Some of these characters can be understood as reflections of the authors themselves, but they are also faced with everyday temptations and evils. In this essay I will show how these authors understand darkness each in their own way. The darkness prevails in most of Poe's short stories but trough each story Poe changes the shape of the antagonist. Whether it is the nature or human condition, Poe manages to evoke some kind of foresight in reader of what is about to happen. In his stories Ms. Found in a bottle and The oblong box, Poe chooses to present nature as something dark and evil.
Interview - King on king King on King is a collection of interviews with the horror author Stephen King. He explains a lot about horror, and why he has the needs to write it. He also tells about why other people need horror and his fascination of a kids mind. The first reason why King writes horror stories is because he is warped, he thinks that it is a necessity to be warped; because of this quote from the interview “The first reason is because I'm warped, of course” the use of the word “of course” underlines that he thinks it is a necessity. He also mentions that he thinks a lot of people are afraid to say that they are warped, but he is not.
The Cask of Amontillado Edgar Allan Poe is a very well known writer in American literature. He was known for his short stories, poems of mystery and style of writing. In “The Cask of Amontillado” Poe exhibits a lot of irony, imagery, symbolism and foreshadowing. His writing was very unique, dark, and consisted of pessimistic moods. This aroused people to think Poe was a sociopath and strange as a person in real life.
It has been said that Carter’s short story The Bloody Chamber is “bloody and full of horror”. Is it any more than a horror story? The “Bloody Chamber”, written by Angela Carter was made to confuse and mislead the reader throughout. Some people may argue that the Bloody Chamber is quite basic and easy to follow due to it being another Horror story, when the protagonist is eventually killed by the villain. However, Carter uses the culture of Modern day Gothic Horror to turn a typical horror story on its head and surprise the reader with unexpected events – known as Equivocal Symbolism.
Frankenstein: The Traditional Gothic Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is, without a doubt, an iconic piece of Gothic literature. The Gothic genre evokes dread and horror within its readers and explores the extremes of human emotion, the unknown and supernatural, destiny, and impending doom. The story of Victor Frankenstein’s quest for knowledge and the tragedy which befell him when he tried to equal God and nature has filled the hearts and minds of readers with sadness, terror, and intrigue. The creature which he breathed life into has become a symbol of the dangers of science and how an innocent soul can be driven to barbarism. Overtime, the novel has become synonymous with gothic literature.
Edgar Allen Poe has written the story, Tell Tale Heart, in such a way that we experience the protagonist’s thoughts and feelings as the plot progresses. The story is written to instill fear in the reader, and is narrated by the main character- a madman. The main characters thoughts are psychologically horrifying to the reader, which is why the story is classified as horror. At the outset, the man presents himself as a calm, collected normal man, but as the story progresses, we see he is in fact psychopathic (although he denies it). The way he expresses himself is unusual, and bizarre.
His work was famous for gothic mystery. The story focuses on two main characters; Montresor, the narrator, and Fortunato as the unfortunate victim. The narrator introduces his adversary immediately in a disdainful tone in the opening of the story, and without haste suggests Fortunato’s demise. Poe uses symbology to provide the story with a dark and sinister environment. The tone of Montresor in the beginning is important in that it attracts the reader’s attention to a mysterious plot.
Aja Rowekamp Popular Literature- Horror Fiction “Bedlam Patterns”:Love and the Idea of Madness in Poe’s Fiction Summary The article talks of Poe and how many of his stories showed his concerns for the disintegration process of the human psyche. Some of his most important stories present analyses of madness, which was also a major interest for Poe, and was thought that those specific stories deserved attention. The author of this article selected a few of Poe’s love stories that also presented the analyses of madness. He gives his opinion or theory on each story about what he thought was Poe’s idea of madness, the varieties he recognized and if Poe was presenting his own mental problems in his fiction. Before he starts on the stories he explains that a man named D.H. Lawrence, who studied Poe’s stories, had a philosophy of love that was the key to understanding the madness in Poe’s stories.
Assignment 1 From studying the novel “The Catcher in the Rye” by J.D. Salinger I discovered that Holden Caulfield, the main character in the novel is merely a confused adolescent filled with bitterness and resentment. His attitude towards others around him holds him back in life. He is a self-confessed compulsive liar and makes quick decisions without realising the consequences of his actions. The novel is narrated by him in the most colloquial of styles and it is obvious that his view on things could be an exaggerated truth in reality.
No doubt Dickey was grieving and perhaps grueling over the unsightly scenes he partook in, and he expresses them fully in this book. I feel that the use of so much supernatural jargon only exacerbates the very idea that he is extremely detached. Detached from reality? Perhaps, but definitely detached from the truth. One critic, Robert Hill, agrees with this theory and supports it with pointing out how Dickey uses energies into people and ghostly presences to create his ambiance and mood.