As I Lay Dying And Fall Of The House Of Usher
Gothic Literature Definition Essay
“The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.” (Mark Twain) Both As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner and “Fall of the House of Usher” by Edgar Allen Poe can be considered gothic literature. Gothic literature is work that strives to get a reaction out of the audience such as fear, anxiety, and suspense. It is the darker side of literature. In As I Lay Dying and “Fall of the House of Usher”, the gothic conventions used are coffins, death, and torture.
In As I Lay Dying, the gothic literature convention the novel is based around is coffins. Addie Bundren was facing death as she knew it. Her son cash was building a coffin for her, that he tried to …show more content…
As Usher meets with his sister again, he realized she is back to being very close to death. As Madalyn is meeting up with usher after he buried her alive "with a low moaning cry, fell heavily inward upon the person of her brother, and in her violent and now final death-agonies, bore him to the floor a corpse..." (Poe 422). The last of the usher family has now fallen. This relates to death because it is saying how the Usher house truly "fell”. With the Ushers now dead, "the body having been encoffined, we two alone bore it to its rest..." (Poe 415). After death, the bodies and the house of Ushers were being laid to rest. However, in gothic literature death is not the final resting place. As I Lay Dying and “Fall of the House of Usher” have death as one of their many forms of gothic literature.
Coffins, torture, and death are some of the many forms of gothic conventions in As I Lay Dying and “Fall of the House of Usher”. Poe in “Fall of the House of Usher” did the most effective job of incorporating gothic literature because of the detail he puts into his story. Gothic conventions present in works today are still appealing to the modern reader because in today’s society, people like to be scared or on the edge of their seat during a movie or a book. People
“The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.” (Mark Twain) Both As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner and “Fall of the House of Usher” by Edgar Allen Poe can be considered gothic literature. Gothic literature is work that strives to get a reaction out of the audience such as fear, anxiety, and suspense. It is the darker side of literature. In As I Lay Dying and “Fall of the House of Usher”, the gothic conventions used are coffins, death, and torture.
In As I Lay Dying, the gothic literature convention the novel is based around is coffins. Addie Bundren was facing death as she knew it. Her son cash was building a coffin for her, that he tried to …show more content…
As Usher meets with his sister again, he realized she is back to being very close to death. As Madalyn is meeting up with usher after he buried her alive "with a low moaning cry, fell heavily inward upon the person of her brother, and in her violent and now final death-agonies, bore him to the floor a corpse..." (Poe 422). The last of the usher family has now fallen. This relates to death because it is saying how the Usher house truly "fell”. With the Ushers now dead, "the body having been encoffined, we two alone bore it to its rest..." (Poe 415). After death, the bodies and the house of Ushers were being laid to rest. However, in gothic literature death is not the final resting place. As I Lay Dying and “Fall of the House of Usher” have death as one of their many forms of gothic literature.
Coffins, torture, and death are some of the many forms of gothic conventions in As I Lay Dying and “Fall of the House of Usher”. Poe in “Fall of the House of Usher” did the most effective job of incorporating gothic literature because of the detail he puts into his story. Gothic conventions present in works today are still appealing to the modern reader because in today’s society, people like to be scared or on the edge of their seat during a movie or a book. People