Hauntings

“The Fall of the House of Usher” – Edgar Allen Poe

There are so many themes going on in this story. The whole time while reading it I couldn’t decide if these events were metaphors or actually happening. Of course because this was written a while ago somethings are hard to understand. For example, why wasn’t the speaker allowed to see Madeline anymore during his stay? Also, why did Roderick say that he put her in the tomb too early? As far as inference goes there was just too much left up to chance for me that I’m not sure if what I was assuming was correct. That being said, I do absolutely love this story as I do most of Poe’s work. There was definitely a recurring element of sanity being questioned in this story. At first when Roderick said he was going to parish in this state of mind to when he when he was full blow crazy rocking back and forth in the chair. I thought it was a really nice literary trick how Poe had mimicked what happened in the poems to actually happen in the reality of his story. I think that was when the speaker first got his though “Oh God I need to get out of here”. Then you have to question whether he really saw Madeline at the end or not. Was she real? A ghost? Had he gone mad? Did the house do this to him? This is not the first time that Poe left his readers to consider the possibilities. Also, this story is the perfect cookie-cutter, format, base-line, or whatever you want to call it, for THE haunted house. Although it took almost three pages, Poe hit it spot on. The massive overgrowth around the exterior, the dark echoing corridors, eerie shadows, and the overall feeling of gloom and despair. That would make anyone go crazy.

“Afterward” – Edith Wharton

Afterward definitely corresponds to the “American Gothic” definition. This really entered the world of “suspense” when it came to ghosts. In most ghost horror stories you know the ghost, you see the ghost, and you can tell when it is near. However, in “Afterward”, you didn’t know when the ghost was coming or how it would present itself. It is much more suspenseful, it’s the kind of story that makes you read sentences twice and think “wait what just happened?” Also, you can’t really say there is a “haunted house”, the home does not conform to the expectations of a haunted house other than the fact that we think there is a ghost. The house is relatively normal and average. The real horror in this story comes from the not knowing, and the thought that no matter what happens, there’s nothing you can do to prevent it from happening and it will most likely happen again.