Gothic 101
This is the central idea or message of a literary work.
What is a theme?
The Lottery & Haunting of Hill House
Shirley Jackson
A town gathers for what initially seems like an innocent annual tradition—but somebody is about to have a VERY bad day.
The Lottery
Women in the United States gained the right to vote in this year.
1920
This legendary Tennessee haunting involved an invisible spirit that could speak, shapeshift, and supposedly torment the Bell family.
The Bell Witch
Unlike a theme, this is a repeated image, symbol, word, or situation within a story.
What is a motif?
The Jar & The Veldt
Ray Bradbury
An orphan gets adopted, but comes with a guest.
WWI increased public awareness of this psychological condition, then commonly called “shell shock.”
PTSD
What was Stephen King's debut novel?
What is Carrie?
Name two common anxieties explored in American Gothic literature.
Any two: religion, racial/patriarchal tension, nature/wilderness, rationality vs. irrationality. societal/historical context
The Yellow Wallpaper
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
A creature lives a life of solitude and climbs to its freedom, only to realize it never should have escaped.
The Outsider
Beginning around 1980, this moral panic involved widespread fears of secret devil-worshipping cults and occult rituals.
What is the Satanic Panic
Name the three major cities Edgar Allan Poe lived in that we discussed in class.
Boston, Baltimore, Philadelphia (bonus: Richmond)
This type of Gothic horror focuses on madness, grief, trauma, and the human mind.
What is Psychological Gothic/Psychological Horror?
The Replacements
Lisa Tuttle
A woman becomes attached to a blood-sucking creature, and her boyfriend is not thrilled.
The Replacements
During the 1950s–1990s, Americans increasingly feared that these might replace human workers or eventually outsmart humanity.
Computers/Machines/Automation
This author was famous for horror and folklore books for young readers—and was also a professor at Rutgers
Alvin Schwartz
Unlike British Gothic's external monsters and medieval ruins, American Gothic often focuses on this kind of monster.
What is the monster/nightmare within the human mind?
I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream
Harlan Ellison
The city is a monster, and violence is its food.
The Whimper of Whipped Dogs
Freud helped popularize this approach to understanding the unconscious mind.
Psychoanalysis
This author was kicked out of college after verbally attacking a professor who dismissed science fiction—and later mailed that professor copies of his published work for 20 years.
Harlan Ellison