Imagine that the Mayans were right about the "Apocalypse" that will soon turn the entire planet into smoldering ash. Tsunamis and earthquakes combine into a 200-foot, 10-point Kraken, swallowing buildings, plunging them into oppressive darkness. Forest fires are ignited by sparks from broken telephone poles, then spread across continents thanks to clusters of hurricanes from each hemisphere. Tornadoes soon join the devastation, creating a pyrographic megastorm, flames engulfing our world, reminiscent of the first ten minutes of “T2: Judgment Day.” Afterwards it seems like Beelzebub himself just came out just to say, "Do you doubt me now!?" After all the chaos and destruction, a few survivors rescued from caves and bunkers emerge from the ashes like a flock of phoenixes, searching for materials to survive. And usually within these post-apocalyptic stories there's always someone who will try to keep track of the traumatic experiences that they've been through and keep track of what they've survived. Years later, someone will come across this person's diary, read it, and one day respond to class or friends. After every disaster there is hope to rebuild. In comparison, without a reader, literature or any other written work will be useless and unknown, thus creating Reader/Response criticism. Emerging since the 1970s, Reader/Response criticism is not just the response of a single individual, but of a group of critics who analytically analyze the text “finding meaning in the act of reading itself and examining how individual readers or communities of readers experience texts.” (Abrams, 85) Digging deep into the subliminal messages and metaphors behind every sentence, these critiques determine the type of reader or... middle of paper... from Poe, finding connections to his past impunities and how those moments of anger have been subliminally woven into the stories and poems he writes. Thanks to that horrible sanity, he was able to construct classics like this that should be introduced to anyone interested in literature. Works Cited Fletcher, Richard M. The Stylistic Development of Edgar Allan Poe. The Hague: Mouton, 1973. “Cerebral Quotation.” Bookrags Media Network. Copyright © 2001 – 2011 .Giordano, Robert. "An Exploration of Edgar Allan Poe's Short Stories". Design215 Inc. Copyright 2005-2011. .The works of Edgar Allan Poe. 2nd. New York, New York: Penguin Books, 1982. 274, 277. Print.Abrams, M.H. A glossary of literary terms. 7th ed. Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace College Publishers, 1999.