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Compare And Contrast American Horror Story Hotel And The Shining

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In this essay I am going to discuss and compare, using my knowledge of the Gothic in Contemporary Culture, the gothic culture and uncanny which is present throughout American Horror Story Hotel (season 5) and The Shining. Both of these stories have similar aspects in common although the main concept behind both is completely different, both stories are set in hotels in the United States. American Horror Story is set in Hotel Cortez and The Shining is set in the Overlook Hotel, both hotels contain a very dark history which is an essential part of the stories plot, each hotel’s history seems to immerge from its past to the present throughout the story. I am going to focus mainly on how each hotel is used as a “haunted house” figure which is a key ingredient in creating a creepy feeling in most gothic stories.
Hotel Cortez contains a very busy atmosphere throughout the series, the storyline is presented through an uncanny approach. This approach in this series gives us the viewers a sense of fear through many scenes of horror and terror, the uncanny is the fundamental element of most supernatural and ghost stories. AHS Hotel uses many different characteristics to make the uncanny and sense of fear present. Costume, setting, music, makeup, camera angles/movement, lighting etc. are just some …show more content…

In comparison to AHS Hotel, the hotel used in Stephen King’s horror novel “The Shining” has many similar elements to Hotel Cortez which are all included in its elements of the haunted house figure in this novel/film. The Overlook hotel is the main location setting throughout this novel/film which too also has a dark past which emerges as the story progresses. Having a history with numerous deaths and curious occurrences, the Overlook Hotel assumes a part of a haunted house in the Gothic novel/film The Shining. Its various rooms, entryways and entries all set the atmosphere for this novel/film. Figure : The Overlook in Stanley Kubrick 's The

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The existence of ghosts or spirits has been a speculation by human beings for many centuries. There has not been a lot of proof within the field of science to show that ghosts and spirits are real. With that being said, many people still believe that once we pass away our spirits will linger on. After reading The Haunting of Hill House, The Turn of the Screw and The Shining, I have come to the conclusion that ghosts are a manifestation of madness, and not spectral forms of once living people. To begin in The Turn of the Screw by Henry James, the Governess first sees a ghost who is known as Peter Quint.

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The checkered past and symbolism of the Overlook Hotel in Stephen King’s novel ,The Shining, reflects the characters’ pasts and influences their actions in order to show the building as more of an antagonist (of sorts) than a setting. One example of support for the claim is when Jack Torrence is having a dream after discovering the blood and bits in the Presidential suite from a gang fight years prior, where he believes that he is killing an intruder of the hotel with a mallet, but as he threw the mallet down, “the face below him was not of the intruder but of Danny’s. It was the face of his son. Then the mallet crashed home, closing his eyes forever. Suddenly Jack awoke standing over Danny’s bed, his fists clenched tightly.”

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During the interview, Mr. Ullman treats Jack mean and doesn’t want to hire him. In addition, there is no reference of the hotel being built on a native burial ground. Jack wants to work at the hotel for the silence and quietness which will enable him to write his play. In the book, Wendy Torrance has blond hair, strong charace In the book, Danny Torrance is

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Gothic fiction has been around for centuries and many great works were created with gothic fiction being the main role. “The Vampyre” by John William Polidori is amongst one of the most famous works under the gothic fiction genre. In “The Vampyre” reflects several themes which also reflect current real life problems and issues of the 19th century. Those themes that are going to be discussed are time and place, power, sexual power, the uncanny, the sublime, crisis, and the supernatural and the real.

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The novel “The Haunting of Hill House,” written by Shirley Jackson, closely follows the traditional tropes of an American Gothic. The main character of the novel, Eleanor, begins her journey to self growth after accepting an offer to live in a suspected haunted house for the summer. Moreover, Eleanor meets three other people that have an important effect on her development as a person. These characters slowly begin to question their own sanity due to the house’s destructive nature. Jackson appeals to fans of the American gothic through her particular description of the house and how the characters interact with it in order to show the environments foil of an absolute reality.

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The story of The Haunting of Hill House is a horror classic. The book and movie depict this terrifying story in vastly different ways. The movie uses cinematic techniques that a book can not portray: music, acting, and props. The book uses imagery, internal monologue, and suspense to peak fear in the readers. Movies are a different way of portraying a story, but movies aren’t always able to depict everything in the book.

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Gothic Literature is a genre that was popular between 18th to 19th centuries in North Germany. It is always being associated with Dark Romanticism which the emphasize was more on nature, terror and death, horror and many more. It involves dark and gloomy setting and also unexplainable things that are beyond human senses and reason such as ghosts and monsters. The main characters, on the other hand, are always ineffectual which they do not give much effect on the story plot. This can be seen through Washington Irving’s “Rip van Winkle” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” which can be considered as American gothic work in terms of its description of setting, the involvement of supernatural element in the story and also the characteristics of the main character.

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A classic element of gothic fiction typically involves a threatening atmosphere and it is very important that this is not just part of the background, but forms a crucial part

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Within this film by just having a specific setting can make the movie seem more startling. The Shining, is based at a hotel in Oregon in which their winters can receive horrible weather. The setting in which this film is made at, is what makes the story the way it is. The history of the hotel, in which a murder had taken place there makes the location for the film seem more startling. The movie would have less suspense or reason for it to have the plot it does due to the significant location.

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(Poe 412).” One element of gothic literature is a gloomy or decaying setting. This scene describes the gloomy setting the literature place in. The dark setting foreshadows the dark theme of the story. The houses feature also represent Poe as himself as well.

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Examples include the fear of fire, crowds, or heights. Media often portrays physical fear with death in gory and disgusting ways. The displays of fear in the modern world are in place to terrify and intrigue people. Going into a haunted house triggers physical fears because there are people there purposefully to scare you, although you know they will not really hurt you. When the choice is made to enter a haunted house someone is allowing their physical fears to scare them and they enjoy that fear.

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Godwin, “turned to the gothic and reinvested it with a power that would render his work influential to later writers in the genre as Charles Brockden Brown, Percy Shelley, Charles Robert Maturin ,and his daughter Marry Shelley” . 45 It is impossible to talk about early gothic novels without mentioning Marry Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818), or The Modern Prometheus for it creates anew turn in gothic fiction. Frankenstein is an idealistic scientist believes that he has discovered the secret of life, but he loses control over his experiment. The gothic, in general, tends to break the crucial bounders between life and death, and interested in certain issues – bringing dead to life, obtaining immortality, living as ghost after death, these theme

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