Diego Weaver
Mr. Kreamer
Honors American Literature
9-19-14
American Gothic Literature American Gothic Literature is a subgenre of gothic fiction. Usually American Gothic Literature is based off things that are included with is the rational facing off against the irrational. Feelings that are included with it are feelings of guilt or insanity. American gothic literature is used to give the reader a thought of an evil presence inside of the story, to get the reader to assume that within all the happiness and good times, a demonic evil presence is still there waiting for its moment to make its grand appearance. There are three different types of American gothic literature: old American gothic literature, New American gothic literature, and southern American gothic literature. The story, “The Raven” by Edgar Allen Poe, it talks about a man who is apparently talking to a raven as it wakes him up in the middle of the night. This is a prime example of American Gothic Literature because the story starts off as a man waking up from his sleep and hearing a knocking on his door, but as the story progresses, the demonic side of gothic literature begins to unravel itself. The raven in this story speaks to the man with one word,” nevermore”, but that one word was all it took for the man to go mad and talk back to the bird. In the story, “The Tell-Tale Heart” the man could not stand the old mad and his eye, so he kills the old man and rejoices when the deed is done. Later on in the story when policemen come to the house to check and see if everyone is alright, he is so confident that they won’t find the body or find out that he killed the old man in the first place, as the story continues he starts going insane with the guilt that is brewing inside of him to the point where he yells and tells the policemen where the old man’s body is.
In both of these stories both