In her essay on the genre of horror, Gina Wisker explores the employment of psychological dread throughout horror fiction and its pertinence to the horrors of human existence. According to Wisker, “…horror exposes and enacts dread and apprehension.” (8) This psychological dread is in opposition to fear, which has a definitive cause. It is simple to name what one is afraid of and for what reasons, but much more complex to list the root of internal dread. Dread is a complex animal, indeterminable, unnamable, and often insurmountable. “It concentrates on making the homely frightening and revealing what is concealed and unexpected: alternative versions of self […] What results is a projection of something repressed, embodied in a demon spirit, …show more content…
The over-the-top language and unnatural verbosity add to the discomfort of the reader and accentuate the decadence of the two men. Written as a peculiarly long suicide note, the story acts as a means for the narrator to artfully describe his own slip into dread-fueled insanity. Ever the intellectual, each sentence employs extravagant language filled with endless qualifiers as though in some way this writing is its own manifestation of his dread. It is a fever dream. He describes the classic gothic horror tropes, “the ghoul’s grave...the pale watching moon, the horrible shadows, the grotesque trees, the titanic bats, the antique church, the dancing death-fires, the sickening odors, the gently moaning night wind, and the strange, half-heard directionless baying of whose objective we could scarcely be sure.” (2-3) The world around him, his reality, is transformed contingent on his internal dread. A scene once so accustomed and comfortable to him has now become wholly unfamiliar. It is as if the narrator hopes to rid himself of his guilt, anxiety, and dread by emitting it and coating the world. His rhetoric is a means of coping with the horror. He writes down what most would experience in a nightmare. He fails to describe in a succinct, clarifying way, however, the true form of this ghoul; further proof that he is merely exorcizing his own psychological dread. His words and phrases are deceptions, and …show more content…
“The Hound” is no exception, as it employs ‘the uncanny’ in its exploration of dread. According to Wisker, use of ‘the uncanny’ “exposes and enacts dread and apprehension.” (8) This ‘uncanny’ is something strangely familiar. It utilizes the recognition of familiar surroundings, akin to déjà vu, with an air of impalpability. It toys with the known, arousing anxiety and dread. The two protagonists of “The Hound” suffer from this ‘uncanny’ a great deal. Nothing in this world of ghouls and demons is particularly unknown to them. They know decay and atrocity. The amulet they discover, a symbol of death and malevolence, alien to most, yet to them “not wholly unfamiliar.” (Lovecraft 3) They have read the Necronomicon, they seek comfort in the ghastliness of the open grave. The ‘uncanny’, however, works in the shadows of comfort and knowledge. The narrator clarifies that “mostly we held to the theory that we were jointly going mad from our unnatural excitements, but sometimes it pleased us more to dramatize ourselves as the victims of some creeping and appalling doom.” His acknowledgment of his own mental instability is soon forgotten, though, as he quickly begins to believe the fear that his psychological dread has projected. They are least protected from their own dread where they feel the most at home. The world becomes less
To seek to discuss the novel’s construction, for instance, in more comprehensively detailed terms, is to find oneself confronted by the necessity of accounting for the kinds of provocation, refusal, or contempt that seem evident in its many ostensible narrative defects or excesses—for instance, the text’s hasty and foreshortened treatment of plot, its repeated implausibilities and coincidences, its arbitrary, dis integrated, extemporized phases of narration, its gaps and enigmas, the sheer extendedness of its wandering, abandoned, destitute, disorientated, or surreal intervals, its gothic elements, its banal and dismissive resolution of the narrative of the ghostly nun, its exploration of altered, delirious, griefstricken, and disintegrated states of mind, its misleading use of narrative cues, its broadcasting of divergent and synthesized elements within a sentence or paragraph, and so
Written in 1818, the latter stages of the Gothic literature movement, at face value this novel embodies all the key characteristics of the Gothic genre. It features the supernatural, ghosts and an atmosphere of horror and mystery. However a closer reading of the novel presents a multifaceted tale that explores
In Winesburg Ohio, the reader is first introduced to “The Book of the Grotesque”. This introductory chapter, provides the reader with what might be considered a summary of the characters in the novel itself. The elderly writer, who has obviously seen and experienced a lot of the world’s turmoils, e.g. The Civil War , has been haunted by the faces of all the people he has ever known. The faces of these people are twisted and distorted, and ultimately appear “grotesque” to the elderly writer: It was his notion that the moment one of the people took one of the truths to himself, called it his truth, and tried to live his life by it, he became a grotesque and the truth he embraced became a falsehood.” (p.24).
Morgan, J. The biology of horror: gothic literature and film. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 2002.
The writing style of Edgar Allan Poe shows the writer to be of a dark nature. In this story, he focuses on his fascination of being buried alive. He quotes, “To be buried alive is, beyond question, the most terrific of these [ghastly] extremes which has ever fallen to the lot of mere mortality.” page 58 paragraph 3. The dark nature is reflected in this quote, showing the supernatural side of Poe which is reflected in his writing and is also a characteristic of Romanticism. Poe uses much detail, as shown in this passage, “The face assumed the usual pinched and sunken outline. The lips were of the usual marble pallor. The eyes were lusterless. There was no warmth. Pulsation had ceased. For three days the body was preserved unburied, during which it had acquired a stony rigidity.” page 59 paragraph 2. The descriptive nature of this writing paints a vivid picture that intrigues the reader to use their imagination and visualize the scene presented in the text. This use of imagery ties with aspects of Romanticism because of the nature of the descriptions Poe uses. Describing the physical features of one who seems dead is a horrifying perspective as not many people thing about the aspects of death.
“The Murders in the Rue Morgue” is a classic mystery by Edgar Allen Poe that inspired many later authors in the mystery genre to follow its example. The reason this short story left such an impression on people is most likely because of how it was published. There are many different techniques the publishers used in order to draw attention to the tale, such as the paratexts and the surrounding poems. Some of this work is unintentional, but still enhances new readers’ experiences. These techniques clearly set a tone that the reader will have coming into and throughout the story. All of the publisher’s work seems to mirror what Poe is doing in his own story. The layout and content of “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” defy new readers’ expectations and doesn’t let them be comfortable in the narrative pace, all of which parallels the mystery Poe is telling.
This may include nightmares, vulnerability, alienation, revulsions, and terror of the unknown, fear of the death and dismemberment, loss of identity and fear of sexuality. Horrors can play on our physical fears, such as grotesque scenes and frightening characters, or our psychological fears, tapping into our dreams states and the horror of irrational and unknown, and the horror within man himself. There are many examples of gothic fiction, here are a few: The Red Room, The Monkey’s Paw, The Signalman, Desiree’s Baby, Clubfooted Grocer, these are the stories that I will be analysing. More horror stories include Frankenstein, Dracula and The Golem.
This causes great tension because the reader is feeling the same emotions as the narrator. The story is portrayed as gothic from the very start of the extract, in the very first line ghosts are mentioned and then three very unnatural residents are introduced. These main aspects indicate a gothic piece of writing almost before the end of the first paragraph. Because of the era that the story was written in the reader gets a good idea of how the characters should behave, so to see three very
Paranoia has always been an enemy to me in the darkness. This irrational fear has accounted for many sleepless nights, and horror only fuels the fire. Yet, I am still captivated by something that produces such unpleasant results. The culprit just might be one thing-- the characteristics, events, and situations that humans all share that are the ingredients to what makes things such as emotions and ambitions exist; otherwise known as the human condition. Based on these two notions, it is safe to say that in the article “Why We Crave Horror,” Stephen King is correct in claiming that humans crave horror to display some sort of bravery, to reassure feelings of normality, and simply for the fun of it.
From the initial start of the story, Edgar Allan Poe creates an emotional feeling of fear and dread in the heart of the reader(s). Through his use of word choice and the amount of details he put into this short story it is to no surprise that he is one of the most well known authors of his time. For example in his story The Tell-Tale Heart he conceives such fear and dread through the narrator and the old man characters. From the very beginning of the short story Poe portrays the narrator to be creepy and mad, as if he possess some disease. If you ever read this story you will find a quote that reads “Every night, about midnight, I turned the latch of his door and opened it-
Gothic Literature is a style of writing that Hawthorne and Edgar Allan Poe excelled at. This type of writing showcased elements of fear, mystery, and horrifying events that were meant to leave you with chills. And of course, to express death. These two authors knew what they were doing when it came to conveying all those elements. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s writing represents the mysterious side of Gothic literature and incorporates some fear. Within the story of “The
Davidson, Edward H. “Poe’s Use of Horror.” Readings on Edgar Allan Poe. ED. Bonnie Szumski. San Diego, CA: David Bender, 1998. 128-137. Print.
Edgar Allan Poe has a unique writing style that uses several different elements of literary structure. He uses intrigue vocabulary, repetition, and imagery to better capture the reader’s attention and place them in the story. Edgar Allan Poe’s style is dark, and his is mysterious style of writing appeals to emotion and drama. What might be Poe’s greatest fictitious stories are gothic tend to have the same recurring theme of either death, lost love, or both. His choice of word draws the reader in to engage them to understand the author’s message more clearly. Authors who have a vague short lexicon tend to not engage the reader as much.
The deep, dark, and gloomy tone in this piece can be attributed to the fact that Poe often chose to write in the gothic style of literature. He actively and wholeheartedly embraced all of the aspects pertaining to gothic literature. His familiarity with the distraught emotions involved in this style allowed him to capti...
Gothic, suspense, and horror add an exciting and chilling type feeling to people’s lives. Weather it is reading a story, a poem, or watching a movie, these genres leave the audience or readers wanting more and will make them not want to stop reading or watching. In a book called Danse Macabre, an examination of the use of phycology in the horror genre, Stephen King writes “what’s behind the door… is never as frightening as the door… itself.” All of the build up until the door is actually opened makes the audience more scared and tense than what is actually behind the door. Behind the door can either be scary or not as scary, but all the details and extra effects leading up to the door opening cause the suspense and will not make the reader