LITR 4232: American Renaissance
University of Houston-Clear Lake, spring 2002
Index to Student Research Projects

Michael Luna

LITR 4232

Professor White

20 April 2002

The Gothic Evolution

I have been a long time fan of all things gothic. But it was not until I took this course that I fully understood where "gothic" really came from. When I used to think of gothic, all I would picture was dark brooding scenery and vampires. Still, that is not the full picture of the gothic. Gothic is something that has been part of the human culture since it began. I am going to look at how the gothic style of literature has evolved since the American Renaissance. Unlike the English writers of gothic literature, the Americans had to make use of the natural surroundings rather than castles and abandoned city streets and alleyways. I personally think that this change that was implemented served a greater good for the gothic in literature. Already is seen a small evolution of gothic literature. Two American writers who made the perfect transition from the English version of gothic literature to the American version were James Fenimore Cooper and Washington Irving. Cooper is well known for his novel The Last of the Mohicans. However, while most people looked for the romantic side of this book, few could see the gothic aspects that Cooper incorporated. As I mentioned, he turns the forest into one gigantic castle in which his characters have to travel within. He also uses colors and light versus dark in his book. I got to see his use of colors when he would emphasize the races of key characters. You have the Anglo, the white person, the Native American, the red person, and Cora, the black person. These three colors are the basic colors that are used in gothic literature. Usually it is black against white with red being an overtone color in the background. But in Cooper's case, he manages to bring these literary colors to life and give them each their own distinct personality. Cooper also uses the concept of hidden passages from castles and bastilles. Since, in the forest, there are no doorways or man-made architecture, Cooper decided to show hidden paths and groves that would take the place of the trap door to a downstairs room.

It is not Cooper that just did this sort of thing. As I have said, Washington Irving was also a writer of the American gothic. Like Cooper, Irving turns the forest into the typical gothic castle. An aspect of the English gothic that Irving keeps is the use of ghosts and superstition. In his work Rip Van Winkle, there is the mention of ghosts that inhabit a mountainside that Rip ascends. There is also a town that Rip comes from that has many of the typical gothic architectural structures. It was another of Irving's works that he is most known for and that is The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. In this work, he makes the forest seem alive and makes the shadows play all sorts of tricks to Ichabod's superstition filled mind. A ghost story is very prevalent throughout and it is this story that makes Ichabod eventually leave. Irving uses the aspect of gothic colors like Cooper, but he does so by just leaving them as colors and not people.

Writers of this time did not just decide to turn the forests into a substitute for the creepy castles of older gothic literature. Edgar Allen Poe relied on the use of castles and dark brooding colors in his work. He would use shadows and the interaction of light and darkness just as Cooper and Irving did. The sceneries in his writings were dreary and foreboding as were the characters at times. Because of the way that Poe wrote, many people often refer to him as the father of American Gothic. But, this would be unfair to two writers who began the evolution of gothic literature from the English to the American.

After these three writers started the evolution of gothic literature who are the writers and artists who would take their place? Obviously, I have more knowledge of the present uses of gothic style in literature among other mediums. But what I want to know is how did the use of the gothic change from when it was first introduced in the U.S. to now? One of the first things I did was take into account what was considered gothic at the time of Poe, Irving, Cooper and so on. The immediate use that stood out to me was the conversion of the castle to the forest or any other natural surrounding. Cooper and Irving did it with the forest and Poe utilized the sea. Another style that stood out was the use of colors and the colors that were used to represent the gothic style. There was of course the use of black and white as well as the use of the color red. This is most evident in Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans in my view. Not only does he incorporate the colors in the surroundings, but he actually uses the colors as persons in his story. As for Poe and Irving, I think that Irving was the most proficient when it came to turning nature into the gothic setting and Poe was able to use a combination of "old world" gothic and "new world" gothic. So I came to this conclusion. The first American gothic style was the use of nature as a gothic setting, the intermixing of black, white and red colors, and the continual battle between good and evil on the spiritual level. Now what I had to do was take into account the artists of my time and see just what has happened to the old American gothic.

The first modern gothic writer that came to mind is Anne Rice. She is famous mainly because one of her books was turned into a motion picture. This book was The Interview with a Vampire. In this book by Rice, she tends to rely on some styles that Poe incorporated when he wrote. She has castles and dark secret grottos, hidden pathways, and lots of mention of gothic architecture. One thing that Rice does in her work is that she gives vampires more human traits than we gave them in earlier writings of the vampire gothic genre. Her series of books continued with The Vampire Lestat, Queen of the Damned, and The Tale of the Body Thief. This series, known as The Vampire Chronicles, served as Rice's first gothic works of art. As I mentioned earlier about Rice, she tends to rely on the older gothic style similar to that of Poe. But where the gothic would usually see a battle between good and evil on a human level, Rice decided to give this battle a place among immortal beings. I found this to be an interesting twist on this aspect of the gothic. In Irving's  Sleepy Hollow Ichabod was battling the evil of a headless horseman. In Poe's works, the hero would often have to struggle against his own inner demons or the loss of someone dear to him. Even in Cooper's book, there was a struggle against other humans. My point is that I never saw these human struggles occur with anything other than humans. I feel Rice transferred these struggles to the immortal level to build upon the usual gothic foundation. Personally, I think she did a good job.

Another writer whom I have read and seen the gothic change is C. S. Friedman. Now this is not as popular writer as Rice is, but nonetheless, she too exhibits a great use and transformation of the gothic. Friedman's series of books that I have looked at are Black Sun Rising, When True Night Falls, and Crown of Shadows. What a bunch of gothic titles huh? These three books compromise her Cold Fire Trilogy. Back to the subject. When I read Friedman, I see that she uses the Cooper and Irving style of gothic literature. One of the main characters live in the middle of a dark and impregnable forest and dwells in the Black Citadel. This notion of a housing in the middle of the forest seems to borrow from the style that Cooper and Irving used in their works. Friedman does go on to make sure that her story settings are gothic as well. There are churches with the typical gothic architecture, dimly lit streets and the interplay of shadows throughout the series. The constant battle between good and evil are discussed throughout as well. But, the one thing that I notice about Friedman's style and use of the gothic is the way she transformed it in small ways. There is the interplay between light and shadow and the use of the colors black, white, and red. However, she introduces a couple of colors as gothic symbol that Irving, Cooper, or Poe did not use and these colors are blues, purples, and greens. Now I did see some of these colors in previous works of gothic, particularly green in Poe's writing, but the colors were never used in such a way that Friedman uses them. In an interesting twist, she creates some white wolves that dwell in this pitch black forest. The only visible presence of these wolves however were their red eyes. It was not until the wolves were actually upon a person that the white would be made out. I found this to be a very creative technique in blending black, white, and red. As I stated, the colors of purple, blue, and green are used a lot throughout this series of books. The purple comes into play as the "aura" of the forest dwelling being. There is a descriptive scene in the first book that shows what the world looks like through his eyes. All across the land are purple tendrils of life energy surging to a meeting point in the forest. This purple is used to contrast against the solid black ground in the forest. Blue is used in almost a similar manner. The only difference is that the blue is actually the hue of this same character's sword. When it is sheathed, it emits no light what so ever, but once the scabbard is off, it glows with such radiance that it is almost too strong to look at. Yet, this blue sword does not fill the scene with it's color. It simply illuminates the blade itself and disappears into the pitch black of the night. As for the green that is used in the story, it is the "aura" of the other main character throughout the books. Just as his "friend" he can only use his powers when the darkness is about and his green glow sets off like a spotlight in a pitch black world.

One of Friedman's gothic styles which I like immensely was the ability to make the day and the night the same. All the character in this world of hers fear the night. All except for two people. During the night is when shadows come to life and move across the land sucking the life-force from the humans. At the same time, the nighttime is full of the beautiful purple tendrils that spread across the ground and the descriptions of the sky with bright white stars and the silverish moon. Considering that most of the story occurs at night or underground where no light exists, I feel that the use of background colors played a good role. It is as though even when the "true night" falls across the land, when no stars or the moon are visible, the beauty of the shadows and the purple, blue, and green colors create some type of mystic collage. It was this use of black and darkness that kind of reminded me of Poe and Irving. Irving used the same effects when he was describing Ichabod riding through the forest. Even the Disney cartoon emphasizes the beauty in the dark forest and the interplay of colors and darkness.

Friedman and Rice are not the only places which I have seen the gothic at use. As strange as it may seem, I have noticed gothic techniques in some cartoons we have watched. I think the best one would have to be "Scooby-Do." Now the reason I say this is because there are always creepy mansions and ghosts. Even in the conclusion that the ghost is not real, there is the Irving-esque use of a person pretending to be a ghost. The mansions have many hidden corridors and passageways, long dark hallways, and believe it or not, the use and interplay of shadows. I personally thought twice about bringing this subject about, but I can't deny the gothic imagery. Other cartoons I noticed this in are the "Heavy Metal" cartoon movie and "Batman." In "Heavy Metal," there is a lot of uses of shadowy interplay. The battle between good and evil is the main driving force between this show and once again the color green is used as a primary gothic symbol. It is used to represent the most vile of creatures in the movie. When usually a red or even black color would represent the bad guy, green seems to be the most logical. Perhaps it is because it contrasts so much against the black backgrounds and creates a larger persona. I'm not sure yet. Now for "Batman" I really don't have much to explain. The first thing you will notice is that Batman is the "Dark Knight" and he lives in "Gotham." I find this so obvious it's almost funny, but many other elements exists in this series. Batman is always lurking through the shadows and moving in and out of them. The artists also give Batman glowing white eyes to offset the black of his suit. It is also on his suit, I got to see another color being added or attempted to be added to the gothic color spectrum. This would be the color yellow. It is close to red, so I can see some connection, but the way it is used in "Batman" just caught my attention. I don't recall Irving, Cooper, or even Poe using yellow when describing some of their gothic tales.

Now I'm going to stay on the topic of Batman here, but I am going to talk about the use of the gothic in comic books. These are in a way an amalgamation of literary work and artistic work. In any case, comic books work pretty good for a gothic medium. Some of the gothic comics I have read are "Lady Death", "Spawn", "Batman", and "Dawn." Just like the cartoon series, the comic book for "Batman" follows the use of shadows and the interplay of black, white, red, and yellow. The same goes for "Spawn." This comic series emphasizes on the use of the colors red, black and green. I never would have thought that comic book artists would have such knowledge of different literary styles, but that just shows how much Irving, Cooper and Poe influenced all kinds of literature. Now as for "Lady Death" and "Dawn", there is a tremendous use of shadow interplay and color interaction to set the scenery. In the "Lady Death" series, the heroine is solid white colored with a midnight black outfit. It is in this comic that I noticed the use of blue and purple colors as a gothic scheme. "Dawn" uses black and white as I said, but the color of choice for this artist is red. The heroine has dark red hair that contrasts against the grey and dreary churches, grave yards, and other Gothically influenced backgrounds. I think this is more of an influence from Poe's works. I have to say that I was impressed with the fact that the gothic genre has gotten this far. I only thought that it would pertain to novels, or other recognized literary works, but not with comics or cartoons.

There is one last spectrum that I noticed the themes of the gothic reached to. This spectrum is that of our motion pictures. It is here, like with comics and cartoons, that the gothic is transferred from the page to visualization. The movies that I looked into are some of our more modern movies and current ones. The first I have to say is "The Shining." This movie is just creepy through and through. There is the hotel that seems to be alive, just like "Fall of the House of Usher", and the constant use of red. There are also scenes in the movie that play with the concept of hidden passages and mazes. This was evident to me in the hedge maze scene and in the never-ending hallway scene. Now I am not in perfect chronological order here, but I don't think it matters. The next movie I watched was "Alien." I did have a little push in this direction by my professor I must confess, because if not for him bringing it up in class, I would not have thought of looking at it. It is in this movie that the audience again gets to experience the secret passages, mazes, and a structure that seems to be alive. The use of shadows is perhaps Ridley Scott's most proficient use in this movie. Some of the character carry torches or flame throwers and with all the flickering flames, it is almost impossible to tell what is only a shadow and what it the menacing creature. In the begging of the movie there is a great gothic scene. When three of the workers from the spaceship Nostromo enter the fallen alien vessel, it is as though they are entering a live creature. The walls almost resemble a rib cage and the openness of the hull is black as tar. If not for the spotlights of the astronauts then we would not have been able to see anything at all. This a perfect example of the contrast and use of black and white. Not just because the lights give off a white hue, but the suits being worn are also white. Yellow, once again is introduced as a color to aid in the gothic element. I first saw this color when the attempt to remove the face hugger is done and it bleeds. Yellow acid blood spills out and causes damage through about eight levels in the ship. There are also many yellow warning lights blaring throughout the ship creating a dazzling effect of shadow and light in a different way that we are used to seeing shadows. A final movie I watched the gothic in is the movie "The Crow." The opening scene starts directly with fires burning out of control in a dark city. An immediate taste of the interplay of red and black and moving shadows. There are also some scenes in which light or white come into play, most noticeably with Eric Draven's costume. The surroundings are styled in a gothic manner with long dark alleyways, cathedrals, and graveyards being the most prominent settings for the storyline. Draven himself becomes part of the shadows in the alley, much like the way the creature did in "Alien." To me, this seemed to borrow much from the older English style of gothic and from Poe as well. Another aspect that I noticed that was borrowed from Poe is the use of a raven or a crow as the movie puts it. In Poe's "The Raven", the bird is a guide to a realization. In the movie "The Crow", the bird is a guide as well. But in this format, the bird a guide to redemption whereas in "The Raven", Poe's bird was a guide to confession. What a strange way to borrow from Poe I think.

Well, this is what I have learned in my studies of the gothic throughout some of our time. It has exceeded many other writing styles. This is partly due to the fact that the gothic will always be a part of lifestyle. It is also due to the fact that we all want to have some kind of experience with things that are forbidden and scary to us. But how exactly has the style of the gothic evolved from the days of Poe, Cooper, and Irving to the days of Rice, Friedman, and Ridley Scott? In many ways the style is the same. There are slight variations on the actual use of how the light interplays with the dark and the way shadows are figured in scenes. The scenery itself is almost a reflection of those used by the greats, with the exception of "Alien." As for the basic colors of the gothic, everything remained the same. Nonetheless, I love the way that Friedman introduced the purple and blue colors into the gothic scheme. This just goes to show how effective the gothic style is. Yes it was tweaked a bit, but it almost remains exactly the same as it did when it was introduced to early Americans.