Death and Gothic Elements in Edgar Allan Poe’s Stories

• Main Authors: Shin-Chun Chaung, 莊適存
• Other Authors: Li-Ru Lu
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2018
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/ybhbxs

碩士 === 國立中山大學 === 中國文學系研究所 === 106 === In “The Fall of the House of Usher,” Poe presents a Gothic atmosphere by first describing Usher’s Gothic house, and the house emanates the sense of horror at the first glance of reading. Besides, Poe arouses subconscious: he no longer tells the story literally; instead, he tells his story with an unreliable narrator, a narrator that does not tell you what really happens. Poe’s mad narrators fail to clearly tell a story and attempt to lie or confuse readers with their inconsistent stories. In other words, Poe’s Gothic fictions intends to manifest the ghosts inside the characters’ minds. The collapse of the house, in “The Fall of the House of Usher,” may imply the full destruction of the character’s inner world. Furthermore, death is a major subject in Poe’s works. To Poe’s characters, death is unacceptable and painful. Death anxiety thus is often seen in his works. In this thesis, I introduce the Gothic fiction of Edgar Allan Poe. Chapter introduces Gothic fiction and uses “The Fall of the House of Usher” as an example. Chapter two discusses the unreliable narrator in “The Black Cat to discuss. The third chapter discusses the premature burial in Poe’s works and uses “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar” and “The Cask of Amontillado” as examples. The fourth chapter discusses the death anxiety in Poe’s works and takes “The Pit and the Pendulum” for example to discuss the death in literature.