H.P. Lovecraft’s Fascination in Supernatural Theories Essay

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.

Fear is among one of the most universal human emotions that everyone is interconnected at one point or another during their lifetime. In the gothic stories, “The Fall of the House of Usher” and “House Taken Over” written by Edgar Allan Poe and Julio Cortazar respectively. Edgar Allen Poe writes about how the character Mr. Usher, who because of his mental illness and delusions, cannot come to terms with his reality. Cortazar writes about the relationship between a brother and sister who have normal everyday lives and have strange and odd nightmare that haunts them. The

In “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allen Poe, it is classified as a short story with horror fiction as the genre. This was written in three different types of fear during the Romanticism period. In this short story the encounter is filtered through the eyes of the unnamed dynamic narrator. The narrator consumes upon the old man’s eye and determines to perform a conscious act of murder. Fear is defined as a horrid feeling that is caused by a belief that a person or something is unsafe, most likely to cause grief, or any type of threat. It is something that people can first experience as children, and is accustomed to respond to in many different ways. Some people live in constant fear; of accidents, of bad people doing any harm, or of physical disorders. Others only obtain things as they come in life, whether they are good or horrible things. Edgar Allen Poe describes fear in “The Tell-Tale Heart” in three ways such as gore, the mood, and insanity.

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

People watch horror films to renew their feelings of normality. Caught up in our lives, we all begin to lose our sense of feeling like a normal person. By watching the peculiar events and characters in a horror movie, a person can replenish their normality. Stephen King offers another example from a horror movie that compares humans to the ugly personae in a horror movie--“Freda Jackson as the horrible melting women in Die, Monster, Die!” (King, “Why We 1) makes us feel, to put it bluntly, normal. King continues to use this example to prove we are “light- years from true ugliness” (King “Why We 1). Humans require the strangeness of horror movies to demonstrate they are normal. A short story by King represents an example on how to compare a “regular” person to the main character of the story “Strawberry Spring.” King states that everyone is a tiny bit insane, and they need horror films to contain their insanity. King describes how even a “normal” person has a minuscule piece of insanity living inside them, “ Your insanity leads you only to talk to your self when you are under stress” (King, “Why We” 2). The average person has a mild case of insanity and to view a horror movie or read a terrifying story about strange characters it reestablishes their sense of normality. In “ Strawberry Spring” the main character loses control of his own mind when the fog comes. When he loses control he carves

H.P. Lovecraft wrote a book called Supernatural Horror in Literature. In the book he wrote a literary analysis about Poe’s writing he says, “Like most fantasists, Poe excels in incidents and broad narrative.” I agree with what Lovecraft has to say about Poe’s protagonist. In each of his stories like “The Black Cat” and “Tell Tale Heart” both of these stories have such an amazing horror into them but when you start reading more about the main characters you realize that all his main characters always do make the same decisions including “The Raven”.

Unexplainable singularities are inevitable. Society does not have the solution to every dilemma or anomaly that transpires. Undeniably, two fields of study that still has unidentified surfaces are the human psyche and supernatural activity. Scientists and researchers, regarding the psychology of the mind and supernatural happenstance, uncover new data and statistics every day. A psychological disorder can develop at any junction in a person’s life and encompass peculiar behavior in the way a person feels, thinks, and acts. In the novella, “The Queen of Spades” by Alexander Pushkin there are several key elements that provide the reader with enough data to formulate that the main character’s mental stability triggers the manifestation of the late Countess. Conversely, Stanley Kubrick’s movie adaptation of Stephen King’s novel, “The Shining,” demonstrates strong indications of the supernatural.

Edgar Allan Poe has a distinctive and dark way of writing (Poe & Kennedy, pp.22). His mysterious style of writing appeals to passion and sentimentality. Poe’s most prominent works of fiction are gothic. His stories tend to have similar recurring theme of either death, lost love or both. Poe’s psychologically thrilling stories examining the depths of the humanoid psyche earned him much fame throughout his lifetime and after his death. And this distinctive style of writing made him possess his own style of wiring (Arbor, pp.71). There is a psychological concentration which is an important characteristic of Poe’s literatures, particularly the tales of horror that encompass his best and well-known works, such as The Black Cat and The Raven which

Howard Phillip Lovecraft was known after his death as being a significantly influential horror fiction writer. One of the works that Lovecraft is known for is the The Alchemist and it is one of the many stories he has written that has influenced many other writers like John Carpenter. Carpenter is the director for the movie In the Mouth of Madness which was influenced by the Lovecraft’s theme cosmic indifferentism. In both works one can see the development of a hero in a horror genre story.

Lovecraft’s “The Shadow over Innsmouth” is a story of denial, steaming from the rejection of the otherworldly or bizarre occurring around the narrator. The narrator’s morbid curiosity to unearth for himself the truth behind this obscure town eventually becomes his downfall. The narrator is analogous to the modern cliché horror/thriller media (movies, TV, video games, etc.) of the character who despite all of the warnings and signs not to open a door, go into the woods (i.e. 90% of fairy tales), or in this case visit the sinister town of alien frog-fish creatures. Instead, the narrator takes the cheaper route of ignorant mistake. There is a slight gleam of realization of the town’s fortune after talking to Zadok Allen, but soon after met with

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.

As a master of short stories of horror, Edgar Allan Poe is knowledgeable, learned and imaginative. He could skillfully manipulate the words in his literary works to create everything people can think of. The masterful use of the symbols, objects intensify the readers’ nerve as the typical elements of horror in Poe’s short stories, and therefore it is also a feature which makes Poe 's stories different from other writers.

significance of the story, I must first talk about Lovecraft's specific style of philosophy towards

In “The Call of Cthulhu,” H.P. Lovecraft makes use of a more psychological horror path, which is a major aspect of Lovecraftian horror. Psychological horror uses more suspense build up and shock than blood and gore. H.P. Lovecraft accomplishes this by using a buildup of suspense, not revealing the ‘monster’ till the end while hinting at what the ‘monster’ is throughout the story. H.P. Lovecraft writes the main character following his great uncle's manuscript and piecing together the puzzle of “the Great Ones.” H.P. Lovecraft also creates the sense of suspense by making the main character’s inner dialogue contain the main characters emotions and thoughts of suspect. Another example of the use of psychological horror is when Henry Anthony Wilcox dreams of “the Great Ones,” and experiences a period of mental breakdown that physicians could not identify. Once Henry Anthony Wilcox came out of the episode he remembered nothing, creating a shock factor, and making the reader ask “how did that happen?”

Both Edgar Allan Poe and H.P. Lovecraft were known for their tales of horror, shocking discoveries and mysterious characters. Lovecraft was known to have mimicked Poe’s style in his popular horror stories of the early 20th century. Poe, one of the most famous writers of short stories and poems in the 19th century, amazed readers with his rich descriptions and chilling plots. Neither disappoint in two of their stories: Poe’s “Tale of the Ragged Mountains” and Lovecraft’s “The Outsider.” Although these are not the most famous of each authors’ works, scholars often debate over the meaning and themes of each story. One common theme in both the