Stories written during the Gothic Era have a dark nature to them. One story that highlights the prime elements of the Gothic Era is Dracula by Bram Stoker. Dracula incorporates the themes of the Gothic Era all throughout the book. Dracula is filled with settings that are isolated, dark, and sinister which are important characteristics of the Gothic Era. It
Adrianna Helms EN031 Mid term The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allen Poe The Fall of the House of Usher written by Edgar Allen Poe was a gothic horror story. It tells the tale of sickness,madness,incest and danger of the family with unrestrained creativity which was Poe's most popular and critically examined horror stories. While Poe provides the recognizable building blocks of the Gothic tale, he contrasts this standard form with a plot that is inexplicable, sudden, and full of unexpected disruptions. The story begins without complete explanation of the narrator’s motives are for arriving at the house of Usher, and this ambiguity sets the
Another example is the story, Shalken the Painter, where Le Fanu combines fear and horror into one story. In the story, Carmilla, Le Fanu portrays the relationship between a vampire, Carmilla, and her close friend Laura. However, besides their close friendship, Carmilla is described as being very secretive and having very deep desires to have control of Laura. The village itself is Gothic, “overlooks the silent ruins of the town.” (Le Fanu 275). The setting of the story takes place in a town that is pictured as isolated and dark.
In this essay I am going to discuss and compare, using my knowledge of the Gothic in Contemporary Culture, the gothic culture and uncanny which is present throughout American Horror Story Hotel (season 5) and The Shining. Both of these stories have similar aspects in common although the main concept behind both is completely different, both stories are set in hotels in the United States. American Horror Story is set in Hotel Cortez and The Shining is set in the Overlook Hotel, both hotels contain a very dark history which is an essential part of the stories plot, each hotel’s history seems to immerge from its past to the present throughout the story. I am going to focus mainly on how each hotel is used as a “haunted house” figure which is a key ingredient in creating a creepy feeling in most gothic stories. Hotel Cortez contains a very busy atmosphere throughout the series, the storyline is presented through an uncanny approach.
Female Gothic creates supernatural monsters that embody their real fears and mirror their sense of unease at the life-options offered to them by the patriarchal society. Therefore, the supernatural in Female Gothic turns out to be the uncanny because it is explainable revealing thus “the mechanism of evasion or repression, by the conscious mind, of the instinctual drives of the unconscious” (Sage, Gothick Novel 22-3). Its writers, in other words, were fascinated by the depiction of the heroine’s psychological status while exploring her different fears which are usually associated with cultural, social perception of women and construction of
“Then the mere consciousness of existence, without thought – a condition which lasted long. Then, very suddenly, thought, and shuddering terror, and earnest endeavor to comprehend my true state.” Poe uses the detailed outlook and description of everything his characters feel and experience, to communicate the feeling of fear and horror to his readers. Poe’s special twist on the gothic element of fear and horror, adds a dark, metacognitive feel to “The Pit and the Pendulum” which makes you, the reader, consider what humanity is, as a whole, truly afraid of. Poe understands what the human race truly fears, and uses that as an advantage, everything his character feels, is so
Introduction Literature has proved to be throughout time a powerful tool for creating enduring myths, legendary characters and fictional stories, making thus the truth irrelevant as long as the narrative was gripping. Such aspects, together with the context and period into which a novel was written brought to life stories that have become immortal and are going to last for eternity. This seems to be the case of the 19th century author Bram Stoker, who, upon fact, legend and fiction brought to life his eponymous vampire: Count Dracula, a sinister and monstrous predator who thrived on the blood of living souls. Regarded by many as the defining work of Gothic fiction, Stoker’s fin-de-sìecle novel achieved a pervasive hold on Western imagination, transforming it into one of the most lasting literary myths of all times. Hence, it comes as no surprise that when we say “vampire” we immediately think of Dracula, and such has been the superstition created around this character that nowadays it is impossible to allude to Romania, and particularly to Transylvania, without thinking of it as the home of Dracula.
Robert Louis Stevenson’s gothic novella, Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde unveils various gothic elements. It is a mesh of different stories into one. The several narratives embraced by Jekyll do not exist separately, but instead rely on one another, (Germana 98). The Gothicism in, and concept of the novella shocked readers of its time. The novella offered new scientific thought, which many feared and could not accept.
2.2 The Gothic Monster As my main focus of this paper is the motif of the double and transformation in the film Black Swan, Fin de Siècle Gothic is of most interest here. In these turn of the century Gothic works, the monster is a recurring and very integral theme. Gothic monster as such are Doubles, Vampires, and Shape Shifters or other forms of transformed part humans. These creatures can have their origin in the supernatural realm or come about through ominous scientific experiments, often times the two are very hard to differentiate(cf. Hurley 192).
The narrator is driven by his compulsive hatred and is about to commit murder, an action full of darkness and evil. Poe’s incorporation of these gothic elements in the Tell tale heart have stimulated me to also include them in my short story, which is apparent in “with the sight of the pitch black skies, I knew that terror slowly but surely approached my mind, twisting and turning into a creature whom never escaped my dreams... Or should I say nightmares?”. The use of vivid imagery creates a powerful setting indicating that as the darkness began to appear physically, evil began to occur internally in the narrator 's mind. The rhetorical question suggests that the figure represents everything dark and evil within the story and it would constantly haunt her, triggering her terrorizing