The Idea Of Mindless Fear In Gothic Literature

Fear is something very foreign to countless people, not the idea, but the response to it, the way people react to fear. Everyone has their own fears; their own definitions and triggers to these unique varieties of fear. We imagine our worst fears and what would happen if they became a reality. This is where imagination plays a key role in the response to fear. Imagination can overcome one’s ability to reason out an abnormal situation, in which fear kicks in; frequently resulting in the situation becoming worse than the previous extent. Fear is in everyone’s lives, although it doesn’t affect some as much as others due to their response to this fear. Meaning they don’t let their imagination overcome their reason, creating a mindless fear as exhibited throughout our lifetime.

In the short story, House Taken Over, the narrator and his sister live in a huge empty house. It is unsaid where the other 6 family members that lived in the house went to or what happened to them. Their lives are on a continuous loop of the same things every day. One day, the narrator hears these abnormal sounds in one room in the house. He goes to his sister and says, “I had to shut the door to the passage. They’ve taken over the back part” (Cortázar 40). They just picked up their belongings and locked away that section of the house. Again this happened, moving to the last section of the house. Upon the last time of this happening, the narrator and his sister grabbed the little belongings they could before they ran out of the house locking the door behind them and throwing the key into the sewer. The narrator said, “It wouldn’t do to have some poor devil decide to go in and rob the house, at that hour and with the house taken over” (Cortázar 42). This passage of gothic literature by Julio Cortázar is a quintessential example of the recurring idea that your imagination overcomes your