Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque

instrument of fear. Roderick fears inheriting the family madness, only to have his fear conquer him in the form of his sister, drawing upon the fears of inheritance, past sins, as readers are left to comprehend the narrator’s own conclusions to the tale. As one reads the stories by Cortázar, it becomes evident that the implementation of the fantastic elements are built into the narrative as vital to the solution of the conflicts in the stories, but also as vehicles in which the characters must…

Almost every story that is written uses symbolism. Authors use this technique to give a object, person, or a situation another meaning than its literal meaning (definition). This makes the text have a deeper meaning. The story “The Fall of the House of Usher” is an example of this style of writing. Throughout this short story writer Edgar Allan Poe uses a collection of symbols in his eerie yet remarkable story. One of Poe’s many symbols is the title itself. “The house of Usher” is not only…

The Haunted Tell-Tale Heart Paragraph one A New Home Once there lived a feeble elderly blind man whose life was cut short by a crazy calculated killer who somehow, someway escaped and evaded the police from arrest Later in the distant future a family had bought a house from a peculiar fellow, this is their story It's seven o'clock am The house was clearly decaying, the interior of the house had worn-down white walls, portraits,…

In Edgar Allan Poe’s short story, “The Cask of Amontillado” Poe creates two mood in two different settings, the carnival and the catacombs. The first mood that is established at the carnival is a joyful mood, it then shifts to being suspenseful at the catacombs. During the carnival setting Poe uses a joyful and pleasant mood. When the the carnival setting first comes up, Fortunato approaches Montresor, “He accosted me with excessive warmth” (84). Fortunato is illustrating how he is excited to…

The descriptions in Edgar allan Poe’s story the fall of the house of usher are visual and can easily be adapted from words into mental images. He uses a method of gothic imagery which can be defined as, literature that focuses on human emotions such as terror and guilt. Gothic literature usually includes elements of an atmosphere of gloom, terror, and mystery. In the story Poe immediately introduces this theme, “with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my…

Edgar Allen Poe uses his words to describe a very moody and kind of dark places to tell his stories. And it gives everything a dark future its like he does not believe in the good things around him but only the bad. Always has something bad to say, nothing happy. Maybe its because he had a rough childhood. "THE thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could; but when he ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge." It remind of when someone makes a pun towards your broken body part and…

In “The Fall of The House of Usher” Edgar Allan Poe utilizes many parallels between Roderick, Madeline, and the House of Usher. Poe uses many parallels some of these being fissures, similarities in style, and even deaths. First of all, the fissure is the widest parallel across the story, “extending from the roof of the building in front… made its way down the wall in a zigzag direction” (Poe 323). Moreover, the fissure has many explanations, one being, the main character and his sister were…

Edgar Allen Poe, in his work “The Fall of the House of Usher”, brings the sinister consequences of inbreeding front and center, in a way that informs, yet entertains, the reader. One of many themes, inbreeding is key to fully understanding the plot and messages of ‘The Fall of the House of Usher” and fully engaging with the text. Poe is able to enter into scientific discourse and discuss both the physical and psychological penalties of inbreeding by making sinister implications about Roderick…

Madeline’s Nonexistence In Edgar Allan Poes’s “The Fall of the House of Usher,” readers are left contemplating whether or not Madeline is still alive or if she is just a figment of Roderick’s and the narrator’s conscious. Throughout the story, we are given supporting evidence for both sides, but the reader must choose which they are going to believe. At the beginning of the story, we learn that Roderick is going insane and that he can not see the difference between reality and fantasy. In…

Inbreeding: It is something that we feel, as a society, we have moved entirely away from, and yet it still haunts and evokes a deep fear within us that something so sinister could have happened among us. Edgar Allen Poe, in his work the Fall of the House of Usher, brings the sinister consequences of inbreeding front and center, yet he still manages to do it quite subtly. One of many themes, inbreeding is key to fully understanding the plot and the deeper messages of the Fall of the House of…