Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque

Ciara Terabasso Pritika Pradhan Principles of Literary Study: The Devil in the Details: 358:206:01 18 December 2017 Response Paper The plight of life can be transformed into beauty based on one’s response to trauma. Dorian had a dark family past when he was younger. He had a wicked grandfather, his dad was murdered, and his mother died young. When Dorian came to be older, his beauty…

Edgar Allan Poe has become a vital figure in the world of literature based on his gothic short stories, Cask of Amontillado to The Fall of House Usher and Tell-Tale Heart, each unique in their own way as they have attracted more people to his books for over two centuries. In his short stories, Poe has shown numerous amounts of descriptive and unsettling imagery with different techniques, adding an eerie mood along with suspenseful syntax. Poe not only incorporates techniques such as unsettling…

Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher “The Fall of The House of Usher” is a dreary tale of a descent into madness, the unnamed narrator goes into detail of just how gloomy the house truly is. The introduction to “The Fall of The House of Usher” sets up a very gothic mood, Edgar Allen Poe does this by using dark descriptive words. “The theme of The Fall of The House of Usher” is a descent into madness as the usher house was once lively and is now dead in a sense. When the narrator…

sometimes tends to be an unreliable narrator in the story. We can see that in his 3 stories “The Tell-Tale Heart”, “That Black Cat”, and “The Cask of Amontillado”. Those stories show characteristics of an unreliable narrator. We can mostly see it in “The Tell-Tale Heart”. Everyone of Poe’s stories has a gruesome and traumatic ending which add on to that insane and unreliable sense. In “The Tell-Tale Heart”, the narrator is a psychotic person. In “The Black Cat”, the narrator is a violet…

Compare and Contrast Essay: "The Tell-Tale Heart" by Edgar Allan Poe and "The Landlady" by Roald Dahl Both short stories "The Tell-Tale Heart" by Edgar Allan Poe and "The Landlady” by Roald Dahl are gothic, mysterious stories. The authors (of both stories) make the stories exciting for the reader due to the tension and suspense they create. There are some clear differences between the two stories, but also some similarities. In “The Tell-Tale Heart” the narrator is the main character in the…

“The Tell-Tale Heart” is a short story written by Edgar Allan Poe, which a story that revolves around the vivid memory of the narrator’s calculated moves, from inception to the murder itself. The narrator bares his soul, and his strong sense of paranoia to justify his sanity, but in the end, confirms his ‘madness’ by the vile act of murder he commits. The narrator reveals the profound truth, of how untruthful and deceiving the human heart could be, and at the same time, how it can be…

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,…

Steinbeck is one of many author that uses imagery for their story, in “The Chrysanthemums” the theme of the story was uses through imagery and symbolism. His imagery reinforces his theme of loneliness and confinement in the story. In “The Chrysanthemums”, the valley was surrounded by mountains and fog, which describe as if she was living inside of the pot. The house that Elisa lives in is surrounded by fences and the flower chrysanthemums is also surrounded by fence inside the fence. As if she…

The stories "An Adventure in Paris"(NASF. 493) by Guy De Maupassant and "Everyday Use"(NASF. 816) by Alice Walker showcase similar and different ways to present a story through point of view and characters. Both stories have characters that are functional and symbolic to the story. Each of these stories uses both a foil and utilitarian through one character, Dee and Jean Varin, that ultimately changes the protagonist for the better and allows them to see what they have. De Maupassant makes his…

Raymond Carver is one of the men accredited for reviving the contemporary short story genre. He was an excessive drinker and this shaped his stories along with the qualities of minimalism and dirty realism. Edward Hopper was an American painter that specialized in realism. Hopper’s artwork depicted the accurate, detailed, and embellished nature of contemporary life. Raymond Carver’s short story “Cathedral” and Edward Hopper’s painting Room in New York both exhibit someone examining a…