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Gothic tradition, also being called as Gothic horror, is a genre or a mode of
literature that combines fictions, horror and Romanticism. To take one step
forward, creatures such as people, animals, or anything ridiculous eccentric
are all counted on the Gothic Literature. To be honest, the Gothic Literature
had been well-known and pandemic during the 19th century. The “Brooding
Romantics” had caught people’s attention during the mysterious period.
Essentially, there are three major points that separated the Gothic ideas. The
three components are grotesque characters, bizarre situations, and violent
events. With no doubt, the bizarre situations would be the most indispensable
key role among the three categories. Take two examples to support the ideas,
“The Birthmark” (Nathaniel Hawthorne) and “The Fall of the House of
Usher” (Edgar Allan Poe) are the two symbolic stories which used the Gothic
traditions to represent the bizarre situations. Concisely, both authors employed
their personal technical proficiency. However, Poe obviously made his stories
become more meaningful use by making his narrators experienced the
hideous perception of getting hysteric insane, physiological torture, or even
spiritual persecution.
First of all, according to “The Birthmark,” Georgiana, who was the wife of
Aylmer, made a dream which showed that the birthmark on Georgiana’s cheek
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has a living connection to her heart. By interpreting the author’s words, the
presence of the mark was being described as likely as the mood was shown in
the readers’ scene, the readership can precisely feel that Georgiana’s life was
only being attached with a miniature meager thread, which can be easily be
eradicated. On the other hand, when Aylmer was preparing for eliminate and
wipe out the unsightly birth mark, he approximately fell into some kind of
particular illusion. The focal point makes the audiences sink into the same
portrait inside character’s mentality, experiences the whole process that make
our skin start itchy and hair become numb. For example: Hawthorne described
the mood of Aylmer’s heart in line 1028. “He handled physical details as if
there were nothing beyond them; yet spiritualized them all, and redeemed
himself from materialism by his strong and eager aspiration towards the infinite.
In his grasp the veriest clod of earth assumed a soul” In addition, at the end of
the story, Georgiana felt jubilant about her pretty face, celebrating for eliminate
her filthy grotesque blemish, which affected her entire life and killed her with
the insane occasion. Afterward, the voice of the narrator makes the readers
start worrying about the influence of the drowsy Georgiana, as well as create
the horror figure in readers’ mind.
Next, with “The Fall of the House of Usher,” Roderick Usher, the
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proprietor of the residence, was afraid of the family traditional marriage
between him and his sister, Miss Madeline. The Gothic images occur first
when Roderick Usher was describing Miss Madeline’s tragedy in the dwelling.
The narrator started slowly giving apprehensive awareness to the audience by
portraying the invincible sick misfortune and making the words transformed to
a large number of thorns, puncturing audience’s skin. For instance, Poe
mentioned about Miss Madeline’s disease in line 13. "Her decease," he said,
with a bitterness which I can never forget, "would leave him (him the hopeless
and the frail) the last of the ancient race of the Ushers." Furthermore, there
was a formidable rainstorm on the seventh day after Miss Madeline was buried
in the cellar by Usher and the narrator, the scene outside the house had the
exactly the same as the painting that narrator saw first when the narrator came
into the old dwelling. The abnormal situation seemed implying that there was
something extraordinary about the whole house. In addition, during the period
after Miss Madeline was buried, the broken wood sounds far from the house
symbolized a sort of horrific revenge or an unnatural symbol that urges the
audience to imagine more possible insane portrait, and then reconstructs the
imagination to a realistic sensation.
For a few reasons, Edgar Allan Poe had some unique capabilities such as
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using psychological understanding and abstruse signatures to make his
bizarre situations more meaningful use by comparing with another Gothic
innovative author, Nathaniel Hawthorne. Initially, it is easily to find out that
Nathaniel Hawthorne was concentrated more on using ethics and
philosophical proficiency by comparing Edgar Allan Poe to Nathaniel
Hawthorne. Among all of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s fictions, most of his features
had other internal ideas, which were hardly for every single readership to
understand what the author was trying to interpret. In contrast, Poe used to
compose something that connected to psychology, which was a rare
component that various composers seldom worked with in the generation of
Gothic, the 19th century. To make his audience went through more about his
individual extraordinary sentiment, Poe strengthened further on playing
emotional words, which make his readers create their own dreadful profiles in
their mind. In Poe’s stories, his first-narrators were often having some kind of
tragedy or unpredictable tribulation.
In conclusion, Poe effectively used his words to make the readers
resolutely pass through the Gothic fictions. In fact, the horror conception is
relying on the people who read the articles. Depend on audiences’ imagination,
the Gothic traditions were being demonstrated formidable.