Southern gothic is a genre that focuses on grotesque themes while including supernatural elements and damaged characters.”The grotesque” is a common character whose negative qualities highlight unpleasant aspects in southern culture. Specifically southern gothic includes characters archetypes such as the innocent and an off-kilter character. Southern gothic comments on southern culture and its moral shortcomings such as social issues like racism. The setting is a very important aspect of the genre as it sets the tone and the mood of the story. The Southern Gothic movie, The Green Mile, uses Southern Gothic elements such as archetypes, “the grotesque”, and setting to establish the binary theme of Black vs. White, in order to highlight and …show more content…
The innocent Archetype in southern gothic is the character who may be broken but acts as a redeemer for others. John Coffey is is a broken man who is put on death row when as Paul describes, “[he] doesn 't seem to [have] any real violence in him”. Coffey is also the redeemer within the movie as his power to heal others is supernatural and god-like. Juxtaposed to Coffey is “Wild Billy” the man who we later find out committed the violent crime of killing the two little girls that Coffey was sentenced for. “Wild Billy” assumes the role of the off-kilter character because he posses freakishness and is set apart from society in a negative way. The freakishness of his character is apparent throughout the novel as he pees on the guards and is often sent to the isolation room wearing a straight jacket. The juxtaposition of these two characters a black and white convict reveals the central theme of the struggle between Black and …show more content…
The creepiness of the jail is shown through frequent rain, lightning, and darkness within the jail. Specifically the scene when Dell is being executed by the chair is classically southern gothic. Dell is literally fried and the rain and lightning occurring outside plays on the electricity running through his veins. The southern feel of the jail also plays into the theme of Black vs. White. The jail is run only by white men who have sole power over their prisoners. This power mirrors that of a slave owner. Even though slavery was technically over blacks were still stripped of basic rights such as, being able to hold positions of power. Racist feelings kept the whites in power and the blacks in a sense subservient. Although true slavery was over the struggle of Black and White was still
Detrimental stereotypes of minorities affect everyone today as they did during the antebellum period. Walker’s subject matter reminds people of this, as does her symbolic use of stark black and white. Her work shocks. It disgusts. The important part is: her work elicits a reaction from the viewer; it reminds them of a dark time in history and represents that time in the most fantastically nightmarish way possible. In her own words, Walker has said, “I didn’t want a completely passive viewer, I wanted to make work where the viewer wouldn’t walk away; he would either giggle nervously, get pulled into history, into fiction, into something totally demeaning and possibly very beautiful”. Certainly, her usage of controversial cultural signifiers serve not only to remind the viewer of the way blacks were viewed, but that they were cast in that image by people like the viewer. Thus, the viewer is implicated in the injustices within her work. In a way, the scenes she creates are a subversive display of the slim power of slave over owner, of woman over man, of viewed over
Heroes and villains, your usual story right? Well Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird is far from it. In this novel Harper Lee uses southern gothic literature to tell the story. Gothic literature is a genre of southern writing. The stories often focus on grotesque themes. While it may include supernatural elements it mainly focuses on damaged, even delusional characters. In her novel Harper Lee utilizes the gothic archetypes of the hero, the monster, and the innocents to portray Maycomb’s crisis of conscience during the trial.
In the Deprivation Theory, inmate subcultures develop in response to the deprivations of prison life. Then there is the Importation Theory where inmate subcultures are brought into prisons from the outside world. These theories are very true and visible in the movie because the prison is split up by race, which is very common for male inmates in prisons. There are basically gangs formed based on race. John Smith, who shares a cell with Wade Porter, says, “It’s not about gangs, it’s about race.” That statement is true to how prisons are in real life. In the movie, there is the Aryan Brotherhood, who basically runs the show. Most of the white men are in this gang, except for some who are in smaller gangs below them. Wade Porter finds himself joining the Aryan Brotherhood due to the need for protection. Next are the Hispanics who are split into two gangs, the northerners and the southerners who have a huge rivalry. Then there is the blacks who are joined by the Asians and the pacific islanders. This movie is a great representation of how prisons are split up by race. The gangs in the movie are also show how there is social control in prison because the gangs are split up into
Gothic elements are used to show suspense, symbolism, and drama, while also setting dark and twisted tones about the story and its characters. In the passage "The Fall of the House of Usher" the author uses Gothic elements to entice the reader with details of ominous character persona and setting.
This cultural phenomenon is not exclusive to music, of course. One need not be a sociologist or anthropologist to clearly see this Africanist presence operating in the linguistic as well as aesthetic elements of popular culture today; however, a particularly fascinating and recent development in the use of blackness can be seen in recent Hollywood cinema. No longer a mere source for cultural self-realization, blackness now actively aids in the empowerment and redemption of whiteness and in no other film is this made quite as clear as it is in Frank Darabont’s adaptation of Stephen King’s The Green Mile. A period piece not unlike Darabont’s previous film, The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile is also set in a prison during the first part of the twentieth century. The central character, Paul Edgecomb (Tom Hanks), is an affable guard placed in charge of Cold Mountain Correctional Facility’s death row, called The Green Mile by the prison population.
Tennessee Williams described Sothern Gothic literature as a style that captured “the underlying dreadfulness in modern experience” (Hemmerling). The literature intended to reveal the social issues surrounding the time period. Features of this literature, “includes situations and places as well as unsavory characters that are often racist, religious fanatic, egotistical or self-righteous” (Kullmer). This description of Southern Gothic literature also fits other genres of post Civil War American literature. Works by authors such as Mark Twain, Charles Chesnutt, Sui Sin Far, Henry James, Kate Chopin, Zora Neale Hurston and Earnest Hemingway also contain characters, situation, and places revealing similar social controversies displaying racism, sexism, and egotistical behavior.
In To Kill a Mockingbird, after Scout Finch reflects upon Maycomb 's citizens and Aunt Alexandra 's class system, Scout states, “I think there 's just one kind of folks. Folks” (304). In a southern town still harboring racial tension, young Scout 's simple statement would not be anything short of shocking and alienating. The Radley and Finch family, Miss. Maudie, and the black community were all examples of the Southern Gothic concept of outsiders. Although the concept of outsiders seems to primarily have a negative connotation, their isolationism is what spares Scout and Jem from the prejudice their friends and neighbors espouse. Pursuing this topic further, Maycomb is representative of the American South and outsiders are representative
Even the first two characters introduced both seem as innocent as could be. Take the name Young Goodman Brown for example; innocence is associated with the word "young" as well as the word "good." Hawthorne uses these words to give Brown a naïve persona much like most young Puritans of his time. His newly wed wife, Faith, symbolizes the faith he clings to in his life. Hawthorne must have also used her name as a symbol for not only Brown but for all Puritans. Puritans cling to faith blindly hoping they are the chosen ones entitled an entrance to heaven. The color pink, of the ribbon she wears, is a color associated with childhood innocence and purity. Young, innocent, and pure are all things Brown considers his wife to be at the beginning of the story. After we are introduced to the first characters Brown sets off into the forest where he will eventually learn the truth of things and in doing so lose his innocence. Once on his journey into the forest Hawthorne writes, "He had taken a dreary road, darkened by all the gloomiest trees of the forest, which barely stood aside to let the narrow path creep through, and closed immediately behind" (148). Brown is venturing into the unknown; the path closing behind him is symbolic of there being no turning back once he has lost his innocence. Once on his way with the devil, Brown learns of his father's and grandfather's affiliations with him. Once honest people in Brown's eyes, these men now become symbols of how surrounded by evil he actually is.
The major issue that runs through the film that I am going to discuss in this chapter is that there are elements of the gothic, grotesque and me...
Southern gothic is a type of literature that focuses on the harsh conflicts of violence and racism, which is observed in the perspective of black and white individuals. Some of the most familiar southern authors are William Faulkner, Flannery O’Connor, and Cormac McCarthy. One author in particular, Flannery O’Connor, is a remarkable author, who directly reflects upon southern grotesque within her two short stories, “A Good Man is Hard to Find” and “Revelation.” These two short stories are very similar to each other, which is why I believe that O’Connor often writes with violent characters to expose real violence in the world while tying them in with a particular spiritual insight.
The loss of innocence is an occurrence that happens in every life, and it is so easily taken. A traumatic moment is often the thief of innocence, leaving the victim scarred from the experience. Events like these are often the process of paving the road into adulthood, and aid in the metamorphosis of a child to an adult. In “My Father’s Noose” by Grace Talusan, “Dothead” by Amit Majmudar, and The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, each of the characters do not understand the concept of negligent personages. Once the protagonist knows that society is not composed of perfect people, their character and personality changes, as it forces them to take a look at their own morals. This prepares the protagonist for the lives
What is America Gothic? The American Gothic movement started around the same time as the transcendentalist movement. Gothic writers unlike transcendentalist writers believed that life wasn 't all rainbows and butterflies. They saw it as a cruel and sometimes menacing place. During this time Gothic writers wrote about the true evils and that even the nicest person could have some of the worse demons.
Innocence in Billy Budd There is much to be said about innocence. If one is with innocence than one can do no wrong. But that is not all to be said. Innocence is not always a good thing. It could make one naive or blind to certain evils.
Southern Gothic Literature is a subgenre of Gothic fiction writing, which takes place in the American South. The Southern Gothic style is one of that employs the topics such as death, bizarre, violent, madness, and supernatural. These tools are used “to explore social issues and reveal the cultural character of the American South (Wikipedia).” The view of the South which is self-identified as the “national” or “American” view is basically a colonial Romance, with the rest of the nation identified with the forces of the light and the South with the forces of the darkness (Wacker 107).The authors of Southern Gothic typically use damaged characters to make their stories better, and to show deeper meanings of unpleasant Southern characteristics. These characters are diverse from society due to social, physical or mental disabilities.
A painting known as American Gothic was painted in 1930 by Grant Wood. It portrays a farmer with pitchfork (Grant’s dentist) and a woman (Grant’s sister) in front of a house. After Grant Wood won his competition with the painting, it became extremely well known and was often borrowed for cartoons, commercials and novels. Novels such as Gothic literature, even though Gothic literature was “invented” about two hundred years before the painting, people still somehow connected the two. Whenever people read Gothic literatures they would visualize the painting or vice versa. “Gothic literature is part of fiction that became popular during the late 1700s in Europe.”(Brooklyn.cuny.edu) Many of the stories generally have combinations of horror, mystery and romantic with a particular focus of settings. Settings such as inside a castle are used often in the earlier Gothic literature along with the supernatural elements.