M1 Unit 1 Analysis

In order to scare us, books, movies, and television shows will take the most ordinary things and make it into a monster. For instance, the movie IT takes a clown and turns it into a child eating predator. Some people had been scared of clowns before the movie came out but afterwards, it definitely made more and more people terrified. Also, in the short story The Fall of the House of Usher, there is a crevice in the house that goes straight down, and in the end of the story, when the Usher siblings die, the house “dies” with them. This can create a paranoia that if there is a fissure in a stone or brick wall, it could collapse. This might also be the case in the short story House Taken Over.

Have you ever read a story that has a significant change in the plot suddenly? A lot of thrillers/horror stories, will use the method of transformation to create fear. Transformation plays a huge role in stories meant to scare us. It causes sudden change of mood or how you feel about a certain character quickly which can create a fearful aspect in the story. Examples of writers that use this method include; Ishmeal Reed and Edgar Allen Poe.

Julio Cortazar’s “House Taken Over” transformation creates fear because a peaceful day of Irene and the brother cleaning their house goes from being peaceful to a demon taking over sides of their house. This is effective, because a perfect day went from being horrifying very few days later. One example is “It was pleasant to take lunch and commune with the great hollow, silent house, and it was enough for us just to keep it clean”

A transformation is a thorough or dramatic change in form or appearance. This can relate to the mind or the actual physical appearance of something. Fear is an unpleasant emotion caused by the belief that someone or something is dangerous, likely to cause pain, or a threat. These two words can be closely related when it comes to being scared. In "Fall of the House of Usher," by Edgar Allen Poe, a reader becomes scared because the mind is transformed. In "House Taken Over," by Julio Cortázar, a simple house transforms into something mysterious. In "Where is Here?" by Joyce Carol Oates, the minds of family members transform and create a sense of terror. Transformation plays a role in stories meant to scare us by changing something in the story to create a suspenseful or mysterious outcome.

Transformation in stories is meant to scare the person reading it. Transformation uses what we as humans don’t quite understand, against us. It uses death, supernatural elements, and the unknown, all things we don’t understand, to scare us. “But i do believe in the paranormal, that there are things our brains just can’t understand.” This quote by Art Bell explains just how little we know.

These transformations are meant to scare us. The man that came to visit Usher became mentally unstable, same as Usher. The house also starts to change, and the weather. While the narrator and Usher are in the house the weather outside because extremely windy, showing something wrong was going to happen. In the end the narrator runs from the house at the house implodes and get swallowed by the lake.

Transformation plays a role in stories meant to scare us by playing with our imagination safety and mood of a story. Imagination appears in both Edgar Allan Poe’s, gothic fiction story “The Fall of the House of Usher,” by Usher’s isolated environment and in Joyce Carol Oates gothic literature story “Where is Here?,” by foreseeing who people are. Transformation also plays a role by it assists knowing our own selves are safe in a scary situation. This is shown in, “ Why do Some Brains Enjoy Fear?,” by Allegra Ringo and in “ House Taken Over,” by Julio Cortazar. Transformation plays with our imagination and our safety it also plays a role in the mood and setting. This appears in , “The Fall of the House of Usher,” and “The Dream Collector,”

We all fear what we don’t know. Transformations are an important trait in everyday life however when an unknown factor is present, fear can ultimately become an outcome of this equation. An author may use transformations as a tool to help frighten readers by providing an unknown element causing a feeling of uncertainty to pass through the reader. Many authors use this technique as a way to spike surprise or fear throughout their stories, this technique can be seen in multiple short stories and novels including Wild Things “critique,” The Invisible Man, and “Where Is Here.” Transformations are extremely useful when providing fear do to the overbearing unknown feature now added.

When the siblings hear a strange noise in one side of the house, they move to the other side “[leaving] so many things in the part that had been taken over” (40). The audience are left to wonder who or what has taken over the house, but the change of demeanor within the characters makes the story disturbing. From ordinary siblings to seemingly mental and unstable characters, Cortazar’s use of transformation in the characters frightens readers and creates an ominous

What was it, I asked myself, what was it that was so fearful, so frightening in my view of the House of Usher?” (1-2). He shakes the feeling of gloom away, and tires to assure himself his thoughts are completely irrational, “ I was still surprised at the strange ideas which grew in my mind from these simple things.” (2) We know at once that this house is not healthy for the narrator, however, he enters at one

How Transformation Plays a Role in Scary Stories Moving from Oklahoma to California proved to be quite the transition for me, as it had been different in culture and presented a distinct social environment. Not only was making new friendships difficult for me, but also getting accommodated to the community’s customs had proven terrifying. This experience shows to be an important event for me because it ultimately transformed my characteristics as a person, which can be viewed as either advantageous or inauspicious. Transformation can be described as the change of someone or something. It affects different characters during dire, horrifying situations, which can intensify the situation more or convey a certain message, and it serves several

In the story "The Fall of the House of Usher" by Edgar Allan Poe, creates suspense, symbolism, and Gothic elements. The author shows this by using a sincere expression of terror. In The House of Usher suspense is used when Lady Madeline is sick and cataleptic. The rest of the story you are left in suspense over if she is actually dead or is now a ghost.

After evaluating the work of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher, he utilizes with imagery to build up the feeling of terror. First of all, the passage is about an ill man, Roderick Usher, who invites his old friend of his to come meet him. In this passage both him and his sister, Madeline Usher, are the last remaining of the Usher race and is diagnosed with an unnatural illness. The narrator begins to feel terror with the supernatural things going on in the house of Usher and the illness of the Ushers. Although the narrator feels the sense of terror from the moment he entered the house, through the use of imagery, Poe is able to bring emotion to the reader. Throughout the passage, the author continues to build up the sense of terror by asserting the image and setting of both the passage and the atmosphere. For instance, he starts the passage by stating “a dull, dark, and a soundless day...clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens” (Poe 194). In relation to the previous quote, the quote illustrates the image of the atmosphere and the setting of the story. In particular, because Poe expresses the sense of terror by describing the atmosphere as dark, quiet, and gloomy, the reader can get an image of the surroundings and get the feeling of the darkness and horror. In addition, according to Poe, during the first glimpse of the house of Usher, the narrator describes it as gloomy and unpleasant. In particular, Poe states “the shades of the evening drew on… a sense of insufferable gloom” (Poe 194). Additionally, the description of the house adds on to the sense of terror that Poe established in the beginning of the story. Based on the past two quotes stated by the author, the reader can begin to picture a dark and dull day with a gloomy house adding on to the darkness. Lastly, in regards to Edgar Allan Poe, the house of Usher is

The opening of the story depicts and sets the gloomy atmosphere of the short story “During the 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” (Poe 109). That is, rather than having the transcendentalist ideas that build to an optimistic ending, The Fall of the House of Usher presents a lifeless plot that comes to be gloomier as the story develops. For instance, the description of the house and its residents are presented as a sarcastic criticism of that

Edgar Allan Poe used fear to attract his readers into his gothic world. Poe realized that fear intrigues as well as frightens, and sew it as a perfect motif for many of his stories, particularly The Fall of the House of Usher. Poe emphasized the mysterious, desolate, and gloomy surroundings throughout the story to set up the fear that got the reader involved. Then he extended the fear to the characters in order to reveal the importance of facing and overcoming fear. Poe suggested in the story that the denial of fears can lead to madness and insanity. This has clearly shown through the weakening of Roderick Usher's mind and the resulting impact on the narrator of the story.