Coffeehouse 4

Jose Flores

Midterm Essay, English 2001

Oct 17, 2020

                    Loneliness is Pretty Bad

    A lot of people are afraid of being alone. Loneliness can bring mental health, such as depression, madness, and thoughts of suicide. These ideas can be associated with gothic literature. Gothic literature are pieces of literature where the main ideas are acts of death or madness. “The House of Asterion” by Jorge Luis Borges has elements of gothic literature that portray loneliness that lead the main character to madness. Another piece of literature that portrays these elements is the prologue to “The Invisible Man” by Ralph Ellison. These two gothic literatures have characters that go through madness and maybe even death.

    The Minotaur, who is also the narrator, from “The House of Asterion” is trapped in a labyrinth all by himself. He tells us his story, but for all we know he is telling himself this story because he is alone. As stated in the story “I crouch in the shadow of a pool or around a corner and pretend I am being followed.”, here you can see that him being alone has brought him to pretend things so he doesn’t feel alone. This leads to him say “that some day my redeemer would come”. He comes to the realization that his life isn’t worth much and that could be due to the fact that he is alone. The idea of someone making up imaginary people is for the insane, which is caused by the Minotaur’s loneliness. Even though in the story it is mentioned that the Minotaur can leave the labyrinth, people are afraid of him and run away from him, and this can make anyone feel alone.