Important ideas in Lloyd Smith’s, “What is American Gothic?”

  1. Pg. 5: American Gothic explores extremes that include cruelty, rapacity, fear, passion, sexual degradation.
  2. Pg. 5: The characters in American Gothic are “free thinking,” up to no good, disbelieve in the significance of virginity.
  3. Pg. 6: American Gothic connects science occultist, pre-scientific doctrines.
  4. Pg. 6 and 7: Other extreme states in the Gothic include suppressions of past trauma, past guilt, anxieties involving class and gender.
  5. Pg. 7: Landscapes in American Gothic explores “inhuman and pitiless” nature such as mountains and wasteland.