The two short stories, “The House of Asterion” and “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings”, share similar gothic elements that helps convey the hidden and very cryptic meanings behind both the stories and and the unusual characters. The first element, the characters, are similar in the sense that they feared and ostracized by their respective members of the society. Asterion, in “The House of Asterion” is a puzzling, misanthropic and seemingly crazed individual, later revealed to be a minotuar, who acts an imprisoned captive, condemned to isolation due to the fears of the villagers. In “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings”, the frail winged old man who was perceived to be an angel by the townspeople. The man was soon caged and was treated like a spiritual spectacle and a pariah, and (in the eyes of Elisenda), a being worthy of being exploited by humanity for the wishes/desires.

The second gothic element, the plot points, were that both stories involved the concept of death/near death, that furthered the narrative while revealing slight details revolving the mythical creatures in both stories. In “The House of Asterion”, the villagers send a set of nine villagers every nine years, seemingly as sacrifices, to appease Asterion for fear of incurring his wrath. However, in “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings”, while the frail winged old man is found by Pelayo, on the verge of death, there is a moment of miraculous survival by the mysterious creature as he, throughout the story, suffers the torment and humiliation of being treated like a pariah by the townspeople, somehow regains his strength and manages to fly away in the end.

In the third gothic element, the settings, they are completely different from one another. In “The House of Asterion”, the setting described by Asterion himself is cryptic in nature, at one point, possibly alluding to the prospect of the setting being a figment of Asterion’s imagination as he vividly describes the house having an infinite amount of doors, courtyards, etc. Asterion’s description of his house is tailored to seem like either a warped hallucination/delusion or a labyrinth. However, in “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings”, the setting was more realistic as it took place in a town/village, or in the winged individual’s case, wired chicken coop which acted as his cage/makeshift prison until the chicken coop degraded and eventually fell apart.