Death And Dying In Gothic Literature

Death and dying are major components of gothic literature and Edgar Allen Poe was the king of writing scary stories. Poe’s three stories: “Masque of the Red Death”, “The Fall of the House of Usher”, and “The System of Dr. Tarr and Professor Fether” are all perfect examples of the impact that death and mortality have on humanity.
The “Masque of the Red Death” was about how an atrocious disease called the “Red Death.” The disease was fatal and horrid and killed half the kingdom while Prince Prospero stood back and watched and did not seem to care about his poor, dying peers. All things considered, Prince Prospero decides to let the people take care of themselves and shuts him and his favorite knights and ladies up in the castle leaving all of his innocent citizens to die on the other side of the castle walls.
“The Fall of the House of Usher” was about an unnamed narrator who visits his sickly childhood friend. Roderick, his friend, suffers from a severity of the senses and Roderick’s twin sister suffers from catalepsy and does not have long to live. Usher believes that the house is able to perceive things and has a great power over him and his sister and partially blames the house. Usher’s sister soon dies and they entomb her body in a vault underneath the house. A week later they start hearing noises coming …show more content…
Tarr and Professor Fether”, was a dark comical short story about an unnamed narrator who visits a mental institution that practices a revolutionary method of treating mental illnesses. The narrator soon finds out that the method was abandoned and replaced with a much stricter system because the patients had rebelled and overthrew the doctors and nurses and locked them up as the lunatics. Just as the narrator began to ask how they got things turned back around, loud noises aroused when the real staff broke loose from their confinements and tarred and feathered the lunatics pretending to be the