Horror Stories by Stevenson and Greene Horror stories are an excellent traditional genre. This genre has been around for almost as long as stories have been told. In this generation there is not much that can really scare us, but what does actually make a good horror story? Horror stories need to have a good and intimidating storyline, it needs to play on people's fears, it also needs to give its audience a real thrill and send chills down their spines. The horror story may be based on phobias, superstitions, murder or science fiction. Horror stories that involve science can be really scary sometimes, as this modern world is vastly developing, and we sometimes wonder what science can do. If a relatively small atom bomb can wipe out a large city than science can basically do anything, and this is what scares us. What also really scares us, is when a horror story is based on something we know little about, "the unknown," this includes aliens, monsters etc. Horror stories contain lots of tension and suspense; it has got to keep its readers on the edge of their seat, making them think what's going to happen next? A good horror story usually involves some kind of history, something that has happened in the past, this creates tension, suspense and creates and element of mystery for the reader. When humans don't know something, their hormones naturally make them want to know the thing even more; this is why the element of mystery and the suspense works really well in horror stories, luring the reader onto reading the rest of the story. In a horror story, lots of imagery is used, to create an atmosphere, this includes darkness bad weather, blood, death, also symbols of horror such as crows and the devi... ... middle of paper ... ... think someone died because he was frightened of the dark, but when you think about it is kind of believable how he may have been so scared, that it just caused his body to stop working. I think horror stories have remained so popular because as humans we like getting a thrill. Horror stories are traditional and even in the times of the cavemen horror stories were told, and now these stories have advanced and can be very interesting. Although we don't like to be frightened, have nightmares and have our heart pounding really fast, the comfort comes when we realise that the horror isn't real (unless it is), and we can have a sigh of relief, and the feeling is good when we look at the horror and reflect it to our own lives, which makes us feel safe. This is the same for nightmares, the feeling comes when we wake up and realise the nightmare wasn't reality.
Wood Butcher by Norman Hindley, Behind Grandma's House by Gary Soto, and Manners by Elizabeth Bishop For this paper I will be discussing three poems. They are Wood Butcher by Norman Hindley, Behind Grandma's House by Gary Soto, and Manners by Elizabeth Bishop. I will be examining the common theme I found throughout the three poems. I found that to be how the relatives teach lessons to their relation of a younger generation and the different approaches to their teaching.
Not far from each other lived two men who shared the same name, Wes Moore. Both men had the same name but had different paths that lead one to be a Rhodes Scholar meanwhile the other would spend the rest of his life behind bars. In the introduction to the book, the author, Wes Moore says, "The chilling truth is that his story could have been mine. The tragedy is that my story could have been his" (Moore, xi). Wes Moore wasn't often the brightest of all teenagers and it would not be until he was sent to military school where he would figure out what life meant with out his mother and the obstacles he had to face. The other Wes Moore tried to fix his life and provide for his four kids; however, making money the correct way wasn't something that
In the book "The Norton Anthology of short fiction" by Richard Bausch and R.V Cassill you can find a varieties of writes with different way of writings. There are some stories which the protagonist are involved in marriages and are addressed in different ways. In some cases these marriages ends correctly with happiness and love. Even though some of them don't end correctly, we can learn from them and avoid to happen something similar to all of us as a readers.
raw to and a yellow fog, a filthy fog, evil smelling fog, a fog that
The world has died, and society has gone with it. In Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, a father and his son are some of the only survivors left after a deadly cataclysm has struck the Earth. Most are dead. The only survivors have lost all of their moral and societal beliefs. It is kill or be killed now. Cannibals and murderers are abundant, but the father does not want his son to only experience this world. Born after the world’s end, the son has never seen the beauty of life. All he has known is death. The father tries to have a “normal” life with his son, whatever normal is in this new world. Cormac McCarthy is able to use varying structures to beautifully portray this element of Safety vs Terror, through his lack of names, sentence fragments,
At the beginning of 19th century, the form of anti-Semitism becomes more serious. Germanys seems to isolate and eliminate Jews. When the Nazi Party, led by Adolf Hitler, comes to power in Germany in 1933, it wants to set up the Perfect Nazi state. The Nazi wants to stamp out any opposition to their rule, so they set up a system of camps, for instance, concentration camps, death camps for holding people that they see as “undesirable”. Lots of those “undesirable” people are Jews. From 1933 to 1945, about six million Jews are murdered and it is called the Holocaust. The Holocaust is the greatest single case of mass murder in history and is difficult to ignore. After World War II, survivors of the Holocaust tell their stories directly or write down what happens in the Holocaust. One of the plenty writings is Night by Elie Wiesel who is Holocaust survivor and awarded the Noble Peace Price in 1986. This work is based on his experience with his father, Chlomo, in the Nazi Concentration camps at Auschwitz and Buchenwald between 1944 and 1945. Another effective book is Fugitive Pieces by Canadian poet Anne Michaels which is awarded Orange Prize and the Books in Canada First Novel Award. As a young boy during the Holocaust in Poland, Jakob Beer is seven-year old and his parents are murdered by Nazi soldiers and his sister, Bella, is abducted. Jakob flees and is rescued by a Greek geologist Athos Roussos. Athos hides Jakob successfully in Greek, then at the end of war, to Toronto. Both characters Elie and Jakob’ experiences reflect a truth which is no matter how harsh the situation is, one tends to overcome all obstacles to obtain a life of fulfillment. The courage can be gained from love, faith and intension of survival...
The Enchantment of Creating a Journey: The significance of structure in Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible
We all have cravings, be it for snacks or sweets, there is always something we desire. We crave horror in the same way. In Stephen King’s essay, “Why We Crave Horror Movies,” he argues that people need to watch horror films in order to release the negative emotions within us. King believes that people feel enjoyment while watching others be terrorized or killed in horror movies. King’s argument has elements that are both agreeable and disagreeable. On one hand he is acceptable when claiming we like the thrill and excitement that comes from watching horror movies; however, his views regarding that the fun comes from seeing others suffer cannot be agreed with because the human condition is not as immoral as he claims it to be.
To what extent can the strange case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde be? viewed as a gothic novel? Jekyll and Hyde is a gothic novel. It was written by Robert Louis. Stevenson, he got the idea for the story after a dream he had.
Thomas Hardy's The Son's Veto, Graham Greene's The Basement Room and alan Sillitoe's Uncle Ernest
The novel begins with the letter that Edgar is writing to his fiancée Mary in which he explains to her his endeavour to locate the murderer of his friend, after which he sets out on his mission. He goes for a walk around the site where Waldegrave's body was found and there, for the first time, sees Clithero whom he describes as “ a figure, robust and strange, and half naked“ , immediately recognizing him as something opposite than himself and everyone around him. After a conversation with him, which seemed more like an interrogation, Edgar begins to empathize with Clithero and as he runs away into the forest, Edgar follows. He is threatened and in awe of this man's ability to find his way through the wilderness and suddenly a sense of rivalry arises in Edgar which turns into pure competition. Consequently, Edgar's inexplicably drawn to the character . He finds him in a cave resembling a madman, a savage, a barbarian: "His grey coat, extended claws, fiery eyes, and a cry which he at that moment uttered, and which, by its resemblance to the human voice, is peculiarly terrific, denoted him to be the most ferocious and untamable of that detested race" . At the entrance of the cave, a panther appears as a symbol of Clithero's transformation into a primal, animalistic creature. That night, Edgar experiences sleepwalking for the first time and a sequence of occurrences begins which leads him deeper into the wilderness of the forest, as well as the wilderness of his identity. What comes next is a scene of Edgar waking up at the bottom of a dark pit in which he fell while sleepwalking. He wakes up to find himself almost entirely naked, covered in blood and with no sign of civilization whatsoever. As he succeeds to crawl out of the pit, he ...
In the short story “Why We Crave Horror Movies” Stephen King accurately states, “ the horror movie is innately conservative, even reactionary.” What this is saying is no matter how bloody or how intense the movie gets, people could always enjoy a little horror in their day. Some movies have those scenes where some person gets injured then killed and that really gets the blood pumping in the viewers and for some people, that essential normality that cures the craziness. To continue, King makes another good point in the short story, “Why We Crave Horror“ and correctly claims, “we may be removed from the beauty of a Robert Redford or a Diana Ross, we are still light years away from true ugliness.” This quote from King’s story states that no matter what happens to people it could always be solved with a quick thrill from a horror movie and that humans do this to have fun with normality. Despite the fact that people seem that it's normal to watch someone get butchered or decapitated but, people can also have some fun and excitement for the
“The Bath” is the first story by Raymond Carver that I remember reading. Despite it being a seemingly normal short story about a boy who falls into a coma after a car accident, it’s intriguing how when Carver writes from a detached narrative point of view, he transforms ordinary events into unusual or creepy ones. Clearly, though, this is his intention since in “Fires: Essays, Poems, Stories”, Carver is quoted as saying, “I like it when there is some sense of menace in short stories” and “There has to be tension, a sense that something is imminent” (1983).
Terror as defined by Merriam-Webster dictionary is, “a very strong feeling of fear” (Terror, 2014, para. 2). Likewise Merriam-Webster dictionary defines horror as, “the quality of something that causes feelings of fear, dread, and shock: the horrible or shocking quality or character of something” (Horror, 2014, para. 2). Without question, Stephen King is a master at designing short stories and novels, which instill sheer horror in the reader. In the fictional worlds Mr. King creates, terror and horror lurk everywhere. From simple closets to an unassuming lake, King is able to turn the ordinary into something that causes fear and panic. With pounding hearts, readers of King’s fictions delight in the terror he constructs. Nevertheless, an author can only write so many stories, before they all begun to sound the same. For example, “The Boogeyman”, “The Raft”, “Strawberry Spring”, and “Sometimes They Come Back” all have the same basic theme. While the plot, setting, and character development may vary, the conflict, literary devices, style, and form are similar.
The Nightmare begins with Saidi pitting his protagonist, Ben Chadiza, against his antagonist, the witchdoctor. A group of seven witchdoctors, is described as they encircle Chadiza: “It was a macabre scene, which in other circumstances the sophisticated Mr. Benjamin Chadiza would have carelessly attributed to his rather flamboyant imagination” (Saidi 421). The definitions of the specific words in this quote speak volumes as to its underlying meaning. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary macabre means: “comprising or including a personalized representation of death”. Mr. Chadiza is described as sophisticated: “having a refined knowledge of the ways of the world cultivated especially through wide experience.” In using these words Saidi gives Chadiza the identity of personified worldly knowledge and foreshadows the character’s courtship with death that continues through the story in the person of the witchdoctor. Saidi further identifies Chadiza and his wife as the “children” in this allegory by saying that Chadiza had “Cried like a small child” during his nightmare and upon awakening, was comforted by his wife in a way that resembles a mother comforting her child: “His wife put her arms around him and soothed him with her warmth, pressing her breasts to his chest and whispering comfort close to his ear” (422). The witchdoctor also refers to Chadiza as “my son” in paragraph 39 (425). Toward the end of the story it is revealed that Chadiza’s wife, Maria, is the biological granddaughter of the witchdoctor and that her mother had forsaken the witchdoctor “because of his sorcery” (427). Mr. Chadiza and his wife are therefore identified as the children of this sorcerer in figurative and literal ways. But they are more than that. The...