Author: Kwameclarke18

Final Essay

December 14, 2020 / Kwameclarke18 / 0 Comments

Kwame Clarke ENG3407 Fall 2020

The Haunting of Hill House

In the Story “The Haunting of Hill house” we follow Doctor John Montague and a group of other carefully selected individuals as they spend a part of the summer at a Hillside Manor that is infamous for being incredibly haunted.As we go through the accounts of everyone staying in this house this story reveals that it embodies many of the gothic elements that we have gone over this semester.In my personal opinion to me some of the most noteworthy of these elements had to be Anthony Vidler’s idea of architectural uncanny and Todorov’s concept of Haunting or as he would have defined it as fantastic as we explore more of the story the house and its inhabitants start to show their true intentions and desires.

The House itself gave off an entire feeling of being uncanny being a small home on a hillside know for being a haunted a great way this was highlighted was in this quote in chapter 2 when the guests first arrived “The four of them stood, for the first time, in the wide, dark entrance hall of Hill House. Around them the house steadied and located them, above them the hills slept watchfully, small eddies of air and sound and movement stirred and waited and whispered, and the center of consciousness was somehow the small space where they stood, four separated people, and looked trustingly at one another” This quote here just set the tone for how the rest of the story will play out.The Uncanny also plays out in this scene were eleanor is exploring the backside of the house and it great detail the architecture is described “Behind the house, seeming almost overhead, the great hills were muted and dull in the rain. Eleanor wandered along the veranda, thinking that she had never before known a house so completely surrounded. Like a very tight belt, she thought; would the house fly apart if the veranda came of!”Here we can see the house described in great detail how its design is so odd and how a house like this was something never seen before and how eleanor sees the landscape surrounding the house as if its choking it.

The story also very greatly explores the theme of haunting with the multiple apparitions and supernatural events that happen inside the house.One scene the shows this perfectly is when Eleanor is with Theodora Eleanor” It sounded, Eleanor thought, like a hollow noise, a hollow bang, as though something were hitting the doors with an iron kettle, or an iron bar, or an iron glove. It pounded regularly for a minute, and then suddenly more softly, and then again in a quick flurry, seeming to be going methodically from door to door at the end of the hall. Distantly she thought she could hear the voices of Luke and the doctor, calling from somewhere below, and she thought,Then they are not up here with us at all , and heard the iron crashing against what must have been a door very close”To me this really stuck out because of the way Eleanor Described it with hearing faint voices of people she knew wasn’t around them the loud noises in the distance and finally how it reached it climaxwith a loudbang on a door in hall causing both of the girls to investigate it.Another scene in the story tat encapsulates the gothic theme of haunting in the story was this scene in chapter 6 “the little gurgling laugh came again, and the rising mad sound of it drowned out the voice, and then suddenly absolute silence. Eleanor took a breath, wondering if she could speak now, and then she heard a little soft cry which broke her heart, a little infinitely sad cry, a little sweet moan of wild sadness. It is a child , she thought with disbelief, a child is crying somewhere, and then, upon that thought, came the wild shrieking voice she had never heard before and yet knew she had heard always in her nightmares. “Go away!” it screamed. “Go away, go away, don’t hurt me,”This was a fantastic way to present the true horror of the situation the sounds of gurgling and the voice fo children crying out in fear shows us the kinds of terrible things that must go on in this house and to its inhabitants.

The haunting of hill house was interesting story that explored many types of gothic elements that clearly are defining factors for its story.The Architecture of the house being so unlike anything else any of the guests have seen and the elaborate way the house is built on the inside makes the setting much more unsettling.The constant hauntings and ghost that appear throughout the story and how they interact with the guests is the most defining factor of the story as these encounters influence the characters and the progression of the story.

Works Sited

Jackson, Shirley. “The Haunting of Hill House”. 1959

“Haunted House.” Wikipedia

Cinema 12

December 7, 2020 / Kwameclarke18 / 0 Comments

The front desk area with movie dates still displayed from 3 years ago

Concession/Snack area along with some wall poster still perfectly lit

These pictures are from a small movie theater that closed down in my neighborhood about 2 years ago called Cinema 12 in a plaza. This location to me seems very gothic because it gets a very Eerie feeling around dusk and at night to the point that I’ve seen people avoid walking past it in the plaza it becomes deathly silent around the outside and odd fact that its has had the power on 24/7 since its closing and the insides have an odd mixture of both messy and pristine. The front with the ticket booth and the snack booth seem to be in perfect condition but everything else seems to be in a state of decay or in need of repair. To me the most unnerving part of this theater to me was the 2nd and 4th picture the front still has movie displays from 2 and 3 years ago and the pitch black hallway that has a brightly lit room at the end that seems to be less well kempt than the rest of the theater

Little shop of horrors

November 2, 2020 / Kwameclarke18 / 0 Comments

A favorite of mine is a movie called Little Shop of horrors there are about 3 different renditions of the movie but

I chose the 1980s version while it seems light-hearted because its a musical it is very disturbing. The story starts off with a man named Seymour who works in a plant shop one day he receives an odd-looking flytrap over time it speaks to him asking for nourishment which starts off with his own blood but convinces him to murder civilians in the neighborhood for more. I think this encases the spirit of perverseness as he willingly does so for his own benefit as the plant becomes a major attraction to the shop and impresses his love interest.

October 30, 2020 / Kwameclarke18 / 0 Comments

Kwame Clarke

Professor Sean Scanlan

ENG3407 (Gothic Literature and Visual Culture)

10/26/2020

The Black Cat/The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

The Idea of depravity and the depths of how low the human ego can sink is a concept that has been explored for many years. In my opinion, two people who both emphasize these traits are Dr. Jekyll from “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” and the narrator from the story “The Black cat”. Throughout each of these stories, different forms of gothic elements present themselves such as The Spirit of Pervessness, Gothic Irony, and The uncanny and I believe that these characters are the prime examples of these traits as we the readers observe their slow degeneration.

The story “The Strange Case of Dr.Jekyll and Mr.Hyde” starts off with the introduction and character of Henry Jekyll a well-Known doctor in his community and is especially noted for his decent and charitable habits to all. Dr.Henry however was involved in some less than virtuous acts in secret and found having to deal with the stress that came from such activities was too much of a burden. Henry then experiments to try and find a way to separate his “good” and “Evil” sides this results in the creation of a potion. This potion gave birth to a new side of Henry Aptly dubbed Mr.Hyde.With this Henry’s alter ego at the time, Mr.Hyde Commited increasing horrid acts when he was in control and as the story progresses we see that this only continues to devolve further to me this touches on The Spirit of Perverseness. I believe that the best scene the exemplifies this was when Henry said “At that time my virtue slumbered; my evil, kept awake by ambition, was alert and swift to seize the occasion; and the thing that was projected was Edward Hyde.” This Quote shows that slowly over time that Henry had to try and suppress Mr.Hyde as at the slightest moment his dark thoughts and actions could easily take over. This also causes the concept of gothic irony to show up as mentioned in the final parts of the story “I do not suppose that, when a drunkard reasons with himself upon his vice, he is once out of five hundred times affected by the dangers that he runs through his brutish, physical insensibility; neither had I, long as I had considered my position, made enough allowance for the complete moral insensibility and insensate readiness to evil, which were the leading characters of Edward Hyde. Yet it was by these that I was punished. My devil had been long caged, he came out roaring.” Here we can see that Henry has fully given up on trying to repress Mr.Hyde as doing so seems to make behave in a state as if he was intoxicated and at the end instead of trying to suppress his urges, he let them loose despite fully accepting that Mr.Hyde is now a permanent part of him and his life.

In the Story “The Black Cat” We begin with the narrator who introduces himself and the events of his life. At the start of this story, it seems all is well as the narrator talks fondly of things such as how he married at a young age and his apparent love of animals. In particular, he mentions a fondness for a cat named pluto. As the narrator continues talking you can notice a change in his speech such as violent mood swings and apparent abuse he inflicts upon his wife. He can be shown to have the same likeness at first as Dr. Henry Jekyll and a kind person who was respected by those around him. Similar to Dr. Jekyll the narrator can be observed showing things like The Spirit of perverseness I think this is best shown when says “One morning, in cool blood, I slipped a noose about its neck and hung it to the limb of a tree; — hung it with the tears streaming from my eyes, and with the bitterest remorse at my heart; — hung it because I knew that it had loved me and because I felt it had given me no reason of offense”. We see that he delved into the spirit of perverseness committing a heinous act for the one purpose of committing such an atrocity. The narrator also experiences gothic irony When he says “Who has not, a hundred times, found himself committing a vile or silly action for no other reason than because he knows he should not? Have we not a perpetual inclination, in the teeth of our best judgment, to violate that which is Law, merely because we understand it to be such?”. Here we see that like Dr. Jekyll he embraces what is now becoming from a once virtuous man who believed in the principles of order embracing discord for no other reason than because he can.

The Stories “The Black Cat” and “The Strange Case of Dr.Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’ Show even the most upstanding characters of society can be influenced by not only their primeval natures but also by trying so hard to suppress and avoid the things that would be considered evil by most

Author: Kwameclarke18

Final Essay

Cinema 12

Little shop of horrors

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