Tod Browning’s Freaks flings itself in-between the different categories of Terror, Horror, and Revulsion, sometimes splicing and mutating the different categories into indefinable, unrecognizable, terms. Browning’s aim for his film is not to clear anything up, using the themes of: us vs. them, good and evil, humans and monsters, etc. to create understanding or enlighten people; and it certainly is not a film promoting the message, “Freaks! They’re just like us!” His intentions, rather, is to stir the witches brew, disturbing the layer of grime deep within us, bringing something to the surface, making us look at it in it’s bulging eye, and having us decipher or at least acknowledge the thoughts and reactions Freaks generates in us for ourselves.…
In Volume 1 of Mary Shelley‘s ‘Frankenstein’, horror and terror are themes that evidently run strongly throughout, for example the horror of the creation and the awakening of the Creature, and Victor Frankenstein’s fearful response. According to James. B. Twitchell – “Horror – horrére means to stand on end or bristle”, which most definitely applies to Frankenstein. Written in the early 19th century, Shelley took inspiration from society at the time – particularly science – with the use of…
Literary Techniques and the Horror of The Turn of the Screw One purpose of Henry James’ gothic novella The Turn of the Screw is to instill fear in the reader. There are several features of this work that make the story horror inducing; first, James’ deals with the idea of the corruption of innocence of children. In the story’s opening chapter, the observation is made that the corruption of a child in a ghost story “adds a particular touch” (James 115). Fear is also associated with the…
Explanatory Essay In scary stories authors use things that could scare us like someone dying, a ghost,an abnormal figure, or even death. In addition , “House Taken Over” and “ The Fall of the House of Usher” the authors used transformation within the characters to scare us as well as the aid of the other scary elements I just stated. How exactly, well the transformation in both stories is used show how characters go from being fearful to accepting the irregularity of their abnormal fate. And…
“Shaking in every limb, I groped my way back to the wall; resolving there to perish rather than ris the terrors of the wells of which my imagination now pictured many in various positions about the dungeon.” The narrator is scared of what may be in the dungeon, since he cannot see anything. He does not know what is in this dungeon, so all he can do is imagine what is in here and how he is going to be executed. This relates back to my theme of the uncertainty of life and death, because the…
but also the more you see and have to fear. When you come out of childhood you learn that the monsters you feared under the bed may not be there, but you learn that they lurk the streets and the halls of your life. You learn not only to fear monsters but also emotion, failure, change and loss. How does one learn to cope? how, after finding out that the earth is so terrifying,, do people continue on? How do you survive When I was a child I feared change. In order to pass the time I read the…
people cannot be prosecuted for any crimes without valid proof (this excludes word of mouth). We are also a more scientifically advanced society so we rarely have use for our imagination when it comes to explaining. We instead we use scientific observations to explain diseases, deaths and disappearances. So in a modern society we have very little reasoning to fear monsters and the supernatural yet we still do. Monsters in modern times serve a different purpose than those of historic monsters.…
I Believe in Facing Your Fears I believe in facing your fears. I have always considered myself a fairly brave individual. I can hold a snake without flinching, climb to the tops of tall buildings, and sleep with the lights off after a scary movie. Yet, there was one thing that at the ripe young age of thirteen absolutely terrified me, and that was airplanes. As a child I heard many horror stories of catastrophic plane hijackings and crashes. It scared me to think that so many things could go…
The common elements and themes in Gothic Literature create unity amongst the genre to instil the emotions of fear, horror and suspense. The ways in which The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and The Woman in Black directed by James Watkins portray the themes of isolation and madness through elements such as context, symbolism and tone. How each text presents these themes is integral to the diverse perspectives which make Gothic literature popular. The emotions of fear, horror and…
also a big part in the Hollywood movies such as the horror movies like The Conjuring, Annabelle, Mama etc. According to Stephen T. Asma, professor of Philosophy at Columbia Collage Chicago, explains humans are vulnerable therefore monsters are a representation of the fear of the unknown (par.6). We as humans make up such monsters to justify the fear of the unknown, the fear of what we grew up knowing and the stories that we heard. An example will be the story of the shadow man people talk a lot…