Gothic Essay In gothic literature, emotion is one of the biggest parts of any author’s work. The shorts stories written by Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Black Cat”, Richard Matheson’s “Prey”, Washington Irving’s “The Devil and Tom Walker”, Horacia Quiroga’s “The Feather Pillow” all incorpórate violence and supernatural in their works. The authors present the common themes in order to give a sense of how the characters feel emotionally. Also the common themes allow the readers to feel sympathy for the characters.
In many stories and poems; such as the Tell Tale Heart, The Cask of Amontillado, The Raven, Annabel Lee, The House of Usher, and so many more timeless works, Edgar Allan Poe has been captivating his audiences with spine tingling thrillers through the words and style of his own twisted ways. The only way to describe where Poe’s writing belongs in history, would be classified as gothic genre. From the start of the 1800’s to present day and the future of literature, through irony, repetition, imagery, and symbolism Poe has been bewitching readers with his gore and insane writings. Poe’s life inspired so many of his poems, from focusing on taboo topics, such as death, revenge, love and loss. Poe’s life was painful and heartbreaking that
Gothic literature is created by using fear, darkness, and negative emotions to consume the readers, as well as bleak or ominous settings. In comparison, the two environments are similar with a darkness that overpowers the main characters at some point. However, the characters are introduced with their dark environments under different circumstances. In the excerpt from “The Castle of Otranto”, Isabella is desperately attempting to escape from the king running through a castle’s underground portion in search for her sanctuary. She is filled with anxiety, fear, despair, and at the last moment “...she approached the door that had been open; but a gust of wind that met her at the door extinguished her lamp, and left her in total darkness”(Walpole 589).
For Poe, this genre might have offered him the chance to write about his sorrows, since, at the time The Raven was written according to Joy Lanzendorfer of Mental Floss6, his wife was deathly ill, he had already lost many to tuberculosis and he must have known, in his bosom’s core, that he was to sadly let another one of his beloved go. This is where both the genre and a dark, ebony omen come into play. It can be said that the gothic genre allows us to discuss quite painful subjects through use of copious symbols and parallels and that we can see the effects of such heartbreaking things on the human mind, that we can gradually follow the decline, the decay one might go through after the traumatising event of losing someone close to oneself. The raven, further, is of importance for it, according to Poe, symbolised “mournful and never-ending remembrance. ”7, the type we see in the poem when the bird repeats ‘nevermore’.
Gothic Elements in the “The Tell Tale Heart” The classic short story of “The Tell-Tale Heart”, written by one of the all time masters of horror, Edgar Allen Poe, has always been used as an excellent example of Gothic fiction. Edgar Allen Poe specialized in the art of gothic writing and wrote many stories that portrayed disturbing events and delved deeply into the minds of its characters. In "The Tell-Tale Heart," Poe revolves the plot around a raving individual who, insisting that he is sane, murders an old man because of his` “vulture eye”. The three main gothic elements that are evident in this story are the unique setting, the theme of death and decay, and the presence of madness.
Gothic Literature is a type of literature that makes the reader question reality. Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” is a good of gothic literature because it is placed in an old spooky house. For example, in the story the house has “eyelike windows”(14). This proves that the house is a part of gothic literature because it has a spooky theme to the house.
Gothic literature is a style of literature that takes place in the past, most of the time it has someone who dies and it has a creepy vibe/tone behind it . Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher,” is a good example of Gothic literature because it shows how a man goes to visit an old friend and see how his friend and his friends twin sister die. “The whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day. ”(13)
Have you ever read a story that causes chills or your emotionally invested in a character. The story’s Frankenstein by Mary Shelley and The mysteries of udolpho by Ann Radcliffe are literature that are centered in fear. These story’s cause suspense or has ghost or some type of monster. A gothic is a great example of fear in literature. The settings, characters, and story line has a way of making the reader invested by hooking to their emotions.
Gothic literature can make you feel like you are in the story. It provides a dubious feeling and is some of the most descriptive writing out there. Pretty much all gothic literature can be connected through the gothic elements within the story. In the short stories, “Prey”, by Richard Matheson, “A Rose for Emily”, by William Faulkner, and “The Raven”, by Edgar Allen Poe, gothic elements such as grotesqueness and supernatural events connect together.
Analyzing Development: “Where is Here?” by Joyce Carol Oates Gothic literature holds an allure that readers and audiences often draw into; its combination of wickedness, mystery, death, and even romance stirs a sensation, a charm no other genre has. Through this charm, Edgar Allan Poe, the "founding voice of American gothic tradition," was able to pioneer interest into many future writers in the American writing industry. Specifically, modern writer Joyce Carol Oates implicated traditional gothic elements from Poe. Using dialogue, diction, and the interaction between characters, Oates carefully establishes the foundations and elements of spookiness into her gothic story—“Where is Here?”
Gothic Literature is known to incorporate many gothic elements into it’s stories. Authors such as Ransom Riggs, Horacio Quiroga, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Edward Poe have done a great job by proving this using elements like monsters, grotesqueness, and fascination with the past. In both the novel Mrs. Peregrines Home for Peculiar Children by Riggs and the short story “Feather Pillow” by Quiroga two main characters died suddenly by a monster. In Mrs. Peregrines Home for Peculiar Children Jacob finds his Grandpa Abe dead by a “tentacle-mouth horror in the woods” (Riggs 39).
Gothic Literature is a genre that was popular between 18th to 19th centuries in North Germany. It is always being associated with Dark Romanticism which the emphasize was more on nature, terror and death, horror and many more. It involves dark and gloomy setting and also unexplainable things that are beyond human senses and reason such as ghosts and monsters. The main characters, on the other hand, are always ineffectual which they do not give much effect on the story plot. This can be seen through Washington Irving’s “Rip van Winkle” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” which can be considered as American gothic work in terms of its description of setting, the involvement of supernatural element in the story and also the characteristics of the main character.
“Lord help my poor soul.” These were the last words uttered by a delirious Edgar Allan Poe on the night of his death on October 3, 1849, wearing another man’s clothes. The mysterious circumstances surrounding Poe’s death and his tragic life reflect his often morbid, macabre, and bitter works. It is often speculated that the death of every woman in Poe’s life due to consumption, leaving him to believe he was cursed, along with his financial failures (though he did have literary success during his lifetime), may have left him unhinged. Two comparable short stories written by Poe are “The Black Cat” and “The Masque of the Red Death.”
In this story, Nicolas Ravolati, the villain, “treacherously stabbed” Antoine Saverini, the son of his widowed mother. The widow and her dog, Semillante, both experienced terrible grief afterwards in which lack of sleep and persistent howling became a constant. Both were inconsolable after Antoine’s murder. The loss of a loved one evidently affected both of them in traumatic ways. They were clearly wronged, which is underscored by their strong symptoms of grief.
Gothic Literature Gothic writing was a development that concentrated on demolish, rot, demise, dread, and disarray, and special mindlessness and energy over discernment and reason, developed in light of the chronicled,