Edgar Allan Poe: A Gothic Literary Analysis

Gothic literature first began in the 18th century by Horace Walpole, who wrote The Castle of Otranto. After the first piece of work, the people instantly became intrigued by the genre and just wanted to read more. One of the most famous authors, was Edgar Allan Poe, who captured the audience with his intriguing and persuasive text. All the authors of this era created suspense through various literary devices that they used to also grab the reader’s attention. Imagery and repetition are both used throughout “The Pit and the Pendulum”, “The Raven”, and “The Birds”, which all are suspenseful stories. Imagery and repetition was a major part in “The Pit and the Pendulum”, by Edgar Allan Poe. It really was able to lure the reader into what’s to

The text was “It was a wall, seemingly of stone masonry-very smooth, shiny, and cold.” (Poe 308), which brought lots of suspense as to what else there could be in the room. Poe also used repetition in the story to create lots of suspense. “Down-...Down-...Down-...” (Poe 315,316), which was the statement that began three straight paragraphs. This creates suspense by showing that the pendulum keeps swinging and moving downward, slowly moving to killing the person on the table. Edgar Allan Poe uses imagery and repetition in “The Pit and the Pendulum”, as well as in “The Raven”. Both “The Raven” and “The Pit and the Pendulum” have large amounts of imagery as well as repetition that make the book more descriptive. The imagery that Poe used all throughout “The Raven”, allowed the

All three of these gothic pieces of works, contained multiple amounts of repetition and imagery. In “The Birds”, Daphne du Maurier used the quote “Something black rose from behind them, like a smudge at first, then widening, becoming deeper. The smudge became a cloud; and the cloud divided again into five other clouds, spreading north, east, south, and west; and then they were not clouds at all but birds.” (Maurier 6). This imagery allowed the reader to have fear by knowing that the birds would be coming towards the narrator any second. This quote also used sight imagery which connects to the quote from “The Raven” about the setting. All three of the imagery related quotes from the stories put fear into the reader’s eyes, while having a suspenseful thought. The repetition that Maurier used was able to foreshadow into the future. “He went upstairs and worked there the rest of the morning, boarding the windows of the bedrooms, filling up the chimney bases,” foreshadows because if Nat had to put so much effort into securing the house, it would be evident that the birds would be able to get through the obstacles somehow. Especially in a gothic piece where there is a ton a fear represented throughout the story. This is similar to the other pieces because it puts fear into the reader, as they hope for the best of the narrators. On the other hand, it has it 's differences between the pieces because it foreshadows, where “The Pit and the Pendulum” has suspense and happens quickly,