Sunday, October 17, 2010

The Black Cat Q&A Cont'd...Again

And here, ladies and gentlemen, is the last Q&A.


What are some similarities between all the Gothic Literature stories we've read so far? Again, be specific and use details in your response.
All of the Gothic stories that we’ve read employ classic Gothic literary devices.  For example, the antagonist ultimately triumphs over the protagonist, the protagonist either voluntarily or involuntarily isolates himself, and the protagonist unknowingly represses his emotions.  The two stories that are most similar to me are The Tell-Tale Heart and The Black Cat.  Both stories are written by Edgar Allen Poe and also in the same year.  Both feature narrators who are extremely and slightly insane, respectively.  Both murder people close to them.  The narrator of TTH smothers a feeble old man with a vulture’s eye, and the narrator of TBC drives an axe into his wife’s brain.  Both narrators display a show of arrogance that leads them to conviction.  In The Tell-Tale Heart, the narrator is confident enough to the point where he decides to hold a conversation with the police officers in the room under which the old man’s corpse is buried.  In The Black Cat, the narrator expounds to the police how finely made the walls of his cellar are and evens knocks with his cane on the planks behind which his wife’s dead body rests.  Another one of Poe’s arrogant narrators is Prince Prospero of The Masque of the Red Death.  Prospero’s pompous attitude drives him to mock the Red Death; he holds a masquerade ball when he fully knows that the Red Death’s most defining symptom is the facial skin turning blood red.

I have more to say, but for now, here is this.

Maria Xie, your Ultimate Decepticon >.<

1 comment:

  1. I would like to make a point clear. The narrator of the TTH murders a feeble old man whom he claims is very close to and loves very much. How's that for some irony?

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