Lynda Williams
Dr. Craig White
Literature 5535
3 July 2002

Final Exam

4.         Appropriately, the Gothic genre derives its name from the Gothic architecture of the medieval period as many people have a romantic view of that long ago period, envisioning imposing castles, shadows, hidden passageways, shut-off rooms, and mysterious, unexplained characters and occurrences.  Although not an American invention, the Gothic genre suits the American environment and experience, which undoubtedly explains its omnipresence in our culture.  In the beginning, America was a land of mystery, an unexplored land.  Although the early settlers did not know what their explorations would uncover, they undauntedly set out to investigate.  And obviously, that fascination with the unknown still lives within us today.  In short, our romantic fascination with the mysterious has, through time, become deeply ingrained in our cultural consciousness.  We still have the urge to “go where no man has gone before,” even though most of us can do so only through vicarious means.  Therefore, we fulfill this subconscious desire through our literature and other modes of art.  One need only observe the immense popularity of mystery and horror stories and movies that pervade our popular culture to see that the Gothic is still alive and well.  How else can one explain the success of such writers as Anne Rice and Stephen King, whose works delve into the supernatural, the unknown?

            To begin, Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” (1839) exemplifies an early example of the American Gothic, still showing the influence of the European style as Poe takes us into a world of castles and ancient families.  A master of Gothic description, Poe lets the readers know at the very onset of his work that they have entered a land of forbidding terrain.  For example, as the narrator rides alone on horseback through a “singularly dreary tract of country” and sees the “melancholy House of Usher,” we know we should turn back, but, like the narrator although this setting oppresses and scares us, we keep going.  Ironically, the “bleak walls,” the “vacant eye-like windows,” and the “white trunks of decayed trees” beckon us.  However, when the narrator himself tries to explain this fascination with danger, concluding that “there are combinations of very simple natural objects which have the power of thus affecting us, still the reason, and the analysis of this power lie among consideration beyond out depth,” even he cannot explain the allure.

            In the same Gothic vein, Poe describes the house and its occupants, Roderick and Lady Madeline.  Set apart from civilization, the house has “minute fungi overspread[ing] the whole exterior . . . and there appeared to be a wild inconsistency between its still perfect adaptation of parts and the utterly porous and evidently decayed condition of the individual stones.”   Like its occupants, the house seems to be falling apart and yet there seems to be no rational explanation.  Then, Roderick, a character of mystery, keeps himself aloof from others; even the narrator who had been a close childhood friend admits that “[he] knows little of [his] friend.”  And to add to the mystery, Roderick and his sister (who literally shuts herself away) suffer from some unnamed debilitating disease.  According to the narrator, Roderick’s affliction displays itself “in a host of unnatural sensations.”  In addition, Poe also uses the Gothic element of the apparition as Lady Madeline, whom the narrator and Roderick had buried in the dark and oppressive vault some days before, makes a ghostly appearance at the end.  Drawing upon one of the readers’ darkest fears, being buried alive, Poe tell us she “now stands without the door!”   But luckily, we, like the narrator, escape the danger as the work comes to a timely end with the narrator’s flight from the House.  He can go back to civilization and we back to our “normal” lives.

             In “A Rose for Emily,”  (1931) because William Faulkner has an American Gothic experience (the Old South) to draw upon, he does not have to depend on the European one.   In a Poe-like manner, Faulkner describes Miss Emily’s house in Gothic architectural terms:  “It was a big, squarish frame house that had once been white, decorated with cupolas and spires and scrolled balconies.”  Like the House of Usher, this house that is in a state of decay, “an eyesore among eyesores,” attracts the attention of the reader, as well as the townsfolk.  We, like they, want to know the mysteries of the house and its occupant.  Recalling Roderick’s isolation, Miss Emily, “a fallen monument,” likewise has held herself aloof from the townspeople.  No one knows her and she too seems to be in a state of decay:  “She looked bloated, like a body long submerged in motionless water. . . .”  The reader is left with the definite impression that the environment has connections with Miss Emily’s deterioration as it does with Roderick’s.  In the end, Faulkner, like Poe, leaves us with a disturbingly nightmarish image, this time one of necrophilia.  

            Finally, in Out of the Past (1947), an example of film noir, we see a more modern version of the American Gothic.  Unlike writers who use words to set the scenes, the directors of film noir depend on light and dark, representing good and evil, to set theirs.  To contrast the dark arena of action, suggestive of suspicious underworld activities, these films use shafts of light created by fires, bolts of lightening, lamps, and streetlights to create an aura of mysteriousness.  To illustrate, when Jeff Bailey enters the dark city streets or the sprawling mansions of Whit and Els from the sunny rural setting with Meta, we have entered the modern Gothic setting. In this world, people have secrets and people are not who they seem.  Like the narrators in the two previous examples, Jeff, the visitor, does not really know Kathy, the femme fatale, who leads them both to their doom.  She too stands above the crowd as she gives an image of beauty and innocence (health) and yet an unexplainable evil (sickness) dwells within her and eventually destroys her.  Could it be the environment in her case, too?  Must she be evil in order to survive?  In contrast, the ending of this work differs somewhat though; it has a more realistic (modern?) ending as the outsider (Jeff) who visits these nightmarish place does not escape.  Similarly, however, this work’s ending also taps into another universal fear ( for men, at least)—that of castration.

5.  This question will follow the format of question 4, but substituting the Romantic image of the quest for the Gothic.

            The Romantic quest image, like the Gothic image, comes to America via Europe as the Europeans set out on quests to find new lands.  Yet, like the Gothic, the quest image finds a permanent residence in American culture as it reflected and continues to reflect the American immigrant experience.  In essence, it is an everyman (woman) experience since all Americans (except Native Americans) are either immigrants themselves or descendent of immigrants.  To show the origins, adaptability, and endurance of this theme, I will look at selected writings by Columbus, Frederick Douglass, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. 

            As the original American quest seeker, Columbus sets this literary theme firmly in place in his writings to Luis de Santangel (1493) and to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella (1503).  As the first immigrant to the New World, Columbus sets the model for all future immigrant experiences.  Typically, since the quest involved in immigrant experiences requires the crossing of boundaries (in Columbus’s case, the ocean), that image also surfaces in American literary expressions.  On the quest for a “commercially viable Atlantic route to Asia,” Columbus discovers the Americas, discovers the land many would later desire to come to for the very reasons that Columbus sets forth in his letters:  it appears a veritable Garden of Eden, rich in resources and, therefore, in opportunities.  In the letter to de Santangel, Columbus writes of lands “fertile to a limitless degree,” “all [of which] are most beautiful, of a thousand shapes , and all are accessible and filled with trees of a thousand kinds and tall, and they seem to touch the sky.”  Then, in his letter to the King and Queen, he tells of lands that “are more extensive and richer than all other Christian lands.”  Indeed, speaking in medieval terms, Columbus must have felt as if he had found the holy grail.

            Then, in 1845, Frederick Douglass, whose ancestors did not willingly immigrate to America, takes the Western idea of the quest and makes it his own in the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave.  Even though not a product of Western culture, Douglass shows how pervasive this theme is in America, how even those who do not actively participate in the culture are nevertheless affected by it.  And when one looks at what Douglass does with the theme of the quest, it really does not differ that much from other immigrants as they too are often spurred into their quest because of oppressive situations.  The difference lies in that Douglass’s quest takes place within the United States; his quest leads him to cross boundaries also as he flees the slavery system of the South and heads to the North for freedom.  But like other immigrants, Douglass has the characteristics and skills necessary to make that journey to freedom.  For one, he has the desire:  “[He] resolved that, however long [he] might remain a slave in form , the day had passed forever when [he] could be a slave in fact.”  In other words, he does not submit to his circumstances (as many do), but defiantly decides to escape.  Next, he has the wherewithal to understand the particulars of such a quest.  Knowing that he cannot simply run away without a plan, he prepares for the trip, learning to read and write and learning a trade that will serve him when he crosses into his promised land.  His patience and his hard work serve him well, as he is able to write his own passes and then when he gets to the North, he has a skill by which to support himself. 

             Finally, F. Scott Fitzgerald, a modern writer, also incorporates the quest image in his “Winter Dreams” (1922), illustrating that the Romantic quest image, although somewhat altered, is still viable in American culture.  In this work, Fitzgerald retells the “rags to riches” story through the main character of Dexter Green.  Like Columbus and Douglass, Dexter too embodies those characteristics necessary to cross boundaries: desire and the ability and courage to see the venture through.  In contrast, however, Dexter does not cross an ocean or a North-South Boundary, but rather his quest crosses class boundaries.  Not satisfied with his prospects as a caddie or going to a public university, he sets his sights on “an older and more famous university in the East.”  Patiently biding his time and growing stronger through his education, he makes a success of his laundry enterprise:  “Before he was twenty-seven he owned the larges string of laundries in his section of the country.  It was then that he sold out and went to New York.” 

            However, there the similarities end as Fitzgerald’s successful hero seeks his quest only for his own betterment.  Unlike Columbus who intended to share his venture with his King and Queen and Douglass who uses his freedom to help others in oppressive situations, our twentieth-century hero does all only for his own glorification. “He wanted not association with glittering things and glittering people—he wanted the glittering things themselves.”  Thus, when Dexter “commit[s] himself to the following of a grail,” the medieval image has become sexualized in the case of Judy Jones or materialized in the case of his Wall Street businessman pursuits.  And the Romantic would undoubtedly attribute that difference to industrial (capitalistic) world values.

Times:  12:15-2:00 and 4:00-5:30 and 7:15-7:30  (31/2 hrs. total)