Quintessential Elements of Grotesque and the Burlesque

¶ … quintessential elements of grotesque and the burlesque in Edgar Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher. The author opens the story with the description of a dreary environment. "DURING the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens"(1846). This introduction is reason enough for an instinctive reader to pre-empt the nature of things to unfold. He goes further to explain the landscape, the haunted house, "….upon the bleak walls - upon the vacant eye-like windows - upon a few rank sedges - and upon a few white trunks of decayed trees…"( 1846). Moreover, there are many other indicators of grotesque elements including the author's description of Roderick and his sister's health conditions. He goes into detail on Madeline telling of the feelings she evokes on him. Nonetheless, the vagueness in the story is also indicative of grotesque features, the reader is left to wonder where the story takes place. The narrator seems to be a Roderick's personal friend yet he knows little about him, he did not know about Roderick's twin sister.

In The Black Cat, the author uses a style that explores fear and obsession with the unknown. The author details the narrators deteriorating mental health demonstrating lack of self-control; this is a revelation of one's own fear as that of the unknown. He starts of by saying "Mad indeed would I be to expect it, in a case where my very senses reject their own evidence. Yet, mad am I not" (3), however his account reveals a strange spirit of perverseness that is even strange to himself. In addition, other elements of grotesque are evident in the superstitious blurring of the difference between reality and the fantasy, "…to the character of the mark of white hair, of which I have spoken, and which constituted the sole visible difference between the strange beast and the one I had destroyed" (10) The narrator claims that shape of the noose was imprinted on the new cat. Nonetheless, the tittle of the story suggest grotesque elements as it symbolizes superstition the narrator mentions that his wife even had a suspicion of black cats.

Comparison of Poe's Gothic Fictions with the Southern Gothic Stories

Similarities

Both stories, A Rose for Emily and A Good Man is Hard to Find, are representative of gothic elements such as the use of crime and horror. In A Rose for Emily, the very thought of Emily not only living with a corpse, but sleeping with it is horrific "The man himself lay in the bed" (490). He adds that "The body had apparently once lain in attitude of an embrace" (490). In A Good Man is Hard to Find, O'Connor provides a description of a horrifying murder scene where the misfit kills grandmother and her family. In the scene after the accident, the mere introduction of the misfit sends terror down the reader's spine. "The grandmother shrieked. She scrambled to her feet and stood staring" (1149). In all these two stories the gothic elements are similar to Edgar Poe's The black Cat and The Fall of the House of Usher, Edgar Poe's style of writing, which includes excessive use of adjectives in The Fall of the House of Usher instills a spirit of fear, and even despair in the readers, " & #8230;upon the mere house, and the simple landscape features of the domain & #8230;" he adds "… upon the bleak walls - upon the vacant eye-like windows - upon a few rank sedges - and upon a few white trunks of decayed trees" (1193) or more evident is a scene in The Black Cat "…with gore, stood erect before the eyes of the spectators. Upon its head, with red extended mouth and solitary eye of fire…" he continues "… sat the hideous beast whose craft had seduced me into murder…" (14).