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Gothic story examples
Example of gothicism in literature
Gothic story examples
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More handpicked essays just for you.
Gothic story examples
Example of gothicism in literature
Gothic story examples
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Poe’s stories “Cask of Amontillado” and “The Tell-Tale Heart” display the dark romantic theme of a man’s soul by the development of the setting, plot, and characterization. As both stories begin, the initial device used to advance the theme is setting, which remains grim and sinister throughout the duration of both stories. Accompanying these physical details is the plot, each of which includes the murder of an innocent man. Most notably, the characterization of each piece’s narrator allows the audience to fully understand their internal struggle and its final resolution. While “Cask of Amontillado” contains an overall intriguing and unexpected plot as well as setting, the narrator’s characterization proves this story to conclude in a less
More specifically, the protagonist recalls herself as a young girl being held “by the hand” by a “woman with Kool”, who purchases for her a “Mason Mint” subsequently takes her to a cabin but abandons her, being “nowhere to be seen” at the moment of the young girl’s experience with the harrowing symptoms of presumed oral sex, therefore allowing for the assumption of her mother (the “woman with Kool”) being the person prompting her to partake in unpleasant sexual encounters at a tender age. Furthermore, the metaphor that she feels devoid of “arms or legs” lying in the cabin, in concert with the reference mentioned previously of her feeling like a girl in a sideshow (essentially like a puppet), fortifies this idea of her having no agency over herself, of being controlled and exploited by her
Beaten. Or of striking someone else because they’d asked you to” (Findley, 39). This theme of violent sex unfortunately comes up once again later on in the text when Robert is raped, “All he could feel was the shape of the man who entered him and the terrible strength of the force with which it was
Gilman also highlights a lack of identity of the narrator through the setting of the novella which reflects the narrator’s societal confinement. The protagonist is surrounded by “hedges and walls and gates that lock”, which create a sense of separation that the narrator feels from others and the outside world. In addition, the room in which she is confined contains a “heavy bedstead, and… barred windows, and then that gate at the head of the stairs, and so on”. These physical and ‘prison-like’ restrictions imposed on the protagonist clearly demonstrate her lack of freedom. Additionally, Gilman’s use of syndetic listing to describe the narrator’s physical entrapment is perhaps reflective of her feelings of suffocation and her inability to escape as the list feels never ending.
In the stories “The Tell Tale Heart,” “The Pit and the Pendulum,” and “The Masque of Red Death,” the author, Edgar Allen Poe, uses figurative language, irony and symbolism to teach us that fean can distort the mind, and cause paranoia and obsession,
Bram Stoker, describes one of the verbal taboos of the Victorian era, violence, through the representation of vampires as “monsters” through the point of view of their victims in his novel Dracula. Stoker portrays violence in three distinct categories- physical, visual and psychological. Each one of these categories is described by one of the antagonists in the Novel, with Count Dracula as the physical aspect of violence, his underlings, the female vampires as the visual and Renfield, the patient at Dr. Seward’s mental asylum, as the psychological aspect of violence. This essay looks at the portrayal of such Categorical violence as different renditions of a “monster” and considers why Stoker would segregate violence in such a manner.
Edgar Allan Poe’s frightening gothic style poetry and short novels about fear, love, death and horror are prominent to Gothic Literature and explore madness through a nerve-recking angle. The incredible, malformed author, poet, editor and novelist is recognized for his famous classical pieces such as “The Raven”, “Berenice” and “The Tell-Tale Heart”, pieces of work that mystically yet magnificently awakens readers with a gloomy spirit. Awakening the subject of madness through written work was viewed as insane during Poe’s times. Yet Poe published some of the worlds most magnificently frightening pieces of literature throughout history. In the following essay I will examine and cautiously analyze
In gothic literature, the elements used by the author depicts how the piece of work is going to unfold. Authors such as Edgar Allan Poe and Washington Irving depict the themes of psychological issues and entrapment through the short stories: “Black Cat”by Edgar Allan Poe, “The Raven”by Edgar Allan Poe, and “The Devil and Tom Walker” by Washington Irving. The gothic theme of entrapment is commonly used across various pieces of literature. Entrapment is the idea of being contained by something either physically, mentally, or emotionally.
Charlotte Gilman’s short story, ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’, (1899) is a text that describes how suppression of women and their confinement in domestic sphere leads to descend into insanity for escape. The story is written as diary entries of the protagonist, who is living with her husband in an old mansion for the summer. The protagonist, who remains unnamed, is suffering from post-partum depression after the birth of her child and is on ‘rest’ cure by her physician husband. In this paper, I will try to prove that ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ acts as a subversive text by portraying the protagonist’s “descent into madness” as a result of the suppression that women faced in Victorian period.
The majority of Horror film and books are suffused with female monsters, with many of these female monsters developing from ancient myths. Yet literary criticism has tended to focus more on the woman as the victim of the monster, rather than the woman-as-monster. The majority of monsters in classical mythology are female and the Homeric myth of Demeter and Persephone is a primary archetype for the classical myths that have informed the horror genre’s construction of the feminine. The myth recounts the abduction and rape of the maiden Goddess Persephone by Hades the King of the underworlds. As David Greven states that the grief of Demeter, Persephone’s mother presents a crucial precedent for the recurrent theme of the return to origins in horror and provides a basis for the representation of the maternal figure in modern horror.
In many stories and poems; such as the Tell Tale Heart, The Cask of Amontillado, The Raven, Annabel Lee, The House of Usher, and so many more timeless works, Edgar Allan Poe has been captivating his audiences with spine tingling thrillers through the words and style of his own twisted ways. The only way to describe where Poe’s writing belongs in history, would be classified as gothic genre. From the start of the 1800’s to present day and the future of literature, through irony, repetition, imagery, and symbolism Poe has been bewitching readers with his gore and insane writings. Poe’s life inspired so many of his poems, from focusing on taboo topics, such as death, revenge, love and loss. Poe’s life was painful and heartbreaking that
The relationship between a mother and a daughter is always thought to be very sacred and one of an unconditional bond. Angela Cater shows us the typical bond in ‘The Bloody Chamber’ while Michele Roberts breaks the boundaries of what we see as normal in ‘Anger.’ “The Bloody Chamber” portrays a very close mother-daughter relationship. It is seen throughout Angela Carter’s novel that this pair have good intentions for each other and have a deep unconditional bond. When the young bride is being brought to her new martial home she seems to be at an unease because she is not sure what marriage is going to be like whereas she knows that while at home with her mother everything is calm and safe.
Gothic Elements in the “The Tell Tale Heart” The classic short story of “The Tell-Tale Heart”, written by one of the all time masters of horror, Edgar Allen Poe, has always been used as an excellent example of Gothic fiction. Edgar Allen Poe specialized in the art of gothic writing and wrote many stories that portrayed disturbing events and delved deeply into the minds of its characters. In "The Tell-Tale Heart," Poe revolves the plot around a raving individual who, insisting that he is sane, murders an old man because of his` “vulture eye”. The three main gothic elements that are evident in this story are the unique setting, the theme of death and decay, and the presence of madness.
In Maria Dahvana Headley’s short story, Moveable Beast, in Neil Gaiman’s book, Unnatural Creatures, Headley tells the story of Bastardville’s Beast through the perspective of Angela. In the beginning of the story, Headley portrays Angela by having a sarcastic tone, being terse with others and barely caring about anything in Bastardville, including herself. Angela later has a coming of age story and realizes what the beast of her town represents and what she has to do to protect and maintain it. The details of the story paint an image inside the audience’s mind that leaves open interpretation to what or who the actual beast is. This effect is achieved by Headley’s complex style and uses irony, epiphany, and imagery to display her wild imaginative and open interpretation to the audience.
The comment on Beauty’s freewill accentuates the lack of volition in Beauty’s case for she had to pay for her father’s transgression and the Beauty, as other women in the patriarchal social setup is aware of it and willingly accepts her plight. The magic realist tendencies of Angela Carter’s writings also come to the fore in the intermingling of the world of humans and animals, and the mundane and the magical. It is a type of postmodern gothic, which treats a ghost at the table as an everyday occurrence rather than something to be afraid of. In contrast to the “The Courtship of Mr. Lyon,” “The Tiger’s Bride” is explicitly sexual and more radical in its exploration of feminine-masculine stereotypes and relationships.