Gothic Literature In Prey, And The Black Cat By Edgar Allen Poe

Gothic Literature is characterized by elements of fear, horror, death, and gloom, as well as romantic elements, such as nature, individuality, and high

Gothic literature was a popular writing tradition of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and is still used today. Gothic literature explores the wicked, perverse and dark desires. Gothic conventions can include burial alive, ghosts, hysteria, ruined bodies, tales within tales, undead characters, underground spaces, and more. Gothic themes are guilt, sex, violence, death, and cosmic struggle. Gothic stories or poems should inspire terror or horror. Edgar Allen Poe was one of the many well-known Gothic writers. In his stories he uses a variety of themes to carry out the gothic theme.

An author and poet who uses decaying in their stories is the father of gothic literature- Edgar Allan Poe. In his story, The Black Cat, Poe demonstrates decay through the main character “[growing], day by day, more moody, more irritable, more regardless of the feelings of others” (The Black Cat Poe 1) which leads him to killing his wife and cat. The decay he felt started as a negative outlook on life but Poe exaggerated how bad he would get in a believable way to show that normal people can naturally get to the violent mindset that the protagonist was in which makes the story have more impact because it feels believable. This decay can also have a fatal effect as shown in The Feather Pillow by Horacio Quiroga, where the character Alicia starts feeling sicker and becomes more bed ridden over time. They are told to call the doctor if she gets worse and “the following day, when she awoke, [she] was worse” (The Feather Pillow Quiroga 1). This could represent how ineffective the medical treatment was

Gothic Literature is a writing style that has dark setting, it has an overall atmosphere of mystery, exoticism, death. A Gothic story will revolve around a large, ancient house or an obscure setting that conceals a terrible secret or that serves as the refuge of an especially frightening and threatening character

Gothic literature has been criticized as being a dreary, dark, and death-involving subset of Romanticism (a literary movement accentuating human individuality, imagination, and subjectivity). In addition, gothic lit incorporates several themes- not all about deathly acts - but includes some emotional and surprising themes such as dreams, nightmares, or hallucinations, and grotesque or bizarre occurrences. Two short stories, both written by Edgar Allan Poe, entitled “The Raven,” and “The Black Cat,” as well as the novel The Night Circus, by Erin Morgenstern, all encompass these gothic elements, found throughout each story.

Gothic Literature is different from other normal works because of the elements that are not usually used in other tales. Gothic stories use elements that can cause the reader to feel emotions they are unfamiliar with. A prime example of these amazing tales would be The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern. In this tale, the use of suspense and mystery adds to the effect of the story and makes the story come to life.

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”.

Gothic literature incorporates many different elements, but in Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn, Black Cat and The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allen Poe, I found that the most prevalent element was psychological issues or madness.

Gothic Literature has dark, gloomy settings and mysterious, often supernatural,violent events. Reading scary stories can make some people deathly afraid and can creep others out.A gothic story can also contain terrifying creatures such as zombies and vampires that are not real. “The Tell Tale Heart” written by Edgar Allen Poe in 1843 is a prime example of gothic literature due to the strange events that occurred the mentally ill psychopath that killed an old man because he supposedly had a “vulture eye”.

Gothic literature is marked by an obsession with gloom, mystery, and terror. Which occasionally, contains supernatural element while focusing on mankind's capacity for evil. Gothic Romantics present individuals who are easily drawn to sinful actions such as overindulging on drugs and, alcohol which eventually leads to their self-destruction. The people that view the world in a gothic standpoint see the natural world as a dark, decaying, and mysterious. when it does reveal truth to man, its revelations are evil and hellish. This is why Edgar Allen Poe was able to write so many recognizable Gothic literature's because he had been through many tragic events in his life which shaped him into the man he was.

Gothic literature is a type of literature like I said in the introduction that is about death horror fiction suspense and more. Sometimes it is found in dark or scary books. like Edgar Allen Poe for example he writes a lot of dark negative books and scary ones. I think personally that gothic literature is one of the more popular literature in his writing.i thought that the gothic theme was neat and exciting but most of all interesting. Gothic literature has effected me by showing me how interesting and exciting it can

In Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “The Black Cat” (1843), Poe creates a gothic narrative that exceeds the suspicions of the audiences predeterminations. Throughout the entirety of his piece Poe creates a scene that continuously leaves his readers wondering what was happening next. Suspicion being a key factor in gothic tales is only one strategy Poe used to illuminate the story of an unnamed psychopath and his attempts to either clear his conscious or set the record straight for his malicious actions before his death the next day. Through Poe’s extensive use of gothic diction, a psychological appeal that develops the personal psyche of a sociopath , and the overall use of death he serves the purpose of the gothic tradition in a macabre mood.

Gothic literature combines a lot of the factors that people now a day love to watch or read. Gothic literature is one of the most famous type of literature in novels today. In the 19th century the beginning of a famous monster character such as Frankenstein was developed. It was in the novel written by Mary Shelley. This attracted a lot of people’s attention into gothic literature. Another gothic literature novel was The Demon Lover by Elizabeth Bowen. Both these novels have a lot of comparison in gothic literature and with the main characters in each novel.

In the short story “The Black Cat” author Edgar Allen Poe creates an intriguing yet dark story by using multiple elements of literature. During Poe’s writing era of the mid eighteenth century he became famous for his dark short stories and lighter poems. His darker edge becomes quite apparent in “The Black Cat.” Although many find his work disturbing one couldn’t not disregard his natural knack of using literal elements to his advantage. In Poe’s “The Black Cat” he uses symbolism, plot structure, and tone to complete this particular short story.

Developing in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, gothic elements have appeared in many pieces of literature. They consist of stories of misery, mystery, consequences, and the supernatural to invoke a feeling of horror and darkness. Stories like Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame, become defining pieces in this style’s formation. Many authors were inspired by this movement to create a prolific number of new gothic stories: William Faulkner’s A Rose for Emily, Washington Irving’s The Devil and Tom Walker, Edgar Allen Poe’s The Black Cat, Richard Matheson’s Prey, and Horacio Quiroga’s The Feather Pillow. The employed the symbolic descriptions of an eerie setting as parallels to characters’ situations and stories. Through these dark plots, many characters lose parts of themselves, especially their innocence, depicting humanity’s capabilities of evil and change.