How Do The Nineteenth Century Short Stories You Have Read Deal With Horror Essay, Research Paper

How do the nineteenth century short

stories you have read deal with horror? How is the genre developed? ????????? ????????? Horror can be delivered through many

different ways, be it through gothicism, the psychological aspect or the

industrial view on horror. ????????? Bram Stokers writing involves

gothicism. He wrote many novels and short stories and amongst them was ?The

Squaw?. I think that Stokers vivid and graphic descriptions of death add more

aspects to his writing than just gothicism: ?but

the stone fell right on the kittens head and shattered out its little brains.? ????????? People usually associate gothicism with creepy haunted

houses or underground passages and secret stairways and that gothic writers

focus more on describing the scene than the characters and death. These are true,

but not necessarily to stoker. He sets the scene well and he also describes the

manner in which the characters died with an exceptional likeness to life.

Unlike the other authors that we have studied, Stokers characters have no clear

psychological uncertainties. Elias P Hutcheson comes across as a very arrogant

and racist character, and when he kills the cat?s kitten, the cat is set out

for revenge fueled by the hatred of Hutcheson: ??.

Launched herself at him as though hate and fury could lend her wings.? I think that stoker drops

subtle hints foreshadowing the fact that the cat is going to get revenge on

Hutcheson: ??.

Her eyes looked like positive murder? ????????? Stoker delivers an exceptional description of the Iron

Virgin which makes his writing all that more creepy and imaginative: ??. Placed in such a position that when the door should close the upper

ones would pierce the eyes of the victim, and the lower ones his heart and

lungs.? ????????? I don?t think that the reader would

have any sympathy for Hutcheson when the Iron Virgin kills him and they will

think that he has finally got his comeuppance: ??. Had pierced so deep that they had locked in the bones of his

skull?. And tore him out of his own prison?????????? Edgar Allan Poe sends the horror genre in a new direction

that is somewhat different to that of Stokers methods of writing horror. He

does so by dealing more with the psychological viewpoint and what?s going on in

the characters head rather than the surroundings. In Poe?s writing there is not

so much focus on atmosphere but more on characterisation. ????????? ?In ?The tell-tale Heart? we are immediately introduced to a

protagonist who has a very nervous and indeed mad state of mind. This is

suggested to us as he tells the reader that he hears voices from out of this

world: ? I heard all things in heaven?. I heard many things in hell.? ????????? He denies his madness and I think that this covering up of

his madness is a most definate and obvious sign of madness. ????????? Similarly, in ?The Black Cat? the protagonist?s mind

becomes progressively worse and more perverse through his evident alcohol

abuse. In just the same way, he tries to say that he is not mad: ?Yet, mad I am not.? ????????? ?The Black Cat? I think also deals with the imagery that

Stoker conveyed, not as well as him but he does so in such a fashion that the

reader recognises that it is a horror story which they are reading: ??. Grasped the poor beast by the throat, and deliberately cut one of

its eyeballs from its socket." ????????? In contrast to Stoker, Poe?s stories

involve investigations from the police that lead to the protagonists? madness

being shown full on as, under no pressure, they break down and confess to their

crimes. At the beginning of The tell-tale Heart, he tells us that he is cursed

with an acuteness of the senses: ??. Of hearing acute.? And this is then used

later on during his confession. I think that he confesses to it because he can

still hear the heart beating under the planks: ? ?Villains? I shrieked ?dissemble no more! I admit the

deed!-tear up the planks!-here, here!-it is the beating of the hideous heart!? ????????? As with ?The Squaw?, I think that there is also revenge on

the cats behalf in ?The Black Cat?. It is the cat that has driven him into

murder and it is then that cat that allows the police to discover that he has

murdered his wife and concealed her in the walls, by wailing out. But, it is

his fault for allowing the cat to wail out because it was him, through his

belief that he had got away with it and boasting about it, that he hit upon the

very same point in the walls where the body was concealed. We saw this mental

breakdown in ?The tell-tale Heart? and now we see it again here.