“During whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country, and at length found myself, as the shades of evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher.” Poe used many gothic techniques in his stories including guilt, grotesque, and a dark and gloomy setting. All of these gothic techniques were used in his stories. The first gothic technique that is noticed is guilt, there were many examples in The Black Cat and there some examples in the other stories. In The Black Cat the main character felt guilt the next day when he had realized what he did to the cat, when he saw the missing eye of his cat guilt pervaded through his body. “I experienced a sentiment half of horror, half of remorse, for the crime of which I had been guilty.”, stated in The Black Cat. This quote is explaining that he had felt bad or guilty for the horrible thing he has done. The main character in The Black Cat had also felt guilty when he had hung that cat from a tree when he was …show more content…
In The Black Cat when the main character had killed his wife was a grotesque scene. In The Black Cat it states, “I withdrew my arm from her grasp and buried the axe in her brain. She fell dead upon the spot, without a groan.” This quote goes into a deep and gross explanation on how he killed her and what she did right after he had struck her with the axe. In the Pit and the Pendulum there was a grotesque smell coming from the pit in the main characters prison cell. It states in The Pit and the Pendulum, “At the same time my forehead seemed bathed in a clammy vapor, and the peculiar smell of decayed fungus arose to my nostrils.” This quote explains the grotesque smell that smelt when he was leaning over the pit. Grotesque was a commonly used gothic technique in Poe’s