Posted: March 20th, 2017

Gothic Literature in America : Hawthorne, Faulkner and O’conner

American Gothic Literature is a chance to experience the bizarre and scary natures of an individual. Authors such as Hawthorne, Faulkner and O’conner use the written word to paint these gothic images in the minds of their readers. Supernatural appearances and motifs such as ghosts and monsters, are embodiments of people’s deepest fears and longings. Authors often use creepy settings because it is what revolves around the event. For example, In The Cask of Amontillado it creates a creepy setting, “I busied myself among the pile of bones of which i have before spoken, throwing them aside”(83).
This gives us a suspicious and vigorous feeling of who’s pile of bones that is? It creates an idea that murder has occurred. Another ideal of a direful set is in the story The Raven when the narrator says, “A distinctly dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor”(467). He clearly tells us what he remembers in December. About the fire tugging its ghost upon the floor. The dreadful settings makes the appearance of it’s leading to the event. Descriptions of characters let’s us know what the character will or may do.
For example, In A Rose for Emily, the character Emily demands, “I want arsenic”. She demands wantin arsenic letting us predict what she may do with it. It gives us clues making a Gothic story more interesting. In Addition, the author of The Masque of the Red Death wrote, “His vesture was dabbed in blood and his broad brow, with the scarlet horror”(122). The Masque of Red Death is about to attack showing himself in blood with his scarlet horror. It scares the people primarily as to just killing them for a more captivating event .

By creating an obscure character, people attend achieving Gothic greatness. The event is the climax of the story with many unexpected tragic stories. For example, in Good Country People Hulga yells at at Manly Pointer, “‘Give me my leg! ’ she screamed and tried to lunge for it, but he pushed her down easily”(12). Hulga did not expect for Manly Pointer to steal her bogus leg. He has always presented himself as a good Christian that is nothing but noble. Furthermore, an unforeseen event makes occurs in A Rose For Emily, “Then we noticed that in the second pillow was the indentation of a head.
One of us lifted something from it, and leaning forward, that faint and invisible dust, dry and acrid in the nostrils, we saw a long strand iron-gray hair”(12). Even though Miss Emily aparted herself from the outside, her murder of Homer was sudden. Miss Emily having Homer’s dead body for so many years conveys there is more than just a solitary feeling in her. Death is usually where the story ends in a Gothic story to follow the sequence of fascinating menacing literature. Abnormal semblance of specters draw the structure of the people’s inmost anxiety and desire.

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