Gothic Themes Of Love And Death

Another brilliant author was brought about in the 19th century during the Romantic Era where he used a mesmerizing Gothic tone to illustrate his famous themes of love and death. Edgar Allan Poe was a short story writer and a poet who was known to be one of first critics to primarily focus on the style effects and structure in the literary movement during this time period (“Edgar Allan Poe”). The American Literature pieces The Gold-Bug and Other Tales and The Raven and Other Favorite Poems perfectly portray Poe’s gruesome Gothic thoughts and pieces of work. In his famous story “The Masque of the Red Death” is where we can perfectly see Poe’s portrayal of the nature of life and death, which was seen as common during this Era. We can see him …show more content…
However, his famous themes of love and death seem to linger on in his work. Though, Poe’s poems also reveal his visionary qualities and eerie and morbid thoughts that were common during the Gothic and Romantic Era. He evidently depicts these characteristics within his famous poem, “Annabel Lee.” Poe uses multiple literal elements such as setting, rhythmical lines and stanzas as well as imagery to portray love and death. He transitions his setting from a happy place of memories spent with the narrator’s beloved Annabel Lee to a sudden place of misery and gloom. He also uses the setting and tone as way to portray the Gothic and Romantic qualities of eerie and morbid thoughts at the end of the poem when Poe writes, “And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side / Of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride, / In the sepulchre by the sea, / In her tomb by the sounding sea “(Poe 41). We see the narrator’s attachment still to Annabel Lee. This brings light to the narrator claiming her as his bride, although they were never married. So, this kind of tone seems to switch from this love-filled story to a more eerie thought of death and obsession. We see the narrator’s desire to want to spend time with his loved one again, so he decides to spend his nights lying down next to Annabel’s dead body by her tomb. This poem goes beyond this simple love story and works its way to more of a weird attachment (“Poe’s …show more content…
Specifically, in “Bartleby,” Melville portrays the character of Bartleby as a passive resistant man who overall helps represent a strident push for humanity. He writes this story as perfectly depicting dehumanization and victimization within the workplace, where he uses a main character to illustrate this theme to get across to his American audience. He used elements such as the setting to show the image of emptiness of modern business life and described the main character’s office as “…an unobstructed view of a lofty brick wall, black by age and everlasting shade, which wall required no spyglass to bring out its lurking beauties…” (Melville 4). Being placed in the corner of a room with no window to look out of helps illustrate this theme of dehumanization and victimization within the workplace, where this room “…entirely isolate[d] Bartleby” (Melville 9). Melville then constructs a deeper meaning into the setting when describing Wall Street and its unnatural emptiness and isolation. The story states, “Of a Sunday, Wall Street is deserted as Petra, and every night of every day it is an emptiness. This building, too, which of weekdays hums with industry and life, at nightfall echoes with sheer vacancy, and all through Sunday is forlorn” (Melville 17). Melville clearly helps paint