Grotesque

An air of gloom, anguish and despair, with a hint of melancholy and a feathery apparition haunting the mind of a young scholar who is burdened by bereaved love and has secluded himself behind his chamber door, in a room full of bittersweet memories. Such is the work of Edgar Allan Poe, specifically, that of The Raven. Published on the 29th of January 1845, The Raven instantly became a hit and Poe’s most famous work. Oftentimes when discussing the gothic genre, many may immediately think of Poe,…

When it comes to the pioneers of American Romanticism, Edgar Allan Poe is considered to be one of the most important authors because of his unique gothic style of writing which perfectly encompasses melancholy, horror, passion, thrill and mystery. In his beginnings as a writer, Poe was nowhere as successful as he is today. Although he published his first literary work, which was a book of poetry, in 1827 at the age of eighteen, his real and greatest success came but in 1845 with the publication…

Edgar Allan Poe “became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity” relating himself to the character Roderick Usher in one of his amazing short stories, “The Fall of the House of Usher.” Poe had a depressing and heartbreaking life, which reflects in his writings, as he is known for horror and mystery stories. Edgar Allan Poe horrifyingly and ghastly reflects Roderick Usher’s creepy and eerie appearance to the decayed, “crumbling”, and lightless house magnificently revealing Roderick’s fear…

Fear, writing and twisted, does not only boil to the surface as a primal response to danger, but to the sense of terror, to loss, to loneliness, and the like. Gothic stories such as Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel, Frankenstein, aspire to unleash and elucidate these sensations. In the fashion of Romantic-era literature, this dread is shown as a ramification of excessive human ambition. To achieve this, Frankenstein shuffles the story’s chronology and employs three different voices to piece its events…

power between mortality and death. This power reversal is also similar to one of the main themes in the story. Whereby becoming a vampire slayer the human reverses the role between predator and prey. The uncanny in the human’s euphoria in such a grotesque act because of their power craving is similar to the…

“The Hungry Stone” is a short story written by Rabindranath Tagore Which is a translation of the Bengali version “Khudhito Pashan” that was published in his book of short stories “Galpoguchcha”. Rabinndranath(1867-1941) and his many-sided achievements are incredible. He is a writer, a great thinker,an artist,a great musician and an orator of extraordinary power. With his god-gifted genius his leviathan bulk of writing and his universal appeal make him global. He got Nobel Prize for his book…

The Tell-Tale Heart Research In 1843, Edgar Allan Poe’s 2,200- word first person unreliable narrative short story “The Tell-Tale Heart,” was published. Edgar Allan Poe was a successful editor, literacy critic and American writer who wrote short stories and poetry. The Tell-Tale Heart is known for its unnamed narrator’s insanity and classifies Poe’s writing as a gothic fictional story. The narrator explains in the opening of the story that he killed the old man, but it was not for passion nor…

The literary works of Edgar Allan Poe often focus on characters that suffer from some form of mental or physical illness. In his poems and short stories, Poe uses repetition and extensive description to create a relevant atmosphere for the reader. This is especially evident in Poe 's “The Fall of the House of Usher”. Using a narrator to provide an account through a first person perspective, Poe tells a story of two friends whose sanity becomes exceedingly more questionable as the story continues…

“Hell in Isolation” In his short story, “The Fall of the House of Usher,” Edgar Allen Poe investigates the negative effects of self-isolationism. Roderick Usher, a mentally ill, incestuous, and secluded man, requests the narrator’s help. Upon his arrival, the narrator notices eerie attributes of the “melancholy” (3) house of Usher, while walking through clouds of miasma. The narrator then witnesses Roderick’s extreme paranoia, which stems from his solitude. The narrator also catches…

Often a person can be conditioned to do a certain behavior, either by their own actions or influences from others, sometimes without realizing it. In two different novels that share a similar theme of racism, A Walk in The Night by Alex La Guma, and Maru by Bessie Head, the act of conditioning is explored. A Walk in The Night follows many different characters throughout the novel but mostly centers around the actions of Michael Adonis. Michael is a person of color in a coastal city of South…