2. pent house

3. Lesson Seven
The Libido for the Ugly

4. Pre-Text Questions What do you know about the author?
What kind of writing is this one?
Why does Mencken uses such a pathological term like libido?
What does the title the libido for the ugly mean?
Who has the so-called libido for the ugly?
Who or what is the target of Mencken’s verbal attack?
What kind of writing is this one?
What is the theme of this essay?

5. Detailed Study of the Text
About the author
Pittsburgh
Steel City / Smoky City
Westmorland county
What route did the author take in this traveling?
Here was the very heart of industrial America, the center of its
most lucrative and characteristic activity, the boast and pride
of the richest and grandest nation ever seen on earth—and
here was a scene so dreadfully hideous, so intolerably bleak
and forlorn that it reduced the whole aspiration of man to a
macabre and depressing joke.
Notice the many literary devices employed here.
What are they?
metaphor
parallel construction
hyperbole
antithetical contrast

6. the boast and pride of the richest …on earth
the U. S., the richest and grandest nation ever seen on earth,
both boasts about and feels proud of this center of industrial
activity
it reduced the whole aspiration of man to a … joke
that this scene makes all human endeavors to advance and
improve their lot appear as a ghastly, saddening joke
be reduced to begging/tears/silence/despair/obedience
shadow/subjection
they would have disgraced a race of alley cats
even homeless, mongrel cats would feel ashamed to live in
What does Mencken describe in paragraph 1?
What is his purpose?
What is the purpose of Mencken saying I am not speaking of
mere filth at the beginning of the second paragraph?

7. agonizing ugliness
ugliness that caused great pain to the viewer
What literary device is used here?
transferred epithet
that did not insult and lacerate the eye
How could a house insult and lacerate the eye?
What’s Mencken’s real intention of saying so?
What literary device is used?
they were among the most pretentious
marked by an extravagant outward show
one blinked before them as one blinks before a man with
his face shot away
What kind of image will be initiated in the readers’ mind by
reading this clause? What effect does the author intend to
produce?

8. A few linger in memory, horrible even there:
Some of the houses remain in one’s memory and later when
one pictures them in one’s mind, they still appear to be
horrible
After the colon, what does Mencken go on to say?
How many examples does he give us?
What literary device is used when describing the building?
dormer-window
a bare leprous hill
a hillside was bare and looked as repulsive as the skin of a
leper
What will a bare leprous hill look like?
Could you describe the church and the hill in your own words?
rat trap

9. There was not one that was not misshapen, and there was not
one that was not shabby.
What literary device is used in order to emphasize misshapen
and shabby ?
double negatives
repetition of the same structural pattern
not uncomely
litotes
an affirmative is expressed by negating its opposite
The country itself is not uncomely, despite the grime of the
endless mills.
The country itself is pleasant to look at, despite the sooty dirt
spread by the innumerable mills in this region.
It is, in form, a narrow river valley, with deep gullies running
up into the hills.

10. solid blocks
What’s the function of the if clause?
What is Mencken’s idea of decent houses in this area?
chalet
What did he find instead?
What do the houses look like?
on their low sides they bury themselves swinishly in the mud
What are these houses compared to?
They lean this way and that, hanging … precariously.
They tilt in one direction or another, clinging to their
foundation unstably.
with dead and eczematous patches of paint peeping through
the streaks
In this phrase, what is compared to what?

11. All the houses are smeared with sooty dirt, and some paint
which is not covered up by the soot looks like dried-up scales
formed on the skin by eczema.
Now and then there is a house of brick.
What can we infer from this sentence?
patina
What kind of egg would it be which is long past all hope or
caring ?
Red brick, even in a steel town, ages with some dignity.
Red brick, even in a steel town, looks quite respectable with
the passing of time.
What is the author’s suggestion about the color of houses?
But in Westmoreland…that uremic yellow.
But it seems that people in Westmoreland county prefer that
yellow color produced by the disease uremia.

12. How many places are mentioned in the following sentences?
Pullman
the malarious tidewater hamlets
malaria infested small village near the sea affected by the
rise and fall of tides
They are incomparable in color, and they are incomparable
in design.
What literary device is used in this sentence?
sarcasm
The color and design were so bad that one couldn’t find any
which was worse.
It is as if some titanic and aberrant genius,…the making of them.
It is as if some genius of great power, who didn’t like to do the
right things and who was an inflexible enemy of man, employed
all the cleverness and skill of hell to build these ugly houses.

13. But in the American village and small town the pull is always
toward ugliness,…an eagerness bordering upon passion.
But in the American village and small town, the drive/drawing
power is always towards ugliness, and in that Westmoreland
valley people have given in to this appeal eagerly or almost
passionately.
What literary device is used?
sarcasm
It is incredible that mere ignorance should have achieved such
masterpieces of horror.
It is hard to believe that people built such horrible houses just
because they did not know what beautiful houses were like.
What does ignorance mean here?
What literary device is used?
sarcasm irony

14. It is impossible to put down the wallpaper…to mere
inadvertence, or to the obscene humor of the manufacturers.
to attribute sth. to sth.
It is impossible to attribute the wallpaper that makes the
average American home at the lower middle class look so
ugly to mere oversight, or to the indecent humor of the
manufacturers.
Such ghastly designs, …give a genuine delight to a certain
type of mind.
It’s clear that the horribly ugly designs on the wallpaper give
real delight to a certain type of mind.
They meet, in some unfathomable way, its obscure and
unintelligible demands.
These ugly designs, in incomprehensive some way, satisfy the
hidden and unintelligible demands of this type of persons.
What kind of people does Mencken mock at?

15. What kind of demands do these people have?
Why does Mencken classify their demands as obscure and
unintelligible ?
Guest, Edgar Albert
What opinion does Mencken have toward theology and Edgar
A. Guest’s poems?
Thus I suspect
What can we learn from this thus ?
Why does Mencken call the residents in Westmoreland the
honest folk and the 100% Americans ?
sarcasm irony
with eyes open
with full understanding of what is involved
Mencken uses this word “mellow” ironically.
What does he really mean?
to let deteriorate, to let it go from bad to worse

16. Parthenon
besides it, the Parthenon would no doubt offend them
Parthenon is noted for its perfect simplicity of design and the
harmony of its proportions and remains a masterpiece of
Greek architecture. Why would such a building offend them?
They like things ugly and do not know what is beautiful. If
one were to put a beautiful building like the Parthenon there,
they would feel offended.
they made it perfect in their own sight by putting a completely
impossible penthouse, painted a staring yellow, on top of it.
penthouse
not capable of being endured; hard to tolerate
one will feel uncomfortable as embarrassed to look at
What rhetorical device is used in this sentence?
ridicule