Erin May
1
Dr. Beach
INLA MAT Project
12/11/10
Focus Statement/Essential Question
Why are audiences across the ages so drawn to works in the Gothic genre, which strive to
connect their audience with the dark and irrational side of human nature?
Selected Sources:
Canon Text: “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe (1843)
Told to us in a flashback, this story describes the narrator’s very meticulous and detailed
efforts to kill the old man he lives with and cares for in order to rid himself of the old man’s
troubling pale blue eye. The narrator, who attests to his own sanity throughout the duration of the
story, is ultimately goaded into suffocating the old man with his own mattress in order to put a
stop to the inordinately loud beating of the old man’s heart. He dismembers the old man, buries
him beneath the floor boards, and calmly fields questions from the police, nearly getting away
with his crime until he begins to hear the steady beat of the old man’s heart from beneath the
floorboards; convinced that the policemen must hear the beating heart, too, the narrator suddenly
and unexpectedly confesses to his crime.
Young Adult Text: “Morgan Roehmar’s Boys” by Vivian Vande Velde (2004)
From Gothic! Ten Original Dark Tales, Deborah Noyes, Ed.
Delightfully suspenseful with a terrifying twist, this young adult short story tells the
harrowing tale of a teenage girl who, while playing the role of a murder victim in a gruesome
haunted hayride tableau, becomes the victim of a treacherous, conniving supernatural force.
May 2
Stationed on her own in an old barn built on top of the site where a famous serial killer once
concealed his dismembered victims, Ashley becomes irrationally paranoid about the irregular
sounds and flickering movements she starts to notice when a storm shuts down the power, as
well as her ability to communicate with the other workers on the farm. Intent on proving that she
is not crazy, Ashley seeks to find rational causes for the inexplicable (and subtly frightening)
things she sees and hears during the storm, and is actually relieved to discover a rational, albeit
supernatural, explanation for the occurrences in the ghost of (presumably) one of the serial
killer’s undiscovered young victims. Lured into a false sense of trust by this sympathetic young
apparition claiming to need her help, Ashley discovers too late that this is actually the ghost of
the killer, who takes over the first-person narration of the story as he gleefully strangles the
erstwhile protagonist to death.
Multimodal Source: “[the films of] Tim Burton” by Kees van Dijkhuizen, Jr.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjGkVtj_UbE
This visually stunning montage of scenes from Tim Burton’s movies serves as an
engaging overview of the many Gothic elements that Burton incorporates into his immensely
successful cinematic work. Overlaid with accompanying music from some of his films’ scores,
this video clip demonstrates how Burton uses aural and visual stimuli to create a darkly
mysterious, Gothic atmosphere and evoke in the viewer an intensely emotional response.
Multimodal Source(s): “Annabel Lee by Edgar Allan Poe” by TheNextRoseTyler
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecfVIt641n0&feature=related;
“Alone by Edgar Allan Poe” by Marthe Traetli
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IW0x7n6-eCw&feature=related;
May 3
“Eldorado – Animated Edgar Allen [sic] Poe Poem” by Tom Lebeau
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqHaKcpKR-s&feature=fvwrel;
“Edgar Allan Poe’s – The City in the Sea” by Wayne June
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EcQi_bluNzo;
“The Haunted Palace – Vancouver Film School (VFS)” by Jeanette Seah and Daniel Nudds
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKq18zRaC8o&feature=related
Featuring the Gothic poetry of Edgar Allan Poe, these YouTube videos all strive to
visually and aurally reinterpret Poe’s works. They vary in their degrees of success, but each
plainly incorporates elements of the Gothic genre and seeks to evoke a depressing, disturbing,
and/or haunting Gothic mood in its audience. They also serve as prime examples of the
translation of specific Gothic elements from literary text to visual image, and can be used to help
students trace the literal connection from one medium within the genre to another.
Reflection/Response
All of the resources I have included in this project are linked by a common genre:
Gothicism. The elements of this genre are quite clearly woven into the creative fabric of each of
the works I have selected, and studying these works collectively allows students multiple and
varied opportunities to identify and analyze the shared traits that define the Gothic genre.
Furthermore, by tracing the elements of Gothic style from one work to the next, students will
gain an understanding of how common themes, tropes, and motifs serve to unite works within
this genre despite major disparities in setting, time period, medium, and style. Lastly, exposing
students to a broad and diverse selection of Gothic works—ranging from text to image, from
canonical to contemporary, and from poetry to prose—allows them to reflect upon the enduring
May 4
appeal of the Gothic genre (our focus question for this unit of study) in more informed,
meaningful, and insightful ways.
United by themes relating to dark impulse, paranoia, inner turmoil, mortality, isolation,
insanity, loss, and guilt, the films of Tim Burton, the works of Edgar Allan Poe, and Vivian
Vande Velde’s piece of short contemporary fiction all tread immensely common ground,
ultimately exploring the dark side of human nature and the uncontrollable forces that compel
people to commit horrific acts. The two short stories, especially, have much in common, both
stylistically and thematically, ranging from first-person narration that offers a murderer’s-eyeview of the action, as well as insights into the irrational motives behind the crimes, to
protagonists desperate to appear sane and composed rather than paranoid and crazy. Both stories
also revolve around themes of malicious deception and wicked betrayal, in that characters with
murderous intent cunningly and treacherously build trust with their unsuspecting victims as they
close in on the culmination of their dastardly plots. There is even major overlap between several
small yet significant details—the loud beating of the victims’ hearts, creepy-yet-quotidian
American settings, death by asphyxiation followed by dismemberment, stashing victims’ bodies
beneath the floorboards, and nearly getting away with murderous deeds before breaking down
toward the end of routine police visits—giving students a lot to sink their teeth into as they begin
the work of comparative analysis.
Although many similar plot points and thematic elements are also echoed in the films of
Burton and the poetry of Poe, all of these works are also strongly united by their emphasis on
certain narrative tools and devices, such as the prominent use of suspense, foreshadowing,
unreliable narration, and shifting pace, to name a few—elements that students might more easily
May 5
pick up on, discuss, and analyze after observing their use across a broad range of sources rather
than encountering these devices in the isolation of a single, traditional text.
Furthermore, using both young adult literature and multimodal sources in conjunction
with texts from the canon will likely heighten students’ interest in the material for a number of
reasons. First of all, most adolescent students find the content and writing style used in young
adult texts to be more accessible, relevant, and relatable to their own lives, increasing their
intrinsic motivation to engage with the materials and learn. Secondly, the novelty of
unconventional sources and materials is sure to catch students’ attention and garner heightened
interest, at least initially. Finally, contemporary high school students tend to be very visually
fluent due to the prevalence and accessibility of visual media in modern society, and teens also
tend to be incredibly tech-savvy; therefore, integrating multimodal sources like film and
YouTube videos into the study of more conventional texts plays to students’ strengths as
learners, increasing the level of confidence (or feelings of self efficacy) that they have in their
ability to work with and interpret the material and also enhancing the likelihood of student
success.
Incorporating multimodal and young adult resources into a unit that focuses on a
canonical text also opens up some interesting and innovative possibilities for student assignments
and projects that play to students’ visual and technological strengths in a similar way. For
example, some assignments that could accompany the study of Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” and
the other supporting resources that I have selected might include: creating a patchwork poem
based on “The Tell-Tale Heart” and presenting it in a visual medium (such as a video or
slideshow presentation), using visual imagery as well as some combination of sound, music,
spoken word, and/or text to represent the theme, tone, and gothic elements in a poem; choosing a
May 6
Tim Burton movie to watch on one’s own time from a list of options and writing a response
paper discussing the similarities in theme, style, and audience appeal between the film and the
two short stories; and reimagining one of the two short stories as a movie directed by Tim
Burton, describing the settings, characters, music, dialogue, any special cinematic effects, and so
on.
These are activities that the students at my current field placement would likely enjoy, as
they prefer activities that allow them to express their own ideas and opinions, exercise their own
creativity, and make their own choices about what and how they learn. I also learned during the
one-week unit I taught earlier this semester that most of my students are fans of the Gothic genre,
particularly its more contemporary incarnations in television and film; they enjoy the horror and
suspense of scary stories, elements that both of the selected short stories deliver. My students
also love to be read aloud to, and read alouds seem to greatly increase my students’ ability to
engage with and absorb a text; the short story format of my selected texts makes reading them
aloud during class far more feasible than if I had chosen novels or other longer works, a factor
that will definitely contribute to my students overall enjoyment!
May 7
Works Cited
Poe, E. A. (1843). The tell-tale heart.
Vande Velde, V. (2004). Morgan Roehmar’s boys. In D. Noyes (Ed.), Gothic!: Ten original dark
tales (pp. 23-53). Cambridge, MA: Candlewick Press.