Ligeia

The Usher house is described in great lengths by Poe; he depicts it as gloomy, depressing, eerie, and gothic. As the narrator approaches the mansion he automatically feels the negative energy radiating into him as he states, “with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit” (Poe) He goes on to describe the walls as “bleak” and the windows as “vacant and eye like” as he moves closer and closer to the spooky mansion. The house reminds the narrator of ,…

A cold and bitter feeling is in the atmosphere on this night. Darkness consumed the small, but promising colony of Massachusetts. A type of night where only those who lurk in the shadows resurface to meet with the black man. Or maybe even a person who has something sinful bearing on their mind, is lurking around as well. This exact depiction of night is the setting for chapter 12, The Ministers Vigil; and the man responsible for the creation of The Scarlet Letter is, “the most significant…

Gloomy, dreary, creepy, forbidding, dark, horror, and fear, are all words that describe gothic literature. Gothic literature is something that the writer Edgar Allan Poe has much knowledge about, for he has written many gothic short stories and poems. Such as the short stories like, “The Black Cat”, “Tell Tale Heart”, “The Pit and the Pendulum”, and “Masque of the Red Death”. Also displayed in his poems, “Alone”, “Annabel Lee”, “The Raven”, and somewhat of “The Bells”. To a great extent, Edgar…

In reading The Rocking-Horse Winner and How to Read Literature Like a Professor, an overarching similarity between these two works can be seen with the presence of a type of ghost in the household (as described by the third chapter in Foster’s work). This ghost deviates from the traditional definition and represents that which is ubiquitous in contemporary, as well as past, life. Foster describes ghosts as ideas or acts that weigh down upon characters and “haunt” them, so to speak. The ghost in…

The overall mood of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado” is sinister and foreboding. In order to convey this, Poe employs the narrative’s setting. “The Cask of Amontillado” is a short story about an Italian man named Montresor, who desires vengeance on his wealthy acquaintance, Fortunato, for reasons not quite clarified to the reader. The story opens at “dusk… during the supreme madness of the carnival season” (501). Dusk, the period of time just before night sets in, is a setting…

Stephen King’s “The Reaper’s Image” can be classified as a gothic tale. In “The Reaper’s Image,” two men are moving an infamous mirror to the attic of a mansion, in which you learn the history of said mirror and the supernatural things that happen with the glass. “The Reaper’s Image” is a gothic tale because it has elements of a bleak setting, tortured characters, and the supernatural. In the short story “The Reaper’s Image,” Stephen King includes elements of a bleak setting, creating the mood…

The Raven and The Fall of The House of Usher were written by Edgar Allan Poe. Poe uses a gothic style in both stories. Gloomy, dark, and dull are some of the words that can describe the setting. The Raven takes place on a cold December day at midnight, The Fall of the House of Usher takes place in autumn. Some say both are dreary. A nameless narrator was invited to see his ‘sick’ friend. Usher tells the narrator it’s the house making him sick. Sometime during his stay, Madeline suddenly dies of…

When I think of "wilderness of the mind", I think of undiscovered territories. Poe definitely discovered new territories of the mind in his writings such as "The Fall of the House of Usher". His work displayed the elements of Gothic such as a sense of fear and mystery. The narrator said "It was no wonder that his condition terrified- that it infected me. I felt it creeping upon me, by slow yet certain degrees, the wild influences of his own fantastic yet impressive superstitions." (663) It…

The Fall of the House of Usher is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe first published in 1839.Whether one reads this story sincere expression of horror, or is Poe simply mocking as metaphysical speculation on the identity of matter and spirit, or as a psychological study of the powerful influence a deranged mind may have on a sane one, or even simply as a Gothic horror chiller, it remains a genuine masterwork of American fiction. The narrator of the story tells of an autumn visit to the House…

they are differences among the elements that are explored in the prose “Ligeia” and the poem “The Raven”. The prose and poem explore pain, and loss of a loved one in a broken unknown narrator’s life. In “Ligeia” it’s similar to “The Raven” in that it has the idea of loss and despair, in the setting and the idea of mythology that plays a huge aspect in the prose and poem. The differences are that “The Raven has symbols while “Ligeia” has no symbolism, and…