to a pressing modern problem: the want for anything without guilt but the persisting reality of guilt is something with which we must contend. Poe’s little, short story strikes the totality of philosophical inquiry over guilt, morality, murder and the weakness of humanity in the face of criminality. In just over 2,000 words, Poe offers a lot for the reader to reflect on and for us to see how prescient he was in seeing the future of modernity.

~ Paul Krause

Douglass M. Kelley, 22 Cells in Nuremberg. WWII is a subject all students are taught in history courses, but it is not everyday that someone comes in contact with Douglas Kelley in their studies. Kelley was a US army psychiatrist, and he was tasked in conducting mental health evaluations for some of Hitler’s surviving commanders, including his second-hand man, Herman Göring. Göring controlled the Luftwaffe, Holocaust operations, and presented the Final Solution, which provided conditions to Jews living in Germany. When Kelley meets Göring, he is never intimidated, rather they shared an immediate bond that surpassed the doctor/patient relationship. Göring, throughout his time in incarceration and Kelley’s studies, shared Hitler’s hope, promises, tactics, plans, and motives before and after the war. Göring wholeheartedly believed in Hitler…not because he was elected by the people of Germany but because he brought hope to a falling country. 22 Cells tells readers accounts no one has ever encountered in their routine learnings of WWII. This in depth analysis not only personifies each Nazi surviving commander, but it prompts grace to those lives lost in the allied and axis powers, the Jewish race, and Hitler’s men.

~ Sarah Tillard

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