The memory of the past can bring pride or guilt, no matter which one it is, dwelling in the past for too long will entrap one into one's own illusion and lose the ability to distinguish fantasy and reality. In The Haunting of Hill House and Sunset Boulevard, the Gothic settings and characters in the stories draw out the deepest nightmare of Eleanor and Norma. While both characters of the novel and film share similar impact of Gothic settings and characters, they are different in terms of the contrasting experience of their illusion; specifically, what benefits and detriments their illusions have brought to them. This is important because dwelling in one's past isn't only harmful to oneself, it is also harmful to the others. The first similarity …show more content…
John Montague and Max von Mayerling, their influences further entrap Eleanor and Norma into their own illusions. Beginning in Eleanor's case, Dr. Montague controls the behaviour of all the character in the story since he is the one who gathers everyone to the haunted house to aid him in his research or investigation of the mystery behind the supernatural activity. His bedroom colour is yellow indicates that he acts as the beacon of light that guides the people around him in the darkest time which makes him the leading figure in the story. In some degree, Eleanor is controlled by Dr. Montague considering every step she takes is under the instruction of him from beginning to end. For instance, when she can't find the way to the Hill House she follows the direction provided in Dr. Montague's letter “as though he had been guiding her from some spot far away, moving her car with controls in his hands, it was done” (Jackson 16). And when he forces her to leave, once again he gives her precise instructions to where to go “You'll go to Hillsdale... In Hillsdale turn onto Route Five going east; at Ashton you will meet Route Thirty-nine, and that will take you home” (Jackson 178). It is clear that Eleanor's constant dependence on Dr. Montague exposes her vulnerability which suggests weak willpower. Eleanor's weak …show more content…
In order to fully understand the different outcome of Eleanor and Norma, the internal issues of the characters should also be considered; specifically, how their pasts affect their psychological and mental states in the present. Prior to Eleanor's invitation to the Hill House, she is forced to spend eleven years of her life looking after her invalid mother, this frustrates her because it prevents her from having a normal societal life like the others with the same age. In some degree, the confinement of her mother interrupts her natural psychological development at that time when she is twenty-one years old. While living in the Hill House, Eleanor is constantly haunted by the dream of the former distressing experience with her mother. Regardless whether there are ghosts in the story, these negative psychological implications of Eleanor suggest that she blames herself for the death of her mother even though there is no direct evidence pointing to her. With this in mind, Eleanor's illusion is the only tool that brings her peace and hopes to sustain in this world of despair. The moment when she is banished from the Hill House, she loses hope because she has nowhere to go, no place to feel home. In the story, she tells the readers that “what I want in all this world is peace, a quiet spot to lie and think, a quiet spot
Every story, every book, every legend, every belief and every poem have a reason and a background that creates them. Some might be based on historical events, some might be based on every culture´s beliefs, and some others might be based on personal experiences of the authors. When a person writes a literary piece, that person is looking for a way to express her opinion or her feelings about a certain situation. A good example is the poem “Southern Mansion” by Arna Bonptems. The main intention of “Southern Mansion” could have been to complain, or to stand against the discrimination and exploitation of black people throughout history. However, as one starts to read, to avoid thinking about unnatural beings wandering around the scene that is depicted is impossible. The poem “Southern Mansion” represents a vivid image of a typical ghost story which includes the traditional element of the haunted house. This image is recreated by the two prominent and contradictory elements constantly presented through the poem: sound and silence. The elements are used in two leading ways, each one separate to represent sound or silence, and together to represent sound and silence at the same time. The poem mixes the two elements in order to create the spooky environment.
A picture tells a thousand words, and "Eleanor" by Eric Drooker says volumes. At first glance, it is a seemingly normal neighborhood, in any city in the world. We see an old woman, at the end of her life, living a meager existence and instantly you conclude that she is lonely and friendless. That is not the picture I choose to see. People assume that once a person becomes older that their life has little meaning or happiness. I see a woman who has everything she wants and needs. She surrounds herself with life, the flowers she grows and nurtures, and her cat. The flowers bring her happiness and perhaps remind her of a garden she once had. They bring color and happiness to her world. They supply her with a touch of nature, something
There is knocking sounds inside of her head as much as the outside, she believes: “I am disappearing inch by inch into this house, I am going apart a little bit at a time because all this noise is breaking me; why are the others frightened?” She decides to give up: “I will relinquish my procession of this self of mine, abdicate, give over willingly what never wanted at all; whatever it want of me it can have” (Jackson, 174). She admits her life is something what she could never control. Eleanor scared everyone in the group on her final night at the hill house. he was acting like a ghost, dancing and signing along the hallways, banging the doors.
Abigail Day is an older member of the Willow Springs' community, sister to Miranda, and grandmother to Cocoa. Instead of embracing the pain Abigail experienced through out her life and turning it into something positive for herself and others, she tried to change the past, and that only left her with more pain. Abigail was the middle child of three sisters. When Peace her younger sister fell in a well, their father and mother became distant with each other and in the end her mother threw herself off a cliff because she could not deal with the pain. When talking about her mother Miranda says, “Mother hardly cooked at all. And later she didn’t eat much. Later she didn’t do nothing but sit in that rocker… Too much sorrow…much too much. And I was too young to give [her] peace. Even Abigail tried and failed”(243). When Abigail was younger her father carved wood and “Abigail, [tried] to form with flesh what her daddy couldn’t form from wood”(262). Her whole childhood was spent trying to make up for her sister’s death.
The character Norma Jean fits all the psychological characteristics of behavior change in mothers who are coping with life after losing their child to sudden infant death syndrome. The most common symptoms are anxiety and depression (Boyle 933 par.1). She is always trying to stay busy. First she decided to build her own body up. She goes to the gym or does exercises around the house whenever she is home. Second she decided to take night classes at her local community college. She comes home and writes essays of stories she has read. She never seems to be in a relaxed state of being. These are signs of anxiety. The definition of anxiety is uneasiness. She can’t decide what she wants to do with herself. There are many reasons for her depression. She is trying to cope with the death of her child, her empty marriage to Leroy and her less than supportive mother.
To start off, first, the narrator thinks that the house her and her husband John are renting for the next three months is haunted or it wouldn’t be as cheap as it is for being such a beautiful place. Another thing is that she unhappy in her marriage. Her husband doesn’t listen to her, tells her she’s wrong and laughs at her. She is feeling very unwell and all he says is she has temporary nervous depression and only tells her to stay in bed and do nothing. The way she describes things is very bleak, dark, depressing. She keeps going back to thoughts of the house being haunted and gets anxious. She becomes angry with John for no reason sometimes and thinks it’s from her ‘nervous condition’. Something the reader may not catch onto when she talks about how she doesn’t like her bedroom is how she took the nursery, so right away, we know she has a baby. She feels trapped with the barred windows and not being able to go anywhere, having to just lay down and look at the most revolting yellow wallpaper shes ever seen. Writing the story alone makes her extremely exhausted and she says that John doesn’t know the extent of her suffering. Eventually, it’s made known that she can’t even go near her own child and it makes her increasingly nervous. She has unwanted thoughts throughout the entire story of the terrifying ugly yellow
When writing a story that is meant to scare the reader, authors use a variety of different literary elements to intensify fear. This is apparent in the stories “The Fall of the House of Usher,” “beware: do not read this poem,” and “House Taken Over”. It is shown through transformation in the character, setting, and sometimes even the story or poem itself, adding to the scariness that the reader feels when reading it. While there are some examples of transformation not being scary or not playing a role in stories meant to scare us, transformation plays a crucial role in making the reader of these stories scared.
Gothic texts are typically characterized by a horrifying and haunting mood, in a world of isolation and despair. Most stories also include some type of supernatural events and/or superstitious aspects. Specifically, vampires, villains, heroes and heroines, and mysterious architecture are standard in a gothic text. Depending upon the author, a gothic text can also take on violent and grotesque attributes. As an overall outlook, “gothic literature is an outlet for the ancient fears of humanity in an age of reason” (Sacred-Texts). Following closely to this type of literature, Edgar Allan Poe uses a gloomy setting, isolation, and supernatural occurrences throughout “The Fall of the House of Usher”.
To set the tone in the story the author had to describe the surroundings of the characters. For example the author states, "with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit." when giving a detailed response of how he feels about the house. This helps show that the author himself feels depressed when in sight of the building and gives the reader a thought of how the house looks. Other textual evidence in the passage also shows a feeling of suspense like the quote, "There was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart - an unredeemed dreariness of thought which no goading of the imagination could torture into aught of the sublime. " which is how the author feels when he thinks about the house. The author cannot bear to imagine the house because he has a dark and negative imagination with different fears he thinks can come to life because of how unsettling the house makes him feel. While suspense is a direct indication of a depressed and dark tone, some other Gothic elements can be used indirectly to describe negative values in the story.
Fear brings forth a certain atmosphere which compels us to act upon it. The era in which the book was published allows us to see how common these fears were. Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House is an excellent portrayal of how fear controls the human mind by using the characters as examples. In the book Eleanor, Theodora, Luke, and Dr. Montague have all been influenced by fear in the story, whether it be the fear of love, the unknown, family, rejection, expression, or loneliness. These different types of fear plagued their minds causing their actions to reflect upon them. Jackson explores the theme of fear in The Haunting of Hill House by creating a cast of characters that in turn are manipulated by the inner workings of their minds and the
Along with Leah isolating herself from the outdoors, she starts isolating herself from her family. Leah always thinks the worst of situations ???. Jack wanted her to move in with him and his family. He didn’t want her living alone. Other than the fact that Lead hated Ruth, Leah thought that the only reason they wanted her to move in was because of her pension. ** dropped quote! You do not understand incorporating quotes- see me**“Why do I stay with them?’ She asked herself the question for the thousandth time and for the thousandth time replied with the automatic answer,’Because they need my pension.” (111) Leah questions why Jack and Ruth want her to move in with them. She repeats, thousands of times how her pension is the only reason as to why they would want that. Leah continuously lies to her kids about little, irrelevant things. In doing so, it creates space between them; the truth being the space. Leah tells them that they will go places, do things, get things when, in reality, she knows none of it is true. “She’d even lie to the children, ‘The winter’s almost over now, things are always easier in the summer. Maybe this year we can all go on a little vacation, to a farm maybe, wouldn’t it be nice to go to a farm?” (111) Leah knows that they won’t actually go to the farm on family vacation during the summer. She tells her kids repetitive lies to make her sound better to them. They didn’t have much money, they almost lost their house, so she would tell them things to make it seem like they were well off. When Leah’s husband dies she becomes isolated. She changes and doesn’t recognize herself
When Elijah realizes that Oglivy can no longer remember his dreams, a divide grows between them. Readers develop sympathy for Elijah since he loses one of the few comforts he has in his “disorder”. Furthermore, the reference of specific tragedies adds to the story such as Mount Vesuvius, the Bubonic Plague, Tropical Storm Vita. By specifically mentioning a range of past events, all imbued with tragedy whether it be a natural disaster or an infectious disease, readers can glimpse the scope of what Elijah deals with and how difficult it can be to witness such events. Finally, Russel effectively employs the use of flashbacks to add to the story rather than draw away from it.
The paper compares two short stories (Poe’s “the fall of The House of Usher” and Perkins-Gillman’s “the Yellow Wallpaper”), in order to develop arguments about the relationship between characters’ fears and the main theme of each story. In the two short stories, the characters are suffering from various forms of fear under different circumstances. Such fears include fear of fear, fear of death, fear of other people, fear of isolation, fear of punishment, and fear of loss of reputation. Such different forms of fears can assist readers in understanding the motives of the characters.
Some people tell the truth and some people show the truth. Elizabeth Bowen shows the truth in her story, “The Demon Lover”. Her story is about a forty four year old woman who revisits her childhood home to collect some possessions for her family. However, the woman finds a letter from an unknown source that she believes is from her dead fiancé. Many readers believe this piece of fiction to be a ghost story, but it is one that is about a woman with acute psychological delusion portrayed through the use of characterization and occasion.
For instance, once Norma presses the button and begins to believe it truly has no power, she receives a call from the Lennox Hospital informing her that her husband died; she then calls Mr. Steward and exclaims, “‘You said I wouldn’t know the one that died!’... Mr. Steward said, ‘do you really think you knew your husband?’” (Matheson 25). Because Mr. Steward asks Norma if she really knows her husband, it suggests that Norma’s egotistical personality causes her to be incognizant of her surroundings. The author composes this choice in the plot in order to manifest the concept that greed can cause a person to be desperate enough to make irrational decisions. Moreover, Norma’s recklessness reveals her inability to formulate logical decisions. In the end, Norma’s decision costs her her husband’s