The Castle Of Otranto And The Black Cat

The main themes of Edgar Allan Poe’s works are death, perversity, revenge and destruction. The settings he employed in the given short stories, especially in The Fall of the House of Usher and The Black Cat are Gothic. Therefore, naturally the mood of these stories would be dark and sepulchral. However, this is not a trivial employment undertaken to put the reader in a certain kind of zone.

Gothic literature is a style of writing dating back to 1764, some of the most important elements of this writing style are of an eerie setting and mental decay, stories that made great use of these elements are: “The Raven”, “Black Cat”, “The House of Usher”, and “The Devil and Tom Walker”. The authors use the gothic element of eerie setting so that they can enhance the mood of the story and of mental decay to highlight what the conflict in the characters’ lives is causing.

Unlike many of Poe's works, little is known about the narrator. The narrator seems to be an innocent bystander, rather than a killer, similarly the classic style writing of Poe. "Twice near the end of the story Roderick calls the narrator Madman, however the narrator runs away, to watch both the tenants and the house of Usher disappear into the tarn, or an underworld in which is their true home" (Poecoder). Some readers think that the very reason Poe covers up the narrator's tracks is to make the story more complex, and to make readers have to work to identify the narrator as the actual killer. Poe, in writing such a way, makes the narrator a mystery

In the book The Castle of Otranto the people of the castle are surrounded by unexplainable events. These events are in most cases damaging to one’s own mind. Those who are seen as great and loving are turn in to violent and unpredictable individuals. Those who were affected include the highest level of nobility, down as far as to the simple servant. While denial is shown by them there is no doubt that they have changed, and only in disastrous ways. Weather the person has good intentions or not they are changed and their intention becomes what they do. A corrupt power which cannot be stopped. People may try to help and form the person to their former self but in The Castle of Otranto this is not the case. When people react to unexplained

Violence also presents itself as a common theme in gothic literature. It focuses to exemplify the effects of evil on a single person or those associated with that person. In Poe’s “The Black Cat” the deepest act of violence is portrayed by the main character. In cold blood “[he] slipped the noose about its neck and hung it to the limb of a tree” (Poe 2). This philosophical act of violence stems the conclusion of evils’ influencing traits and how they lead to acts of violence that result in death. Furthermore, this violence steers the character in a direction to affect himself in a deeper way which will eventually directly affect those around him.

The third and final element of gothic literature that can be found in “The Tell-Tale Heart” is that of the presence of madness and the thin boundary line that

If Prince Prospero had never faced the terror of the Red Death, he would have never locked himself and the others in the abbey. Being locked in the abbey led to the demise of all of the characters in Poe’s short story. When considering the crucial nature of a decision, it is very important to consider the role of emotion in making a choice. Once

Gothic literature has a different way of captivating the reader. Page by Page, gothic themes are present that create mystery and evoke suspense. The Night Circus, a novel by Eric Morgenstern, “The Devil and Tom Walker”, by Washington Irving, and “The Oval Portrait”, by Edgar Allan Poe share two important themes: eerie setting and isolation. All the stories connect through a lesson that passion can become harmful.

Pre-Write In the novel “Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children” and the short stories The Black Cat, Feather Pillow, and The Raven, the author uses elements that cause a domino effect on each other and cause distress, physically or mentally on the victim. The authors have intricate ways of evoking or emphasizing points they want to get across, and can do it so well they only have to subtly apply it into their works. In all the works, the authors use gothic elements such as psychological issues, monsters, and death to show their prevalence within each other and their level of severity.

Although now seen as the father of the modern horror story, Edgar Allan Poe was previously viewed as a drunken failure. Within Poe’s writings much of his own life riddled with guilt, anxiety, alcohol, depression and death shines through resulting in works that appear unrelated yet once dissected prove similar. This is true for Poe’s works “The Raven” and “The Black Cat”. Poe’s examples of gothic fiction share the use of the color black and a rapid digression of the narrator 's sanity while seemingly unveiling Poe’s internal pain. Despite these similarities, Poe’s works also differ immensely. “The Black Cat” focuses around death while “The Raven” is fixed around discovering the reasoning for a bird 's arrival. Moreover, gothic themes seen within “The Raven” do not necessarily remain constant when compared to “The Black Cat”.

Each event in one's life whether important, meaningless, joyful or sickening has an impact on that person's character. Harrowing & tragic events occur often as it was for Edgar Allen Poe which left a vast impact on his character. This author's stories focus on his wretched life and obstacles placed in the forms of stories. His unfortunate events turned into eerie, emblematic tales such as “The Raven”, “The Black Cat”, “The cask of amontillado” & more which all have twisted plot lines such as horror, sadness, revenge etc.

GOTHIC ELEMENTS The gothic elements found in Castle of Otranto trigger the fear response mechanism in the human brain. In this paper I will talk about some gothic elements Found in Castle of Otranto and how they trigger the fear response in the brain. Gothic elements are elements that work together to create a scene that is frightening and builds up suspension to make the story, movie, novel, ext, more frightening. The point of the elements is to fill the needs for a person to be afraid, but the individual is in no immediate danger. Some examples of the elements are “the metonymy of gloom and horror”, “women threatened by a powerful, impulsive, tyrannical male”, “supernatural or otherwise inexplicable events”, “an atmosphere of mystery and suspense” and, “setting in a castle”.

The following piece of writing will explore factors of a gothic novel. It will exclusively do so in regards of the two novels Wuthering Heights and Frankenstein. These very famous novels will be looked at in a very in depth piece of writing. Each novels main themes and their background will be presented. The morality and the gothic novel with specific reference to Frankenstein and Wuthering Heights will be assessed. The second aspect will be the social and cultural of the genre, the genre being the gothic novel. Thirdly, the monster as punishment and the punishment of the monster in both novels. The final aspect that will be analysed is the constructed nature of boundaries in both texts.

Gothic literature’s desire to explore the unknown, the unexplainable, inexplicable and the terrifying can be seen as a reaction to the Enlightenment’s emphasis on the rational and knowable. The Enlightenment rejected the belief in superstition, and religion. Reason, deductive logic, and observation were the methods of examining the world. A clash of these two approaches is noticeable in Otranto. The novel violates 18th century

The two short stories, "The Black Cat" and "The Cask of Amontillado", by Edgar Allan Poe have a dark and gloomy setting which helps lead into the conflict in each story. The story "The Cask of Amontillado" creates an eerie and gloomy setting in Montresor’s vault. This vault only containing Montresor and Fortunato giving him an opportunity to murder and commit a terrible act against Fortunato, the one who inflicted pain in Montresor’s life. One conflict developed was man vs self. Montresor is torn in the decision to kill Fortunato or not. He