The primary gothic elements in the “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allen Poe include the incidence of madness, theme of decay, and death. The story’s setting is styled and set in a shadowy and dark background, although it occurs in an urban environment. The vague description creates and elicits fear, anticipation, and more terrifying. The threatening aspect helps evoke the real feeling and picture of horror, coming from a reader’s inner self. By its frantic and nervous tone, the reader imagines and eerie, despair, and gloomy feeling. The setting is most interesting as it not only conjures imaginary weird feeling but also sets the stage for destruction and killings.
The author’s use of creepy words and sentences are not only evidential in the horror of the story, but also elicits the deathly environment illusion. For example, the author describes the old man’s body, “First of all, I dismembered the corpse. I cut off the head and the arms and the legs ( Poe, 1843) .” The symbolic violence is interesting as it portrays death and couples with the loose floorboards, creaking door hinges, and dim lighting. All these set the stage for a killing, madness, and insanity. The image describing the old man raised numerous questions as to the sanity and linked process of death. How reliable was the sanity of the main character in the story?
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In “Rappaccini’s Daughter” by Nathaniel Hawthorne, the central gothic elements are exotic settings, familial secrets, revenge, and a supernatural curse. The most interesting and capturing feature in the story is the element of the supernatural curse. How effective is the supernatural curse? Another critical is, “what is the relationship between the supernatural curse and the poisons shrub?” How significant is the relationship with the overall tragic death of Beatrice? These questions are critical and offer an insight into the relevance of Rappaccini’s experiments.
References
Hawthorne, N. (2006). Rappaccini's Daughter . ReadHowYouWant. com. http://www.shortstoryamerica.com/pdf_classics/hawthorne_rappaccinis_daughter.pdf
Poe, E. A. (1843). The tell-tale heart. https://repositorio.ufsc.br/bitstream/handle/123456789/132720/The_Tell-Tale_Heart_(Edgar_Allan_Poe_1843).pdf?sequence=1
