LITR 4232 American Renaissance 2010 final exam—Answers to Question B1

Jonathan Nguyen

Journey to the Center of the Dark Black Forest

            The gothic is an element in literature that most people recognize almost immediately. Just the sound of the word seems to denote a sort of spooky and haunting air. When the word “gothic” is mentioned, people immediately think about the tall and jagged architecture, the decaying and uninviting forests, and the dark and spooky atmosphere. The title of this essay is even taken from a song by Steve Rhyner called “Dark Black Forest” that features a male speaking in a low and haunting tone and a little girl speaking in high and afraid voice. The music itself also has drum beats and flutes to give the impression that you’re walking through a scary forest at night while the unknown denizens of the forest lurk around you. Most people in the world can tell you that Batman lives in Gotham City, an obvious play on the word “gothic” to go along with Batman’s dark nature. So why is the gothic so recognizable and so widespread?

            The gothic forest aspect is one that is used in many nature-oriented pieces of literature and it used for good reason. One of the most distinguishing features of the gothic is the fact that it either hides or is directly involved with the unknown. The perfect place where things can remain undiscovered is of course the dark and another good place is a wide forest so naturally combining the two is a great way to get the point across to a reader that a character in a gothic forest is at a disadvantage. James Fenimore Cooper’s novel “The Last of the Mohicans” used the gothic forest in a variety of ways. One thing really interesting in Cooper’s portrayal of a gothic forest is the fact that the forest was both an enemy and an ally. In this sense, the forest hid the unknown from the protagonists (Hawkeye, Heyward, and their group) and the various enemies of the protagonists. In the story, another gothic element beside the forest would be the dark descriptions of the characters themselves. The “dark” description isn’t meant to be a purely physical description in this sense either but to show the darker side of certain characters mainly Uncas and Cora. The dark descriptions of the two characters could also be a minor form of foreshadowing as they both meet untimely deaths at the end of the story.

            Edgar Allan Poe is known as a pioneer in gothic writing and in fact one of his poems, The Raven, is my all-time personal favorite piece of literature. Looking at The Raven, the entire poem represents everything gothic. The narrator in the story feels a sense of loss for a deceased loved one and as the poem continues, he also struggles with the loss of his privacy and his sanity with his home being invaded by this intruding raven. The themes of loss are obviously gothic so much so that further detail isn’t really required. When a person feels loss they feel a sort of dark emptiness that can’t be immediately mended. This poem however has another gothic element that not many people tend to focus on and that is the rhyme scheme in the poem. The rhythmic and melodic words in Poe’s poem give off a nice flow while reading it. The flowing of the words combined with the creepy words themselves keep a sense of suspense throughout the entire poem. To really put this idea into a perspective, imagine that if you were in an uninviting or scary atmosphere you would naturally always be on guard in case something was to jump out at you. That’s the impression I get from The Raven. The rhyme scheme keeps the poem flowing therefore keeping the reader on guard which in my opinion further adds to the gothic element.

            Poe’s other story The Fall of the House of Usher uses more of the physical description of the gothic to get its point across as opposed to the more psychological aspect given off from The Raven. Poe describes the house in the story in a very detailed manner with “bleak walls” and “vacant eye-like windows”. He even at one point calls it “a mansion of gloom”. These descriptions by themselves tell the reader what they can expect from the story and what kind of house they’re dealing with. It’s because of Poe’s writing such as this that readers all over have a haunting yet very vivid picture of what it means to be gothic.

            Gotham City is very widely recognized due to the fact that Batman is such a popular character in mainstream media. Gotham is named as such after the word gothic and if you look into the lore of Batman, you can clearly see how appropriate this is. For one, Batman himself is a man full of secrets with a dark and haunting past. The architecture of the city is filled with large buildings that cast huge looming shadows. Crime is rampant and most of the action within the city takes place at night. This means the city is full of dark people and dark places where they can hide. Batman brings up an element of the gothic which I think is why people think the gothic is so attractive and that is the fact that things that are gothic make things that are lighthearted possible to exist. Light can’t exist without dark and vice versa. Looking at Batman and using his gothic background as an example, you can see that although he lives and is part of the darkness, he does heroic things to protect the people around him sort of like the darkness being used as the ultimate source of light. His entire identity as Batman is because he was afraid of bats and he became what he was afraid of- he conquered his fears. He’s the perfect example of someone venturing into the darkness and conquering it as opposed to running away from and avoiding the darkness. Characters who can do this such as Hawkeye from “The Last of the Mohicans” are seen as more daring and romantic in our eyes and it inspires us as readers to want to do the same. The overall idea I’m trying to get across is that yes the gothic can be scary and hold our greatest fears but it is overcoming those fears that is so enticing to us.

            The gothic has many different varieties that appeal to us and make us think while making our hearts race and our minds wander. It piques our curiosity yet goes against our better judgment in all forms and it is because of this that people will always and forever find it exciting to explore haunted houses and forests and why we can’t help finding ourselves being interested in the minds of murderers and the lore of demons. The gothic offers a sort of escapism to the darkest desires and crevices of the human mind and the vivid pictures we have stored there will never go away.