Gaining Empowerment Through The Gothic And Horror Genres

Gaining Empowerment Through the Gothic and Horror Genres

The dark beauty of the gothic and horror genres continues to enrapture the hearts of many to this day. They create a safe container to explore other dark realms from which we can gain introspection on the darker and hidden parts of our psyche. It transports us to experience heightened situations and to be able to explore and answer taboo questions that we may otherwise be reluctant to explore in our daily lives. I argue that the gothic and horror genres continue to thrive because of their ability to allow us to explore our psyches through heightened dark worlds that empower us to face the deeper shadows that haunt our day-to-day lives.

Before we explore the shadows that the gothic and

The ability to explore these heavier emotions in a safe setting opens the door for great introspection and healing.

One of the greatest themes and shadows the gothic and horror genres help us to face is the shadow of death. Death in our day-to-day lives is a taboo topic. We are aware that it is a part of everyone’s cycle, but it is something that we tend to feel very disconnected and isolated from. When we interact with the gothic and horror genre Christine Davis and Johnathan Crane suggest that it opens a dialogue between us and death stating;

We suggest that death is a root metaphor in horror fiction, and we highlight how fictional works about the undead allow us to face death and relate to it, as they move us to look more closely at the alliance between living and dead, provide us with a tangible adversary at end-of-life, and enable us to approach death with dialogic intimacy, acknowledgment, courage, and acceptance. (Davis and Crane

Written in an autobiographical format we experience Lestat’s life firsthand as he struggles to find purpose first in his human life and then in his immortal life after he is turned into a vampire against his will. Through his travels, we see many instances of how he personally interacts with his thoughts on the meaning of life and death and how he observes other characters’ dilemmas on their own journey with their own meanings. For example, there are two contrasting instances where Lestat gives his dark gift of vampirism to two loved ones, and we experience how they react to their transitions very differently. His mother, Gabrielle, who was dying of consumption, welcomes the gift of immortality gracefully and finds the freedom she could never have of being a mother in the 17th century. His lover, Nicholas, on the other hand, who had underlying issues with depression and internal conflict beforehand reacts poorly and once he turns and becomes mad, and eventually commits suicide. These two contrasting experiences illustrate the uniqueness each of us may experience in the face of death. Would we find peace and accept it? Would we accept a means to avoid death? And if we did, would we find peace, or would it make things worse? The gothic and horror genre usage of the undead allows us to explore death and discover and draw our own conclusions