He investigated this phenomenon in several stories, including "William Wilson" (a story which is analyzed in this volume), and so it is important to note that there is a special importance attached to the fact that Roderick Usher and the Lady Madeline are twins.
Here is the genesis of this type of story, created almost one hundred and fifty years ago in plain, no-nonsense America, a new nation not even sixty years old.īesides having a fascination for the weird and the spectral, Poe was also interested in the concept of the double, the schizophrenic, the ironic, and the reverse. This, then, is the gothic and these are its trappings one should realize by now that these are all basic effects that can be found in any modern Alfred Hitchcock-type of horror film, any ghost movie, or in any of the many movies about Count Dracula. Outside the castle, a storm is raging and inside the castle, there are mysterious rooms where windows suddenly whisk open, blowing out candles one hears creaking and moaning sounds and sees the living corpse of the Lady Madeline. Immediately Poe entraps us we have a sense of being confined within the boundaries of the House of Usher. The first five paragraphs of the story are devoted to creating a gothic mood - that is, the ancient decaying castle is eerie and moldy and the surrounding moat seems stagnant.
0 kommentar(er)
