The Fall of the House of Usher (1839)

-->Edgar Allan Poe
-Unity of effect: single overall feeling
-Exploring strange & fantastic, conveying psychological terror through carefully chosen details and events
-Mood: feeling or atmosphere in words
-Setting: imagery & figurative language
*Autum, clouds hanging low

• Man rides horse to spooky House of Usher
• He used to be childhood friends with Roerick Usher, the house proprietor
• Rod sent him a letter that Rod now had a mental illness. Rod wanted to see him. He agreed to go give Rod a visit.
• Rod was always really quiet and didn't say much.
• House featuers gothic archecticture.
• The future scares Rod
• Rod's sister Madeline is about to die. She goes into coma like stages because of her illness.
• Rod and the man mourned over her death by opening her coffin so Rod could say his goodbyes again.
• The man watches as Rod goes crazy, thinking his sister has awakened from her death.
• Rod and the man saw Madeline's ghost in the hallway, she fell into Rod so they became one and she killed him.

-->Rod burries her alive because of her diease. She has spells like she is in a coma. Rod knows that she isn't dead, but still buries her. When she is in the coffin, he can hear her scratching at the wood.

The Signal Man

--> By: Charles Dickens

Spector-->Ghost

• The signal-man gets a sign from a spector when somene is about to die. The story takes place on an eerie railroad track, where many have been killed. One night the signal-man recieves a sign so he goes out to check it out. He is searching on the tracks & gets hit by a train. It was his signal to die.
  

The Raven

Edgar Allan Poe

--Raven was a bird of prophecy; in western cultures, ravens have been associated with myster, evil, omens, and eath. Bird is a phrophecy and can tell the future.

End Rhyme: Similar or identicle sounds at ends of lines.
Internal Rhyme: Rhymes within in line.
Rhyme Scheme: Basic patten at the end of rhymes.
Stanza: Group of words in a poem; paragraph.

• One December night, a man hears a knock on his door around midnight. He is almost asleep.
  
• It was the ghost of Maiden Lenore, his deceased wife he thinks.
  
• He was in an excited terror & lets them in.
• As he opens the door he apoligizes for taking so long because he was almost asleep; but when he opens the door, there is nobody there.
  
• He whispers, "Lenore", and waits, but not reply.
  
• He walks back inside and hears a louder tapping, but he believes it is only the wind this time on his window.
• He flings open his drapes and there is a Raven, just sitting there.
  
• He man asks the Raven why his name is on the night's death shore, so why the Raven is bringing death to his window.
  
• All the Raven says is, "Nevermore". That was all he said and the Raven just sat there.
  
• The man says he has hope that the Raven isn't bringing him death.
• He pulls up a chair in front of the window & looks at the bird. He wonders why the threatening bird is at his house.
• The bird just stares at him. The man had no evidence to come to a conclusion why the bird was there.
  
• The man asks God to give him relief from his memory of Lenore. He drinks in hopes of these thoughts leaving him. All the Raven says is "Nevermore".
  
• The man accuses the Raven of being a prophet, of the devil and evil. Either sent by the devil or someone else, he asks if he will ever be relieved.
  
• Raven, "Nevermore".
  
• He asks the Raven why he has to continue to be sad.
  
• Raven, "Nevermore".
  
• He tells the Raven to leave.
• Raven, "Nevermore".
• The Raven is a deamon, the lamp casts the Raven's shadows on the floor as the Raven takes the man's soul, killing him.
  

The Masque of the Red Death

-->Red Death: Sharp pains, dizziness, bleeding at pores, dissolution, scarlet stains upon body, seizures

• Prince Prospero: Happy, lived in the abbey (abbey: building built to resemble a monastery). Prince designed it to have gates of iron and many other Gothic elements. Prince had but many pleasure items in the castle; ballet-dancers, buffoons, musicians, beauty & wine. These were all safe from "Red death".
  
• Prince had a masked ball, but of most unusual magnificence, Masquerade.
• Masquerade was held in seven rooms. Imperial suite, sharp turns every 20-30 yards, big Gothic windows made of stained glass, decorations.

Different chambers:
--> 1. Blue
--> 2. Purple
--> 3. Green
--> 4. Orange
--> 5. White
--> 6. Violet
--> 7. Black Velvet: Window panes color of blood, hall of velvet

• The black velvet room there was a big clock. Clock of ebony. It made a beautiful noise. Everything and everybody would stop what they were doing to listen to it ding. When it would finish, people would laugh nervously.
  
• The prince's decor was bizzare; he had a fine eye for color. He was seen as mad. He loved the grotesque.
  
• The chambers held dreams inside. When the clock dings, the dreams stop. When clock is done, they begin again.
  
• No maskers at the ball could go into the hall of velvet. In the other rooms, the beat of life continued.
  
• At midnight, the 12 strokes of the clock pretty much hypnotize the people. During that time, the people noticed a masked person. The figure was tall, shrouded head to toe with clothing from the grave, his mask was a skull. He looked as he was sprinkled with blood like "Red Death".
  
• When Prince sees him, he shudders, of terror & distaste. The prince orders from him to be unmasked. The prince goes up the figure & the figure stabs the prince with a daggar.
  
• The skulled-mask man was Red Death. He killed everyone who was at the party. The clock stopped working also.
  

Death: You can't cheat it. Nobody can.

Danse Macabre

---> "Dance of Death"
By Stephen King, an essay

• The unknown suspense and music are the scary parts of the story, they cause the heart to race
• The "bug behind the door" is the unknown and the relief

--> Allegory: a work with two layers of meaning where most of the persons, objects & events stand for abstract ideas or qualities.

Prince
Meaning: Life, living
Lesson: Hope

Abbey
Meaning: Safe place
Lesson: You can't hide from fate

Series of 7 Rooms
Meaning: Life, Black room means death
Lesson: Scenarios of life

Clock
Meaning: The time everyone had left to live
Lesson: Our days are numbered

Stranger
Meaning: Death for all
Lesson: Nobody can escape destiny

The Devil and Tom Walker

Setting: Deep inlet, winding through Charles Bay, dark grove, gigantic tree, Massachusetts

• Old stories tell of a pirate called Pirate Kidd who buried treasure under a big tree; people say the devil hid the money. Kidd never returned to the treasure because he was hung for being a pirate.
• 1727, Tom Walker and his wife; they are miserable together and cheat on each other. She is very secretive. They live in an old, abandoned, moss covered house.
• Tom's wife was fierce of temper, loud of tongue & strong of arm.
• One day Tom takes a shortcut home, through a swamp. There is an old Indian fort in the swamp. He stopped there to take a break from walking. He is about to sit on the ground when he sees something halfway buried in the ground. It is an old Indian axe, so he goes to pick it up. As he does, he hears a voice say, "Leave that skull alone."
  
• Tom looks up and sees a black man sitting not far from him. The man is neither black, nor Indian. His skin seems to be covered by soot.
  
• The ground they are on belongs to Deacon Peabody, but the Indian man says Peabody is dead so it's his land. The Indian does not feel bad for cutting down Peabody's timber.
  
• The man goes by various names; black miner, wild huntsman. He talks to the Quakers & Anabaptists.
• Tom thinks the man is Old Scratch who is talked about in old stories. The two talk for a long time and become friends.
  
• The man tells Tom of Kidd's treasure. The man owns the tree it is buried underneath. The man burns his thumb print in Tom's head before he part. (Showing he is the Devil)
• Tom goes home, tells his wife of the stories, and she wants to go and find Kidd's money. Tom tells her no, just to make her mad, so she sets off on her own to go find it.
  
• Stories came about of her going to the swamp. She spoke of the black man. Eventually she disappears in the swamp. Rumors of her death flared, but the most famous story was a man with an axe on his shoulder was seen coming out of the swamp carrying a bundle in an apron.
  
• Another rumor is that Tom goes in search of her. He is about to give up when he sees an apron and a vulture hanging in the tree. Tom retrieves the apron because it looks like his wife's. He unfolds the apron to reveal a heart and liver inside.
  
• Tom thinks the man helped him because his wife was dying. Tom wanted to give the man thanks.
• He sees the black man, they talk, say thanks & begin talking about the treasure again. Tom wants to give the money to a slave ship, but the man said no. The man says to open a broker's shop in Boston.
• Later, Tom begins to attend church, he still believes the devil has something in store for him. One day, Tom says he just wants the devil to take him. He goes a little insane. Just then, the devil appears on his doorstep on a black horse. The devil sweeps Tom away never to be seen again.
  

Gothic Literature Notes

Elements of Gothic Literature:

• Grotesque characters, bizarre situations & violent events
• Began in Europe
• Came into the United States in the 19th century
• Famous writers include Edgar Allan Poe & Hawthorne
• Age of reason, fear of Gods

Romanticism:
.Writers saw basic elements of nature, limitation of reason
.Celebrated the individual spirit
.Emotions
.Imagination
.Splendors of nature rather than the fear of God
.Fascination of Supernatural
.Washington Irving: Prominent writer in the United States

Transcendentalists:
.Forms of truth beyond reason and experience
.Every individual is capable of discovering this higher truth on his or her own through intuition." -Ralph Waldo Emerson

Dark Side of Individualism:
.Gothic architecture
.Gothic cathedrals
.High stained glass windows, gargoyles (Gothic mascot)
.Imaginative distortion of reality
.Shadowy, demonic region
.Gothic tradition can be called the Dark Side of Individualism
.Romantics looked at the individual and saw hope
.Gothic saw potential evil

Poe

• Many of his stories took place in Gothic castles, decaying ancient estates which provided a eerie setting for terrifying events
• Male characters are crazy
  
• Female characters are beautiful but usually dying or already dead
• Plots are extreme murders, crazy situations
• Live burials, physical and mental torture, retribution from the grave
• Romantics show the good side, the evil side is brought out by the Gothic
  

Hawthorne

• Examined human fear under many conditions: fear, vanity, mistrust, betrayal