Both Edgar Allan Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne Essay

twain Edgar Allan Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne may be classified as writers of the gothic fiction genre in English Literature. mediaeval literature is characterized by themes of darkness, such as death, dread and decay. In Poes short story The Tell-Tale Heart, death is a central concern. The protagonist is simply obsessed with the idea of committing murder. Instability and dementia are also very typical of gothic fiction, and the protagonist embodies both(prenominal) qualities in spite of his repeated insistence that he is quite sane. The computer architecture in this story is also quite Gothic it is falling by and is quite gloomy and dim.The use of the floorboards to hide the old mans body echoes the gothic shares of underground and subterranean activities in both the erratum and metaphorical senses. The horrors and neuroses that occupy gothic characters are quite evidently put in in Poes short story. The excesses of emotion and heightened sense of horror captured in the s tory is essential to a piece of gothic fiction. Hawthornes boyish Goodman Brown uses the typically gothic instrument of dreams as a manner of carrying forward the action in the text.Dreams also deal out to heighten the element of the supernatural and horror in the gothic text. The presence of the typical damsel in distress female character i. e. Faith and the Devil itself are some of the typical Gothic elements in Hawthornes work. The concepts of the staff as a symbol of evil and other Christian references may be interpreted as Gothic in this short story. Goodmans betoken for Faith is symbolic and works throughout the novel aided by the various Gothic elements of dreams, trances and desperation.The story examines how Goodman can be anyone at all. The roughly terrifying realization is that anyone at all is capable of great evil. Gothic themes of isolation are explored to drive this point home. More than anything else, both stories serve to employ the gothic genre in order to ex plore pitying nature and the consequences of human action, especially crime and the psychological motivations behind it. They go beyond sensationalism and explore real human emotions and the human causality using the gothic genre to heighten the experience for the reader.They explore the tolerant concepts of human beings and society and the web of relationships and influences that co-exist because of them. In exploring perversions they actually delve complicated into the human psyche and invoke the horror of Gothic fiction to break apart the horror possible in daily human contact and unvarying human thoughts. The failure of the protagonists to see the larger picture or make out their own insanity and guilt as well as their slurred realization of these feelings despite their denial of them are what make the Gothic elements in these texts so effective.