Analyzing Development: “Where is Here?” by Joyce Carol Oates Gothic literature holds an allure that readers and audiences often draw into; its combination of wickedness, mystery, death, and even romance stirs a sensation, a charm no other genre has. Through this charm, Edgar Allan Poe, the "founding voice of American gothic tradition," was able to pioneer interest into many future writers in the American writing industry. Specifically, modern writer Joyce Carol Oates implicated traditional gothic elements from Poe. Using dialogue, diction, and the interaction between characters, Oates carefully establishes the foundations and elements of spookiness into her gothic story—“Where is Here?” In brief, “Where is Here?” illustrates an encounter between an unexpected visitor and a family of four, living "in a quiet residential neighborhood" (325). On a dark evening, a stranger comes to visit the family, explaining that he used to live there as a child. He asks to lure around their home as he passes the father’s offer inside. The mother has mixed feelings of sympathy and uneasiness, while the father is cautious about his whereabouts actions outside. Although the father and mother are pessimistic, the mother decides to invite him again out of sympathy. At this point, Oates has …show more content…
Joyce Oates uses vivid speech to establish clues and evidence of the stranger's past. To take as an example, when the stranger describes the kitchen, he promptly includes how it was personally “a—controlled sort of place" (327). This quote hints how the house was always "controlled," therefore, a possibility of abuse or severe obsession. As he further expresses his remembrance of each feature in the home, he adds how the dining room was “dark most of the time...dark by day, dark by night.” Giving a feeling of mystery, Oates urges her audience to sense his strange, dreadful