Analysis Of The Use Of Transformations In Gothic Literature

The man, howling at the night sky, slowly reared back and roared louder, until the beast within bursted from the seams. That seems like a start to a werewolf or some old monster movie, moving on, so how does transformation scare us? Transformation plays a big role in gothic literature and scary movies by taking something the movie portrays as a normal life and flipping it on it's head. Gothic literature that includes transformation are stories such as Where Is Here by Joyce Carol Oates, House Taken Over by Julio Cortázar, and The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe. Where Is Here is a story by Joyce Carol Oates, the story starts off with a man asking the father of the story if he could poke around for a little bit because it was his childhood house, the father agrees, the mother is in disdain because she doesn't know if the man is safe or not.

The man, who from now I will refer to him as just “stranger”, gets invited inside and his face instantly lights up, telling the family about how the house was when he was a child, he starts in the kitchen, telling them that the kitchen was “so modernized” (pg 71 para 6). Slowly the family is getting annoyed with Stranger as he tours around the house,from the kitchen to the dining room, to the living room. The father, not wanting to be rude, lets him stay for a little while longer. They get to the stairs and Stranger is almost half mad at this point, mumbling to himself how the house was before. The father finally gets ballsy, and or mad, enough to ask Stranger to leave. Stranger, looking taken back as if he had gotten slapped, begs the father to let him stay a little longer. The father says no and mentally, physically, and psychologically gets Stranger out of the house.

Stanger pleads him for more time, asking “Just to sit on the stairs? In the Dark? For a few quiet minutes? And you could close the door and forget me, you and your family could have your dinner and--” (pg 76 para 34), but he gets shut off by a slam of the door. Now, I know that was a long summary of the book, and someone could probably tell it better, but I'm not here to tell you a story I read, no I'm here to tell you (the reader of this essay) what the transformation is in this story. As Stranger left the house, the father and mother go into the kitchen to finish up supper, but the father, angry and upset “the mother said, coming up behind the father and touching his arm. Without seeming to know what he did the father jerked his arm back” (pg 76, para 39). To me that paragraph speaks miles, I believe that Stranger is a ghost or spirit or something, and all because of one slip up, one line. “Please don’t be, We’ve all be dead- they’ve all been dead- a long time” (pg 73, para 19) see how he corrects himself? Maybe he was trying to say ‘We’ve all been dead FOR a long time’ Stanger, his mother, his sister are all dead, and you would barely be able to tell until the end of the story. In some stories, movies, and other things, Ghosts, and all of that unworldly stuff, have to be invited in the house, now what does the father do in the beginning part of the story? House taken over by Julio Cortazar. In my opinion the book could have done some things better, now I’m just going to assume that you have already read this story as it is too complex to explain. The story follows a brother and a sister living in the house, slowly it gets taken over by an unknown force.

What I would like to speak about in this story is not the transformation of the house, or monster. But the siblings. At the beginning of the story, the house, and the brother are almost like mice they are quiet. Only occasionally showing up for each other for breakfast, lunch, or just in general. The sister takes up knitting, weaving clothes for the both of them, the brother goes out and each day, buys the sister yarn. Pretty normal, right? I mean if I lived with my sister in a big house I’d probably hide my face all day. But in all seriousness, it seems somewhat normal. Then what is the transformation? You may ask, well, as their house gets taken over by an unknown force they have to bend, hide, and be as quiet as possible they are scared of whatever is on the other side of the oak door. The brother, once thinking himself useless and many other things, now is forced to hide with. . Well I don't want to call his sister deranged or mad, but slowly as she did nothing but knit, she changes to only care about yarn. Tell Tale Heart, by Edgar Allan Poe. An amazing twisted story of a man slowly driven insane, by a man with a “Ravens eye”. The story starts off fairly simple, the usual of a murder story. The man, who I will refer to as Mur (Mur-der), talks about how him and what I believe is a best friend of his, an old man, love each other, but that he hates only one thing about the man. His raven eye, the eye would just drive him crazy. One night, Mur slowly cracks the door open, he finds the old man asleep, so for hours Mur would watch him. This goes on for several days, each day Mur would open the door just a little more, than a little more, then more. On the eighth or ninth night, Mur slowly creeps in. He looks over the man, finding the raven eye still open. Mur kills the man and chops up his body pieces and hides them under the floorboard.

Unfortunately for Mur, the old man had let out a scream as Mur killed him, the neighbors getting the police. Apart of Murs transformation, was quite literally, being drove insane by what he believed to be the old man’s heart still beating in his ears so as he was being investigated by the police, he screams that he did it and rips up the floorboard where he hid the old man. In conclusion transformation doesn’t have to be a person turning into a monster, on the contrary, the monsters are the people themselves. As in Where Is Here, Stranger show the fathers true colors. As in Tell Tale Heart, where the smallest difference can lead to death. As in The House Taken Over, where they go from a rich and well off people, to a frightened, quiet homeless people. Transformation, in my mind, can be even more scary if you can relate to the story.