Toni Morrison was born in 1931 in Lorraine, Ohio.  As a child she lived in an integrated neighborhood.  As a result, despite the fact that she was a black female living in the 1930’s, she didn’t become aware of racism until she was a teenager.  This came as something of a surprise to me, that in the 1930’s she could live through her entire childhood without ever having encountered racism.  Perhaps it was a result of the naivety of youth.  She simply didn’t notice the acts of discrimination that surrounded her.  Or perhaps it says something about the progressiveness of the region in which she grew up.  Although, that brings to rise the question of what changed between her days as a child and the time she was a teenager.  Did the attitude of Lorraine change somehow?  Or, more likely, as previously stated she simply became more aware of the situation.  When we gave our presentation things certainly seemed to go well.  Our delivery was adequate as far as I could tell and our facts were accurate.  However, in reflection it might have been nice for us to add some conclusions or postulations as are stated above.

Toni morrison

Louis Durpé claims that, in literature, “what is uniquely Romantic…is that the person has become a question to himself.”  Here, Dupré is essentially saying that Romantic literature is introspective.  That is to say, it endeavors to plumb the depths of the human psyche and see what new insights might be gleaned.  But we are specifically interested in not just Romantic, but rather Gothic literature.  So in what way does Gothic literature treat the person as “a question to himself?”  How does it endeavor to explore the human psyche?  The obvious answer is fear.  Now, that sounds simple, perhaps too simple (too broad) so let us expound.  Perhaps a better way to phrase it would be something more like this; Gothic literature examines a core aspect of human psychology, that is, what frightens us and why?  Now let us be clear here.  This is not meant to be taken as “what sort of monsters frighten us?”  But rather something more akin to the idea of, what is it about frightening things that makes them frightening?

In order to explore this idea we will examine a number of actual works of Gothic literature to see what conclusions can be drawn.  To begin, let us start with Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown”.  It is a story about a man who leaves his wife, Faith (an obvious allegory), at home to journey into the forest (a classic symbol of sin and evil in “Puritan” literature) for a rendezvous with Lucifer.  While engaged in this expedition he makes a series of disturbing discoveries.

As it turns out, he is not the only person on an unholy pilgrimage that night.  As he travels he encounters or witnesses pastors and goodwives and all manner of people from his village all making the same trip for the same dark purpose.  At one point the devil draws his attention to one such group of fellow travelers, “he pointed his staff at a female figure on the path, in whom Goodman Brown recognized a very pious and exemplary dame, who had taught him his catechism in youth, and was still his moral and spiritual adviser, jointly with the minister and Deacon Gookin.” (Hawthorne 114)  This encounter seems to corroborate the Devil’s story that he “[had] a very general acquaintance here in New England.” (113)  But beyond that, the Devil even shakes Brown’s faith in his own family.  The young Goodman attempts to decline the Devil’s invitation for a stroll and conversation by saying, “My father never went into the woods on such an errand, nor his father before him.” (113)  But the Devil cuts him off to correct him, saying, “I have been well acquainted with your family…that’s no trifle to say.  I helped your grandfather, the constable, when he lashed the Quaker woman so smartly through the streets of Salem; and it was I that brought your father a pitch-pine knot, kindled in my own hearth, to set fire to an Indian village in King Phillip’s war.” (113)  At first Goodman Brown doesn’t seem to wholly believe him, but at the very least it certainly plants a seed of doubt, as Brown responds by saying, “If it be as thou sayest…I marvel that they never spoke of these matters, or verily, I marvel not, seeing that the least rumor of the sort would have driven them from New England.” (113)  The fact that Brown is so quick to doubt his forebears indicates that perhaps the Devil does not so much plant a seed of doubt, as he nurtures one which is already present.  In her essay “The Depths of Allegory in Hawthorne’s ‘Young Goodman Brown’”, Laurie Anne Jacobs points out an interesting connection between Hawthorne’s story and the historical context in which it resides.  Particularly, that of the Salem witch trials.  Jacobs pinpoints the setting in time, “The time period is established with the description of Goodman Brown as the son of a man who fought in King Phillip’s War…fought between 1675 and 1676, and a son would have been of marrying age by the early 1690s.  The Salem witch trials were in the year 1692, and the story is likely set just before this date.” (Jacobs)  This placement of the story into its historical context reveals a good deal.  For one thing, Brown certainly alludes to this when he says of his father and grandfather, “the least rumor of the sort would have driven them from New England,” (113) but this was true in general of Puritan society, as it was a theological one and those lacking in faith were not to be tolerated.  However, the Salem witch trials were a period of the utmost mistrust, paranoia, and suspicion.  It was literally a witch hunt.  Neighbors turning against neighbors, wildly speculative and unfounded accusations, and mob killings were the order of the day.  This mistrust, which is pervasive in the story, points to a deep seated human fear, a fear comprised of doubt.  The sort of fear that causes a man to question the motives of his neighbor.  A fear which at its core causes interpersonal relationships (and as a result society as a whole) to fall apart.  What makes this so deeply troubling?  Man is, by his very nature, a social animal.  It is nearly impossible for man to exist without society.  Thus it makes perfect sense that something which is so fundamentally threatening to the fabric of society would be so deeply troubling and frightening to us as human beings.  In this way, Hawthorne happens upon a part of the answer to the question that is man.

But let us shift focus now to the work of another Gothic author.  Here we will examine E.A. Poe’s “the Raven”.  In this poem, Poe probes the depths of sorrow and madness.  As the poem opens we see a man suffering from the loss of his love, Lenore, and seeking solace from his library, “vainly I had sought to borrow From my books surcease of sorrow—sorrow for the lost Lenore” (Poe, 422).  A faint knocking on his door ultimately reveals itself to be a wayward raven (once the man finally works up the courage to investigate his late-night “visitor”).  The narrator’s suffering, coupled with his hesitation and fear regarding a simple knock at his door, reveal a somewhat less-than-sound mental state.  When the bird finally gains entrance it squawks a solitary word, “Nevermore”.  Throughout the poem, this is the only line of dialogue which the Raven ever expresses, keep that in mind.  The narrator initially deals with the bird in a rational fashion, assuming that it was the lost pet of a master from whom it had learned only that solitary word.

Yet as the poem progresses the narrator begins to converse with the bird and draw deeper and deeper meaning from its responses (again, keep in mind that the only word ever spoken by the Raven throughout the course of the poem is “Nevermore”).  By the end the narrator has come to see the bird as his own supernatural, eternal tormentor.  But the otherworldly nature of this bird is highly questionable at best.  Poe is known for having a penchant for the use of unreliable narrators, and what is this poem’s protagonist if not unreliable?  We have already established the questionable mental state of the narrator as the poem opens, and by the end we’ve seen him arrive at completely irrational conclusions based off of the presence of a bird which only ever says one word.  It is not the Raven which convinces him of the dire situation that he is in at the end, but rather it is he who convinces himself.  However, this is done in such a meticulous and subtle fashion that the reader hardly notices it.  Unless a thorough reading is conducted it may well appear that supernatural forces are at play.  This subtle transition is no accident.  In his essay “On Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Raven’”, Dana Gioia reports that, “Poe claimed [that]… ‘The Raven’ emerged from a delicate and conscious process that progressed ‘with the precision and rigid consequence of a mathematical problem.’” (Gioia)  While Gioia goes on to refute Poe’s claim (about his own work), Poe’s explanation actually makes a great deal of sense when the unreliability of the narrator is taken into consideration, an aspect which Gioia fails to address.

It is certainly worth noting, perhaps even must be noted, that “The Raven” contains at least one double meaning, or rather double interpretation, of sorts.  Not only that, but a double interpretation that intertwines with itself.  Not only is there the creeping mental degradation of the narrator, but there is also the symbolism present throughout the poem, but particularly embodied in the Raven.  The Raven who symbolizes the narrator’s everlasting grief over the death of the woman with whom he shall be reunited “nevermore”.  This is especially obvious in the final stanza of the poem, “And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting…And the lamplight o’er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor; And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor Shall be lifted—nevermore!” (425)  Thus as the narrator makes the final descent into madness, the Raven becomes, to him, the embodiment of his grief.  It is that grief which Poe is chiefly exploring here.  The idea that grief can have such an everlasting and deeply significant (mind-altering even) effect on the human psyche is in a way an explanation of the fear of loss, and Poe’s portion to the answer of the question of man.

Gothic literature, as with other Romantic literature is deeply introspective.  Yet what makes Gothic literature unique is that it is both willing and able to plunge into the deepest and darkest regions of the human mind and condition in its search for answers to the man’s question of himself.

Works Cited

Gioia, Dana.  “On Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Raven’”  www.danagioia.net [Online]

Available 04/28/15

Hawthorne, Nathaniel.  Young Goodman Brown and Other Tales, © 2008, Oxford University

Press. Great Clarendon Street, Oxford.

Poe, Edgar Allan.  The Portable Edgar Allan Poe, © 2006, Penguin Group.  New York, NY

Jacobs, Laurie Anne.  “The Depths of Allegory in Hawthorne’s ‘Young Goodman Brown’”

“What is uniquely Romantic [about this essay] is that

[my studies have] become a question [to themselves]”

-Louis Dupré (heavily edited)

What have I learned?  A deceptively simple question, particularly in conjunction with the ancillary, “and how did I learn it?”  Certainly, for 40,000+ dollars a year one would hope to come away with some modicum of new knowledge and insight.  Were this a course in science or mathematics, or even history or geopolitics, the answer would be as simple as the question itself.  Merely a list of new facts which have been mastered; different equations, dates of significant events, names of influential figures.  However, in an humanities course such as this, the answer becomes infinitely more complicated.  And that complexity gives rise to a certain level of stress when one’s own reflection is to be judged for a grade.  But having come this far, let me endeavor to continue, and in doing so perhaps discern that which I have learned, and the means by which I have come to know it.

Specifically, this assignment is interested in determining what new insights I have gained into American culture.  This at first seems odd, as I have grown up immersed in American culture, both as an actor and an observer.  But it is a fair question, as we often receive only a distorted or limited view of a thing when we are in the midst of it and American culture encompasses far more than simply the present day.

In the assignments I have completed for this course I have focused chiefly on the writings of Hawthorne and Poe.  The reason for this is simple.  I find the theocratic society of the Puritans to be intriguing in a troubling way and I find Poe’s despondent, haunting style to be darkly alluring.  But what does any of this have to do with American culture?  For the purposes of this essay, I shall focus on that which I have learned from Hawthorne with regards to Puritan society.

It is easy to see the Puritans as uptight fanatics, and that is certainly how Hawthorne portrays them.  Dogmatic, superstitious, and overbearing.  Yet even still, their culture, one of the founding cultures of America, was not without its redeeming values.  As I point out in my artifact “Regarding ‘The Maypole of Merry Mount’”, “Hawthorne seeks to illustrate that true happiness come from purpose, and while he may not have agreed with the purposes of the Puritans, he respected that what they did at least had meaning.” (McManus, “Regarding ‘The Maypole of Merry Mount’”)  In what we see from Hawthorne, the Puritans led dull, mirthless lives.  But, “While he obviously detests the drudgery of the Puritans it seems that he holds even greater contempt for the carelessness of the Merry Mounters.” (McManus, “Regarding ‘The Maypole of Merry Mount’”)  And that is not all he respects about Puritan culture.  There are certain aspects of it for which he truly seems to have an admiration.  For example, the Puritan culture involved a strict work ethic and a solemnity for fidelity and personal sacrifice, “As [“The Maypole of Merry Mount”] draws to a close, we see the newlyweds ready to sacrifice their very lives for one another, and this seems to be where Hawthorne’s respect for the Puritans stems from.” (McManus, “Regarding ‘The Maypole of Merry Mount’”)  Thus, when we think of American culture today the terms freedom and individualism readily spring to mind, but one thing that this course has served to teach me is that those values which we prize today are rooted in a foundation comprised of a redoubtable work ethic and a respect for personal sacrifice.

Now we know what I know, and the question becomes, how did I learn it?  In truth (and this holds for nearly each and every one of my classes) I find the greatest insight, if not necessarily the most new knowledge (knowledge here meaning facts and data), through completing assignments and the actual writing process.  This is a result of the fact that while a deal of information can be absorbed passively, the act of actually sitting down to write forces a synthesis and analysis of both the source material and my own thoughts and preconceptions, which often leads to new ideas.  For example, in my film trailer analysis, I mention that one possible theme of the movie is man’s inherent capacity for evil, “evil can be found in anyone and evil itself can never truly be destroyed…[in other words] everyone has the capacity for evil, and as a result evil will exist so long as mankind continues to exist.” (McManus, “On the Topic of the Horror Film ‘Fallen’”)  Now, I had seen the entire movie at least once (perhaps twice) before sitting down to write a paper about the trailer.  And each time I watched it I enjoyed it and I retained a great deal of information regarding the plot and characters, but it was not until I stopped to write that I actually synthesized this knowledge and understanding into a coherent theme.

Throughout this course I have gained a number of new insights into American culture, as I have spent my whole life living in it, but it was not until now that I viewed it as an objective observer.  Naturally, for the purposes of this paper I limited myself to discussing a specific insight.  But more than any cultural understanding I developed, or facts that I learned regarding authors and styles of literature, the most important thing that I have discovered in this course is having discerned just exactly how I learn.

The movie “Fallen” is a supernatural horror/crime mystery thriller from 1998 staring Denzel Washington as a successful and competent inner-city detective.  The trailer indicates that the film opens with Washington’s character visiting a death row inmate, one that he put behind bars, on the day of the man’s execution.  This would seem to be a peculiar starting point for a crime drama, and thus it is here where the supernatural horror components come into play.  In the trailer we see the convict executed, the words “The case is closed” flash white on the screen against a black background, and then they are followed shortly by the words, “but evil doesn’t die easy”.  We learn, via narrative exposition, that the spirit of the killer is able to transfer itself from one person to another (essentially possessing them) simply through physical contact.  The rest of the trailer hints that the movie is something of a supernatural mystery thriller, with Washington’s character seeking a way to destroy the evil spirit while it taunts and toys with him.

But what specifically does any of this have to do with Gothic conventions?  Here I will elucidate, but I intend to focus solely on the uncanny, as the trailer and really the premise behind the film itself make such good use of it.

Chiefly, there is this idea of possession.  The sense of the uncanny that comes from this is exceedingly pervasive.  So much so that it will remain with you the very next time you walk down the street, as any of the strangers you pass may not be just another stranger, but rather any one of them could be a murderous, demonic spirit in disguise.  Crowds only worsen the effect, as the constant jostling would mean that the spirit could pass from person to person more easily, and you could even become easily possessed yourself.  Thus, it takes some very normal, very everyday human social interactions and it alters them, or rather one’s perception of them, drastically.  It creates something perverted and deeply unsettling which still retains at least a semblance of its normal, comfortable appearance and to do so is the essence of the uncanny.

But the trailer is uncanny in a broader sense as well, perhaps not in so threatening a manner, but in a way that still defies ones expectations by delivering something different and a little disturbing in a familiar package.  In a way, I am speaking here of the genre of the film.  We can see in it a sort of meta-uncanniness.  The film takes the crime drama blueprint and distorts it at its core.  It retains all the trappings of a crime drama and a mystery thriller, and even retains their basic formula to a degree, but it also adds an element of horror and the supernatural.  What I find most intriguing about this is the idea that a meta level uncanniness might just slip past a viewer the first time they see the movie, but I wonder if it would affect them even if they didn’t expressly notice it.

In addition to all of this, I would like to make a note on the apparent theme of this work.  The ability of the malign spirit to inhabit and possess persons at will and to continue to exist even if the possessed vessel is destroyed gives rise to an interesting and, I believe, supremely Gothic theme.  That is, evil can be found in anyone and evil itself can never truly be destroyed.  Not that everyone actually contains an evil spirit (or even “evil” itself in the abstract sense) but rather that everyone has the capacity for evil, and as a result evil will exist so long as mankind continues to exist.

The 1998 film “Fallen” makes a brilliant use of the Gothic convention of the uncanny.  And with a little close analysis, it even gives rise to quite a profound theme, or perhaps it would be better said that it makes a profound commentary, on human nature itself.

Works Cited

“Fallen (1998) Theatrical Trailer” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VO-jGkLzRgM  [Online]

Available 4/28/15