What Are The Gothic Techniques Used In The Black Cat

Gothic Techniques “I became insane, with short intervals of horrible sanity.” Gothic literature originates from Horace Wadpole’s “A Gothic Story” in 1764. The use of the word was intended to be a joke, until Poe picked up the style and made it popular. Some of what Poe used to capture attention was unreliable narrators, macabre, and gloomy settings. In “The Black Cat”, Poe uses unreliable narrators by using the line “For the most wild, yet most homely narrative I am about to pen, I neither expect nor solicit belief”. This gives the reader the impression that his story may not be true. He also says he expects readers to think he is mad, which also can be assumed that affects his reliability. In “The Pit and the Pendulum”, the narrator is also unreliable because he passes out frequently and is drugged. He also tells of some events that don’t seem to really make sense or match with what else has been told. For example, when he’s talking about the rats and how they chewed off his bindings, logically he should have been torn up from the rats biting him. …show more content…
He is in a drunk rage and cuts its eye out. Another instance of macabre in this story is when he kills his wife, in a dark way. Macabre is in “Pit and the Pendulum” also. The narrator didn’t die in this story, but he was supposed to die a gruesome death. He mentions the “horrors of Toledo”, and how the Inquisition focused around torture. In “Fall of the House of Usher”, Roderick’s sister was thought to have died of a mysterious illness, and is buried alive. She then comes back from her grave, goes to the room where Roderick is. She falls unto him and