The Importance Of Gothic Fiction

The gothic world is dark and can contain evil, dark and mysteries. The short stories “A Rose for Emily” written by William Faulkner, “The Black Cat” written by Edgar Allen Poe, “Prey” written by Richard Matheson, “The Feather Pillow”, written by Horacio Quiroga and the novel “The Night Circus” written by Erin Morgenstern all represent several gothic elements. Isolation or entrapment is a gothic element that is found in “The Night Circus”, “A Rose for Emily” and “The Feather Pillow “. Violence or revenge is a gothic element that is well represented by the short stories “The Black Cat”, “Prey” and the novel “The Night Circus”. The narrators use these types of gothic elements to prove that if you stay away from people around you or force others to isolate themselves from the world and act evil towards others, it will lead to your own catastrophe.

Gothic can be defined as “literature dealing with the strange, mysterious, and supernatural designed to invoke suspense and terror in the reader.” (Pickering, 2004, p. 1425) Gothic literature generally presents the same themes and motifs: love lost, hidden secrets, love and death hand in hand, beauty, youth, grotesque characters, macabre eroticism, etc. Gothic literature also explores taboo subjects such as murder, suicide and incest. “A Rose for Emily”, by William Faulkner, is representative of the Southern Gothic stories since the themes of love lost, death, and murder are present in it. There are many elements that hint at the Gothic nature of the story: Emily’s description, her house, the poison she bought, and finally the ending.

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.

Gothic literature uses wide ranging themes and gothic elements to convey its story. Gothic literature short stories can range from romance to horror to supernatural occurrences. Horacio Quiroga’s “The Feather Pillow,” Richard Matheson’s “Prey,” and Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Black Cat” all incorporate the following gothic elements: violence, revenge, hallucinations, nightmares, and psychological issues.

The world of the gothic is a place where the threshold of uncertainty is emphasized and asserted. Gothic literature is the playground of humanity’s deepest anxieties and fears; it teases with the audience by confronting the elements of society that are most seldom mentioned. In gothic literature, this anxiety causing shadow element is known as the liminal. To further clarify what the luminal is, it is something which hides in metaphorical shadows that exist just beyond the reader's attention. When the liminal emerges it is meant to provoke a fearful response in the audience that is fueled by personal anxiety. Perfect liminal elements cause a subconscious response of fear in both the audience and the characters of the story. This kind of liminal

The rain outside collided with the metal rain catcher. Small droplets formed on the exterior of each window; all glistening in the yellow light coming from the streetlamp nearby.

One-thirty on a Thursday morning. I laid in bed worrying, after watching John rush to Main Street for a fire call. My head spun as the pager near my head continued to dispatch calls. “Be careful on the roof Watson, I can see light through,” Feltner’s voice echoed. Ambulance sirens boomed down a four-block stretch of Main Street. My body sprung from the bed and hurried out and down the block. My face began to fill with heat. Just then another page came through, “I know idiot, I put it there.” It was John’s voice. I felt relief and began to walk back down the sidewalk to our home. I heard a young girl screaming for her dog, hysterically. Finally, back in my house, I completely forgot that I had left the two girls upstairs. Thankfully,

Edgar Allan Poe has written many different stories and poems throughout his lifetime and the common themes of death, horror, and mystery help to prove him as a Gothic Literature writer. Many of his ideas came from his own life because he had a very hard life growing up involving a lot of death of loved ones. Throughout his stories, he has a common motif of suspense that help to exemplify the Gothic Literature sense. He also used a third person point of view very often as to help portray the horror in the stories and create more mystery which are common elements in Gothic Literature. Edgar Allan Poe uses his poor personal background, the motif of suspense, and the first person point of view to prove he is a Gothic literature writer through his short stories, “The Pit and the Pendulum”, and “The Tell Tale Heart”.

Why Might Parents Allow Their Children to read Gothic Literature? According to some parents, Gothic Literature provides a sense of escape for the child and allows the child to relate to their own real-life problems that they may be facing in their own lives. However, when parents allow their children to read Gothic Literature, they are opening their children's minds up and allowing them to go into the dark world and face many unknown challenges and experiences, in hopes of overcoming and conquering their fears that they may have once had. In these Gothic Literatures, there is often a recurring theme that allows the child to put themselves in that character's place or shoes.

Gothic literature is a deliciously terrifying blend of horror and romance. From Walpole's Castle of Otranto to Shelley's Frankenstein and Stoker's infamous Dracula, as well as Edgar Allen poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart, the Gothic novel has been around for centuries, and, despite a few major changes, has maintained some of the basic elements of classic Gothic romance since its very origins. The height of Gothic literature, which was closely aligned with Romanticism, is usually considered to have been the years 1764-1840, but its influence extends to the present day. Gothic literature was focused on elements of death, decay and both physical and psychological terror. These elements were often portrayed by setting, characterization, form, and recurring motifs. The Gothic style also suggests a belief in the supernatural and thus many gothic texts contain an air of mystery and intrigue. Another key aspect in any gothic text is 'evil'. During the emergence of the Gothic literary movement, it is perhaps not surprising that the period was characterised by widespread terror, namely from the French Revolution. Subsequently, the genre became very popular among writers as it enabled them to express their sympathy and concern over such political movements. The presence of the quintessential elements of gothic horror consequently helped to make the genre so alluring to both readers and authors.

The grotesque in gothic is usually the behavior of a man (or women,) who battle with an internal conflict and they are also, usually sick. When an individual reads gothic stories, one can sometimes miss-interpret what they have read. It is common knowledge that when we are younger we understand things differently from when we grot be adults. We can infer that if one was too read gothic literature as a child, one would find it humorous, versus if that individual was to read gothic literature as an adult. As an adult you might not find the text humorous, but rather disturbing. Naturally, the gothic literature is disturbing because it showcase's the darker sides of humans; one reads the conflicts the characters are having and one is likely to

The Gothic literature’s development is very colorful and the influence is great, because the Gothic has devoted itself to many popular genres and influenced many important writers such as Edgar Allan Poe. Poe, as one of the most important writers in American Southern literature, makes very important contribution to the development of the Gothic literature. Edgar Allan Poe is one of the most unique writers in America. He stands alone with his aesthetic taste and writing principle, engaged in the morbid theme of nightmare, death, crime and evil. Consequently, he adopts Gothic technique in a composition, taking a full advantage of Gothic subject matter, plot and elements and lingering on violence, murder, insanity and collapse.

How is gothic literary elements used in The Fall of the House of Usher? Gothic literary elements are used several times in the story. Some examples of them are where it takes place. The type of people in the story is also a gothic literary element. The emotion the characters display in the story is another gothic literacy element.

In the Victorian Era, Gothic fiction was an exceedingly popular literature genre among numerous people because it was relatively new. Such elements as death, gloom, suspense, mystery, and terror make up a Gothic novel in literature. The novel Dracula, written by Bram Stoker, was the ideal Gothic fiction in the 19th century and still is today because of its incorporation of vampires, castles, spine-chilling murders, and overpowering emotions which contribute to the Gothic atmosphere.

The term ‘gothic’ is mostly connected to an angst adolescent with jet black hair, heavy onyx eyeliner, and charcoal clothings, among other characteristics. However, it goes more deep than that. According to Study.com, ‘gothic literature’ refers to a style of writing that relates to horror, death, and gloom and others. A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner recounts a dysfunctional woman named Emily Grierson who was born into an aristocratic family, where the townspeople believed she was scornful and a chore they held. When her father passed away, Emily slowly and surely became mentally sick. In the end, it is revealed that she killed Homer Garner, her homosexual partner. Faulkner’s 1930 classic is a prime example of this genre due to the elements it includes such as the elements of decay, the isolation of the protagonist and damsel in distress, and the high emotions that are exerted by the main character.