Gothic Fiction In 'Where Is Here '?'

Jeannette’s family never had enough money to buy themselves a decent house, so they lived out of rugged shacks, old abandoned buildings, and even out in the desert without any form of shelter. The author would describe each new house that her family moved into in such a way that it would persuade the reader to have such strong feelings of hatred towards Jeannette’s mother and father. Neither Mr. Walls, nor Mrs. Walls could keep a job for any decent amount of time, so after living in a house for a little, the family would get behind on the payments and have to pack their things and move on to a new place. The most memorable example of these terrible houses is the house that the family bought in Welch West Virginia. On page 153, “We called the kitchen the loose-juice room, because on the rare occasion that we had paid the electricity bill and had power, we’d get a wicked electric shock if we touched any damp or metallic surface in the room.”

The latter prevalent throughout Joyce Carol Oates’ short story: “Where Are You Going, Where

You Know Who I Am?”: The Grotesque in Oates’s “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” Rutgers UP, Studies in Short Fiction,

At the beginning of ”The Landlady” it has you thinking that the landlady is some sweet nice old lady that owns a bed and breakfast. She was so nice to the young man who was staying there. While they were drinking tea the young man asked about the two other guests who had stayed before him, because when he was signing the book he saw their names and

Fearing more damage to the house, the facade a family puts up to tell society they do not have trouble, the narrator mentions the “Roots in the cellar drains”; meanwhile, the mother of the narrator

The old woman had been gone for weeks, but passing through the front walls, he saw a vehicle driving down the worn dirt road toward the house. The grounds had been visited twice since the old woman’s death, officials of one sort or another, looking the grounds over, inspecting pipes and furnace ducts. But this ‘car’ towed a trailer behind it, packed with boxes and odd pieces of furniture. The driver of the car was a lone young woman, and as he observed her features and form, he felt something he had not felt for decades: the desire for her companionship, her

Ghost stories, surprise twists, and the unknown are all elements that a lot of audiences enjoy. In Lucille Fletcher’s The hitchhiker a man is going on a trip; however, this is not an average road trip. Instead, Ronald Adams continues to see a mysterious man over and over again. Seeing this man is driving Adams to the edge of insanity.

Joyce Oates uses vivid speech to establish clues and evidence of the stranger's past. To take as an example, when the stranger describes the kitchen, he promptly includes how it was personally “a—controlled sort of place" (327). This quote hints how the house was always "controlled," therefore, a possibility of abuse or severe obsession. As he further expresses his remembrance of each feature in the home, he adds how the dining room was “dark most of the time...dark by day, dark by night.” Giving a feeling of mystery, Oates urges her audience to sense his strange, dreadful

The story “Where is Here” ,written by Joyce Oates, begins when a man goes to look at the house he grew up in. He knocks on the door and the dad invites him in, but he declines and just walks around the outer parts of the house. While he is walking outside, the mom of the house tells him to come inside and walk around. The house brings back many good and bad memories that help the reader piece together the strange man's past. The short story, “Where is Here,” has a bleak setting, tortured characters, and supernatural events which help make it an American gothic piece.

In Gothic literature, authors use ambiguity to create suspense and add scary details to their stories. Ambiguity defines the Gothic genre by developing questions and have the audience wanting more. The author of “Where is Here?” uses ambiguity more effectively than other Gothic authors like Edgar Alan Poe and Josie Couterez because of the use of fear of the unknown and the frustration of unanswered questions.

The story says, “You’ve let this room and this house replace you and your wife in your children’s affections. This room is their mother and father, far more important in their lives than their real parents.” This quote is significant because it shows how the family is separating. The parents are letting the house take over the role parents are supposed to play. This effects the story because it represents the moment the parents found out that their choice to fill the house with technology was almost the worst thing they could have done.

Gothic literature can make you feel like you are in the story. It provides a dubious feeling and is some of the most descriptive writing out there. Pretty much all gothic literature can be connected through the gothic elements within the story. In the short stories, “Prey”, by Richard Matheson, “A Rose for Emily”, by William Faulkner, and “The Raven”, by Edgar Allen Poe, gothic elements such as grotesqueness and supernatural events connect together.

And Christopher Mulholland’s is nearly a year before that-more than three years ago’” (Page 66). It is highly peculiar for an extremely cheap bed and breakfast to have only a few visitors over the course of three years. This piece of information may reveal that the landlady has an ulterior motive besides earning money and receiving visitors. A final foreshadowing clue that convinces readers of what will happen to Billy Weaver is, “‘No thank you’, Billy said.

Gothic Essay In gothic literature, emotion is one of the biggest parts of any author’s work. The shorts stories written by Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Black Cat”, Richard Matheson’s “Prey”, Washington Irving’s “The Devil and Tom Walker”, Horacia Quiroga’s “The Feather Pillow” all incorpórate violence and supernatural in their works. The authors present the common themes in order to give a sense of how the characters feel emotionally. Also the common themes allow the readers to feel sympathy for the characters.

The speaker is describing his yard as “. . . dark, the tomatoes are next to the whitewashed wall, the book on the table is about Spain, the windows are painted shut.” (Siken 3-6), is also what his relationship has become. His dark yard, standing for nothing more than how lonely his relationship has become. The tomatoes next to the whitewashed wall is the built up hatred that they are concealing from one another.