Gothic Literature : Grotesqueness And Violence In Gothic Novels

The use of Gothic elements in the short story, “The Devil and Tom Walker” by Washington Irving, is prevalent. A few examples of the gothic elements found in the text are hidden evil, obsession with death, isolation, and grim setting. These elements are shown through Tom, Tom’s wife, the devil, and the town and its people. Hidden evil is identified early on in the story and constantly throughout. The first instance of hidden evil is when the narrator informs the reader of tom’s wife’s greed and abusive actions (Irving, 200).

The short stories “The Fall of the House of Usher” by Edgar Allan Poe and “House Taken Over” by Julio Cortazar are two well known works of literature that encompass unique literary styles. Poe utilizes Gothic literature in his story, a style of writing that incorporates elements of darkness, gloom, drama, and intense descriptions. On the other hand, Cortazar uses Magical Realism and its realistic characters, setting, and fantastic and unusual events to tell his tale. Despite the two being completely different genres, they share many similar traits, specifically relating to fear.

It is a well known fact that Edgar Allan Poe‘s stories are famous for producing horror or terror in his readers beyond description. However, it is one of this essay’s attempts to precisely describe these two characteristics present in The pit and the pendulum and The black cat. Horror may be defined as “the feeling of revulsion that usually occurs after something frightening is seen, heard, or otherwise experienced. It is the feeling one gets after coming to an awful realization or experiencing a deeply unpleasant occurrence.” On the contrary terror is described as “the feeling of dread and anticipation that precedes the horrifying experience” These two concepts are thought to be crucial when analyzing Poe’s writings. It is going to be

Horror, what is it, according to literary historian J.A. Cuddon, it is “a piece of fiction in prose of variable length…which shocks or even frightens the reader, or perhaps induces a feeling of repulsion or loathing.” This sets the guidelines for how the generic horror piece is written, as long as it can scare the reader in one sense or the other, or cause them to loath a certain part or character, then it can be called horror. The horror today has roots stemming from old folklore and religious traditions which had elements that dealt with death, the afterlife, and the demonic, along with the things or thing that embody a person. Horror during the 18th century was called gothic horror and this particular type of horror was invented in the

Like in “The Black Cat” it seems as if the personality of the husband has turned has turned to a state of paranoia that he blames on the cat. In result his actions were maloevent. All the texts can relate by becoming dreary in some form of depression, in which is inhospitible for the characters in the story. When the characters take actions that each have looked as though they have lost their true sense of sanity. In “A Rose For Emily” despair has sabotaged her life with the death of her father. In every text there seems to be some bleak example of evil, sadness, and despair. Each story is rather cynical and dry, leaving the reader to concur that the authors are trying to convey a message to show the reader the end result of such actions like the ones each character had done in each story and where it put them. In pure misery, hopeless, and almost as if the sadness tormenting them was necessary. We should be skeptic of big actions and process where they can put us in the future, if they will truly help us, or kill our happiness

In the gothic literature, some stories have similar gothic elements in them that can be used in different ways depending on the author. The elements that are of concern today are the elements of curses and violence. The works of Edgar Allan Poe, Washington Irving, and Richard Matheson will provide some examples of similar elements in their stories, The Devil and Tom Walker by Irving, The Black Cat by Poe, and Prey by Matheson.

The main themes of Edgar Allan Poe’s works are death, perversity, revenge and destruction. The settings he employed in the given short stories, especially in The Fall of the House of Usher and The Black Cat are Gothic. Therefore, naturally the mood of these stories would be dark and sepulchral. However, this is not a trivial employment undertaken to put the reader in a certain kind of zone.

Gothic literature has been criticized as being a dreary, dark, and death-involving subset of Romanticism (a literary movement accentuating human individuality, imagination, and subjectivity). In addition, gothic lit incorporates several themes- not all about deathly acts - but includes some emotional and surprising themes such as dreams, nightmares, or hallucinations, and grotesque or bizarre occurrences. Two short stories, both written by Edgar Allan Poe, entitled “The Raven,” and “The Black Cat,” as well as the novel The Night Circus, by Erin Morgenstern, all encompass these gothic elements, found throughout each story.

The Gothic genre often reproduces a conservative paranoid structure when it comes to homophobia and other moral panics over sex (Hanson, Pg. 176). Eve Sedgwick depicts this in her work, ‘Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosexual Desire’ as she discusses how these ideas (paranoia) are represented within the Gothic, in what she describes as the ‘homosocial’ in reference to male bonds (Sedgwick, Pg. 86). She also discusses how bonds between men exist as the backbone of social form and forms (Sedgwick, Pg. 86). Thus, a consequence of said structure is the ability to define, control, and manipulate male bonds, which in turn becomes an inexplicably powerful instrument of social control (Sedgwick, Pg. 86). Thus, homosexuality is represented as the ‘unspeakable’ within the Gothic, as it has been defined, controlled, and manipulated to be such though social control. Therefore, this paper will discuss how ‘homosocial’ bonds between men, are used as a tool in social control and used as a way to produce paranoia and moral panic, thus in reference to the Gothic, these forms epitomize homosexuality as the ‘unspeakable,’ especially through homosexual representations within the contexts of ghosts and haunted houses.

After a long period of time getting to know John B and piecing together how Woodstock, Alabama works, John asks Brian “You’re beginning to figure it out now, aren’t you?” If the reader listens to everything that is going on, and piece everything together, then there are many delicate topics covered in the piece that deserve to be talked about. S-Town fits almost all of the southern gothic literature definitions for a contemporary piece. S-Town is a contemporary piece of Southern Gothic Literature because of the violence, setting, and decaying that takes place.

The use of Gothic Elements in Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs are similar to the ones placed in the three stories “Black Cat”, “A Rose for Emily”, and “The Devil and Tom Walker” by using of elements through the description of Violence, Fascination with the past, and dreams/ nightmares. In “The Devil and Tom Walker” by Washing Irving uses gothic elements such as dreams and nightmares to encompass the reader deep in the theme of the short story. This can also be observed in the book Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. “He had left his little Bible at the bottom of hos coat pocket, and his big Bible on the desk buried under the mortgage he was about to foreclose; never was a sinner taken more unawares” (Irving 329).

But in The Pit and the Pendulum, the hopes of the narrator saved him eventually but still he felt himself to be not in his life on many occasions when he had to endure tortures in the dark and dreadful dungeon. Thus this project had encompassed a bird eye’s view on the facts that were not much known among the admirers of Poe. As a result of the final analysis of the horror short stories, we have unwrapped how horror short stories gained influence from Poe’s life itself and his horror short stories, The Black Cat and The Pit and the Pendulum are with much logical clarity and finally the selected short stories shudder fear and thus are proved to be the dark of the

Although now seen as the father of the modern horror story, Edgar Allan Poe was previously viewed as a drunken failure. Within Poe’s writings much of his own life riddled with guilt, anxiety, alcohol, depression and death shines through resulting in works that appear unrelated yet once dissected prove similar. This is true for Poe’s works “The Raven” and “The Black Cat”. Poe’s examples of gothic fiction share the use of the color black and a rapid digression of the narrator 's sanity while seemingly unveiling Poe’s internal pain. Despite these similarities, Poe’s works also differ immensely. “The Black Cat” focuses around death while “The Raven” is fixed around discovering the reasoning for a bird 's arrival. Moreover, gothic themes seen within “The Raven” do not necessarily remain constant when compared to “The Black Cat”.

Edgar Allan Poe was a famous American author who specialised in short story and gothic fiction. One of Poe’s most famous works was The Tell-Tale Heart which explores murder, mental illness, cruelty and horror. The viewer becomes aware of the unprovoked mental challenges between characters which heightens the tension and fear, as darkness envelops the reader and the strong beating of a heart gradually grows louder. In order to create a more dramatic storyline, Poe has applied a range of narrative techniques including characters, point of view, setting, and theme, to amplify the intensity of the text and to elicit fear within the reader.

on the aid of Hell itself, and to find things familiar in the world of