In the story “The Reaper’s Image,”, there are many key points to make it classify as gothic literature. The story takes place in an art museum, where two men, Mr. Carlin and Johnson Spangler, are transporting a Delver glass mirror from down in the viewing gallery after an “unfortunate incident” (King). A woman by the name Sandra Bates, lost her brother after he looked such the occasion of him looking into the glass and sawseeing a dark, hooded figure behind him. In the story, the dark figure is portrayed to be the Grim Reaper, personifying death. As the story continues, Mr. Carlin and Spangler have a few run-ins with “death” in this eerie museum attic, with supernatural occurrences, leaving the reader to decide what caused Spangler to disappear. In “The Reaper’s Image,”, King included many types of imagery to enhance the reader’s connection with the story. King writes about describing the features of characters in the story as well as how the building was by using dark and gloomy context. Sections of the building were described as “With the heat came a creeping stench that Spangler knew well, for he had spent all his adult life working in it -- a smell of long-dead flies in shadowy corners, of wet rot and creeping wood lice behind the plaster” (King). King also described the building as having …show more content…
King writes a section from this story where Mr. Carlin is telling Spangler about what happened to Sandra Bates’ brother. This section in “The Reaper’s Image” has some evidence towards it being supernatural by stating how Sandra Bates’ brother looked into the mirror and noticed a “black splotch” in the upper left hand corner. Her brother also explained to his other classmates while on the field trip that there was a dark figure at his shoulder. Later after he saw the imperfection on the glass, he went to get a drink of water from the fountain and never was found again