Gothic Comparison The American Romantic Gothic short story , “Fall of the House of Usher”, written by Edgar Allan Poe and the American Contemporary Gothic short story, “ Where is Here? ”, written by Joyce Carol Oates are two short stories that are written in two different styles of American Gothic Literature, they have more similarities in being that they are both written in a grotesque and mysterious way, making them more similar than different. The two short stories contain similarities in the feeling they create and differences in their styles of writing. “The Fall of the House of Usher” and “Where is Here?” are two different forms of gothic writing yet portray very similar ideas and have the same style of creating an eerie and frightening mind set for the readers. The American Romantic Gothic genre is traditional grotesque and generally creepy writing. A famous example of an American Romantic Gothic writer is Edgar Allan Poe. Poe wrote many gothic stories , but people during his time did not accept them because they thought his writing was different, peculiar , and all in all , scary. The American Contemporary Gothic genre is also grotesque …show more content…
Oates’ story takes place in modern time making her story contemporary. While she is writing this short story she is giving very little information to the readers , creating a mysterious and eerie feeling. “ ‘ We’ve all been dead-- they’ve all been dead--a long time.’ ” (page 329) This statement is made by the man who comes to the family’s house and asks to look around as “ he’d once lived in the house .” (page 325) The remark made by the man is peculiar because he refers to himself as dead but he seems to be alive to the family. Oates writes this short story in a creepy manner and wants to make the readers feel intrigued and curious as to what is going on in the family’s house and why they’re acting so
The Complexion of Southern Gothicism From ghosts to sleeping with corpuses and deranged characters, Southern Gothic literature has it all. This twisted period began in the 18th century and is still written today. Some authors still write Gothic stories based in this time period. Many well-known authors are Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, Mary Shelley, Harper Lee, and Bram Stoker. Each author is known for their contribution to this stunning time in literature.
The aesthetic basis of Gothic literature is magnificent and weird. Gothicism is good at extraordinarily irrational factors, exploring the dark side of human nature, terror, despair, anxiety, desire, blood, and thirsty that were suppressed in traditional literature. In
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)
The first example of this story being an American gothic is the creepy setting. Oates describes the setting as, “A quiet residential neighborhood… one November evening at dusk.” This quote describes what the neighborhood the family is living in. This
Edgar Allen Poe’s short story The Black Cat immerses the reader into the mind of a murdering alcoholic. Poe himself suffered from alcoholism and often showed erratic behavior with violent outburst. Poe is famous for his American Gothic horror tales such as the Tell-Tale Heart and the fall of the House of Usher. “The Black Cat is Poe’s second psychological study of domestic violence and guilt. He added a new element to aid in evoking the dark side of the narrator, and that is the supernatural world.”
The use of gothic Romanticism can be seen with various amount of stories. For example, " The Raven" by Edgar Allen Poe which he wrote over his wife 's death. Also Poe does a good job with the tone of the story making it seem gothic, with him being in the dark during a storm. The supernatural presence in the story is the raven itself , and since the death of his wife it showed up to his window. In the story as Poe talks to the raven and tells it his feelings all the raven whispers is " nevermore" which give the audience the dark gothic feeling.
Edgar Allen Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Emily Dickinson are just some of the few authors who wrote gothic literature. American Romanticism was used to show the reactions to the restrictions of the puritans during the 1800’s. The purpose of Gothic literature was and still is to entertain and to inspire improvement of oneself through imagination. Some characteristics of dark romanticism are desolate location, ghost or spirit, use of symbols, and death by disease or madness. Of course not all gothic stories have to have every single component to be thought as gothic literature.
The new house owners might be the ghosts of the stranger 's parents, and somehow he has come back to his childhood home as the adult spirit of his former self. He remembers living in the house, with his parents and his sister when he was eleven, this family also has two children: a boy, who is eleven; and a girl, who is thirteen. The reader can sense that there 's a violent past, however, Oates doesn 't explicitly state whether or not there is. The stranger also has an obsession with riddles, which can be the key to understanding the plot of the story. There’s not a much literary criticism of this story, but because the riddles demonstrate infinity, this could be the purpose of the story.
American Romanticism were mostly written during the 1800’s. The use of American Romanticism was to get readers to read. The authors would exaggerate stories to get them attached and start reading them. American Romanticism were stories that were mostly gothic or dark stories. The death of a protagonist is usually over exaggerated.
The Southern Gothic Genre can be described as fictional stories written about people with disturbed personalities and macabre situations. Several traits make up this genre, a few of them are, unrequited love, being an outsider, and good vs. evil. This genre does not deal with the supernatural, although it does deal with disturbed people with unusual personalities. In the short story “A Good Man Is Hard To Find”, Flannery O'Connor uses the Southern Gothic genre.
Gothic novels and poems were given their own genre mainly because they include extreme emotional content and intensely dark themes. The natural settings were castles and monasteries which are typical forms of gothic literature. By 1840 the gothic genre had played itself out and this was partly due to writers who were developing the
Edgar Allan Poe: A Romantically Grotesque Poet “Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality”-Edgar Allan Poe. Horror is something not entirely new to Poe and many other writers of his age. During the Romantic time period of American literature, poet and fiction writer Edgar Allan Poe was known for his controversial, dark, and gothic writing style.
Therefore, the accuracy in his depictions of people reveals the inner workings of the human mind and his outlook on them. Poe’s precise and intricate use of narrative and diction examines the psychological elements of human nature, thereby creating the new genre of gothic romanticism. Poe’s narrative style was unconventional as seen when describing the character’s environment in The Tell-Tale Heart. Poe uses first person narrative as a mean of revealing the character’s psyche. He also indirectly and
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.
I have always had an interest in Edgar Allan Poe’s writing, poems and short stories. The way in which he writes is very peculiar and very original and unique to him. In grade 10, we made gothic movies and focus thoroughly on the works by Poe. He uses first person narrator in both “The Tell Tale Heart” and “The Black Cat” and he does this in a way that is so unreal, and it puts you in the mindset of the somewhat psychotic speaker. I think it is an important topic as there are so many gothic authors out there, but Poe has his own unique way of telling the story that are so distinct to him.