Definition of Plot

The interconnected series of events that move the story along through cause and effect. 

Plot is divided into the

beginning, middle, and end.

The beginning refers to the incentive moment and begins the cause-and effect chain of events. It is similar to striking a match and lighting the fuse.  

The middle or climax,must be caused by earlier events and in turn cause the events that follow. 

The resolution or end must be the result of the events in the story, but it cannot introduce new events outside the scope of the story. 

conflict is a struggle between opposing forces. Internal conflict is a struggle within oneself and external conflict is a struggle with opposing forceConflict s which are outside of oneself.

A conflict is a struggle between opposing forcA conflict is a struggle between opposing forces. Internal conflict is a struggle within oneself and external conflict is a struggle with opposing forces which are outside of oneself. 

Internal conflict

Internal conflict is a struggle within oneself and external conflict is a struggle with opposing forces which are outside of oneself.

In a good story everything is not harmonious. All of the characters don’t always agree with each other. This helps to make it a good story

Conflict

Conflict is the

struggle or opposition experienced by the main character in a story. 

External Conflict

occurs between the main character and another character or between the main character and another force such as the environment

Internal conflict 

Characters

like people in real life, are largely responsible for what happens to them. As events unfold, we may observe the characters in a story losing control over their lives. The decisions that a character makes determines what is eventually going to happen to him just the same as the decisions you make determine what your fate will be. 

Protagonist

The main character of a story is called the protagonist. The force that conflicts with the main character, whether it is external or internal, is called the antagonist. In a good story, conflict grows out of the events in the story that uncover the relationship between the protagonist and antagonist. The main character can experience more than one conflict throughout a story.

Four Types of Literary Conflict

Man against Man

Man against Himself

Man against Nature

Man against Society

Man against Man 

This occurs when the conflict is between the protagonist and another character in the story.

Man Against Himself

This occurs when the protagonist is experiencing a personal inner conflict.

Man against Nature

This occurs when the protagonist is experiencing a conflict with a natural condition such as a hurricane or flood

Man against Society

This occurs when the protagonist is experiencing a conflict with the rules, norms, or structure of his society.

Two types of characters

Static or Flat Characters

Dynamic or Round Characters

Static or Flat Characters

They exist only in two dimensions and can be regarded as card board figures. They present only a single view and they do not change. Consider the classic Disney story of “Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.” Throughout the story these characters remain the same. They do not grow or change in a meaningful way. Snow White is always pure and good. Happy is always happy. Grumpy is always grumpy. 

Basic Definition of Character

The protagonist is the main or leading character of the story.

Dynamic or Round Characters

Characters that change and grow are called Dynamic or Round Characters. They exist in three dimensions and may surprise the reader in convincing ways. The reader gains new insights into the character’s true self as he changes vantage point. 

There are many ways in which an author reveals a character’s inner qualities. 

Setting

The setting includes the place and the time period in which the story takes place.

Setting may or may not have an important influence on the story:

Integral Setting

Backdrop Setting

Setting can clarify 

conflict, illuminate character, affect the mood, and act as a symbol. The setting itself can be an antagonist in a person-against-nature conflict.

Point of View

Limited Point of view 

First Person Point of View

the narrator is a character in the story and tells it from their perspective. 

Third Person Point of View

In third person point of view, the narrator is outside of the story. 

Third Person Omniscient

First Person Point of View Advantages

It is easier for the author to use his/her voice.

There is often more power and emotion in the voice of the narrator because he is in the story as the events are taking place.

The author assumes the protagonist's role, therefore it is easier for him to discern the character's motivations and emotions.

First Person Point of View Disadvantages

The author can only reveal what the protagonist sees, hears or thinks. He can't reveal the thoughts of the other characters.

The narrative is restricted to only what the narrator knows about or experiences.

Verbal Irony

Theme 

Theme is the underlying meaning of the story, a universal truth, a significant statement the story is making about society, human nature, or the human condition.

The subject

Theme is the underlying meaning of the story, a universal truth, a significant statement the story is making about society, human nature, or the human condition.

A story's theme must be described in universal terms, not in terms of the plot. The plot is the way the universal theme is carried out in that particular book. Themes can be applied to the reader's own life or to other literature.

Themes must be clearly stated; one word is not usually enough. To say that a story's theme is ""friendship"" is not clear. It may mean, ""Friends are a person's most valuable possession."" It may also mean, ""Friends can never be trusted if their own interests are opposed to yours.""

Primary Theme

The primary theme is the most important theme in the story; children's books usually have one primary theme. There may be other secondary themes as well

Explicit Theme

An explicit theme is one that is stated openly in the story. It is stated in universal terms in the story itself

Implicit Theme

An implicit theme is one which is not directly stated, but which the reader can infer. Many times, readers will not notice that an explicit theme is directly stated, but they can often infer the theme anyway

Literary Devices 

   Tragedy

Writers create stories for a variety of purposes

Writers create stories for a variety of purposes, the most logical being to make a statement about a topic or theme that is interesting, clear, persuasive, and memorable to readers. An author develops a writing style that is appropriate for the audience by carefully selecting words that will have the most impact on the reader.

words choice is selected with one of three purposes in mind:

Emphasis, association, clarification, and focus for comprehensibility (ease of understanding)

    Physical organization, transition, and arrangement for comprehensibility (ease of understanding) and readablitity (ease of reading)

    Decoration and variety for affectivitiy (emotional response)

Literary devices help authors 

authors achieve these purposes with flair and elegance that demands thought beyond the literal meaning of words. In a sense, much of the comprehensibility, readablility, and affectivity of a text doesn't come from words themselves, but the meaning the reader finds buried within those words. As you read novels and short stories, you will encounter a variety of literary devices and gain a strong understanding of the literary device and its purpose.

four devices that relate to purpose of emphasis, association, clarification, and focus.

emphasisrefers to an author's attempt to stress an important word, phrase, or idea. An author may emphasize a point to help the reader recognize its importance.

Associations, on the other hand, help readers understand a text better through connections. If a reader can connect an idea with something, someone, some place the reader knows, it will be easier to understand and more memorable.

Clarifications are used to make an important point more clear to the reader. 

Literary devices that fall under these emphasis, association, clarification, and focus purposes are:

allusion, symbolism, theme, and allegory. Both allusion and symbolism are examples of associations. When an author uses allusion, he or she is making a reference to a familiar person, place, thin, or event. In the novel Of Mice and Men Steinbeck referes to the city Soledad and the Salinas River in the first chapter. These are references and associations to a familiar place and thing.

When an author uses symbolism

he or she is using a concrete or touchable object to represent an idea. We'll use Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men again as an example of symbolism. George is one of the main characters in the novel. Why do you think George is always playing the card game solitaire? Why not poker or Go Fish? Solitaire is a game associated with one person. Since George is a solitary, lonely person who really only has one friend, the card game Solitaire is a perfect symbol of George.

Both theme and allegory are used for the purpose of focus

because the author wants to specifically direct the reader's attention to a word, phrase, or idea. Although we have studied the literary device of theme, and you know it refers to a statement about life the author is trying to make through the story, theme also acts as a focusing element for readers. All of the word choices, places, characters, conflicts, and other literary elements relate to and are focused on theme.

Allegory is used for focus

An allegory is a story where people, things, and actions represent an idea or generalization about life. Usually a strong moral or lesson about lifes characterizes an allegory. Although theme and allegory look very similar, keep in mind that an allegory is a specific type of story with a moral or lesson, while a theme is contained within a story. In other words, it is possible to find multiple themes within an allegory.

The second purpose of literary devices

involves physical organization, transition, and arrangement in order to make the ideas comprehensible and readable. Physical organization involves the visual representation of text on the page. How is font style, color, alignment, and contrast used so that the reader can easily identify key ideas? Transitions help the reader to move smoothly from one point to another within a text. Arrangement refers to the sequence of events.

Literary device of foreshadowing 

If we look at Of Mice and Men again, we will see several examples of these three literary devices. The literary device of foreshadowing uses hints or clues to help the reader make logical predictions about what will happen later in the story. The title itself, Of Mice and Men is an explain of foreshadowing because we know that the plans of mice and men often go awry. This means that the main characters, George and Lennie, will have their plans go awry, too. Progressive and digressive time relate to arrangement and transition because they involve whether the sequence of events moves smoothly forward or back in time. Of Mice and Men moves forward in time, so the novella uses a progressive time sequence.

The last literary device focuses on the purpose of decoration and variety

Decoration and variety refer to choosing words for their power and elegance, and using different sentence structures and word combinations to affect people's emotions. When an author affects the reader's emotions in some way, the story becomes more memorable and interesting.

Two literary devices, imagery and tragedy

the purpose of affecting the reader's emotions. Imagery is used to create a specific picture in the reader's mind through powerful sensory details. Although imagery could also fall under the purpose of association because the word choice helps the reader to picture a familiar place or idea, imagery is often used to create setting, which is connected to the mood or feeling of the story. In Of Mice and Men, Steinbeck uses imagery at the beginning of each of his chapters to help the reader visualize the setting and to set the tone

Tragedy as a literary device 

Tragedy as a literary device that does exactly what the word implies. A tragedy is a literary work, typically a story, where the hero is destroyed by a character flaw or forces beyond his control. Of Mice and Men is considered a tragedy. You already know from the title that something goes wrong with the dreams of George and Lennie.

Emphasis, association, clarification, and focus include the

literary devices of allusion, symbol, theme, and allegory

Each of these devices are used by authors to emphasize a point, help the reader understand the ideas through association, clarification, and focus. Authors also not only use physical organization, transition, and arrangement to help make a text comprehensible, but it also helps make a text readable

Literary devices such as foreshadowing and progressive and digressive time help readers to understand the sequence of events to come.

authors use imagery and tragedy to make their stories and ideas memorable by affecting the reader's emotions. Powerful emotional responses will ingrain a story (and possibly a moral or lesson) in a reader's mind. Keep in mind that it is quite common for these literary devices to serve more than one purpose. For example, a tragedy not only creates an emotional response in the reader, but it can also help emphasize an idea as well. The categories are intended to help you remember the general purpose of literary devices. Do not see these classifications as struct, but rather as a means of remembering why an author might use a literary device.

Sensory Language

Sensory language is one of the most important tools authors use to create imagery. Poetry frequently uses sensory language, but many short story author's, such as ones by Edgar Allan Poe, use it to help create an image in the readers' minds.

What is sensory language?

Sensory language refers to any appeal a writer makes to one of the five physical senses: sight, sound, smell, touch, and taste. Many of the other devices writers use appeal mainly to our intellect or to our emotions, but sensory language has the added power of appealing to our physical selves as well. When writers use sensory language well, they can almost make us ""feel"" the things they describe.

How do writers use sensory language to establish setting? 

Answer:Writers probably use sensory language more than any other tool for establishing scene. Sensory language contributes to establishing setting by making a place seem unique, by contributing to the tone (or mood) of the story, and by building strong connections between characters to their surroundings.

What would a story about the beach be like without sensory details like ""the gritty touch of coarse sand between your toes"" or ""the tangy salt air that made his lips sting""?

What would a ghost story be like without sensory details such as ""the moaning of the cold wind across the deserted moors"" or ""the creaking of the rusty hinges"" as the door swings open? Likewise, science fiction stories need ""the stars scattered like glittering jewels across the black velvet night"" to capture the reader's imagination; mystery stories need "the creak of unknown feet on the staircase" to create suspense; and fantasy stories need ""the chorus of silver trumpets ripping open the sky"" to evoke a sense of grandeur.

How do writers use sensory language to advance plots? 

Answer: Writers can use sensory language to advance plot by focusing on the senses as stimuli that prompt characters into action. For instance, imagine a character who walks through the front door of her apartment only to be greeted by the unique scent of natural gas. What will her response be to that stimuli? Perhaps she rushes to the kitchen to check the stove; maybe she immediately calls the fire department; possibly she is stricken with panic because she thinks her depressed roommate might be trying to hurt herself; or maybe she becomes convinced that it's time to look for a new, more well-maintained place to live. All of these possibilities can be extracted from one single use of sensory language, and each possibility opens the door to a completely different kind of story!

How do writers use sensory language to evoke characters? 

Answer:Writers can use sensory language to tell readers a lot about the kind of person a character is. For example, a man who is described as ""smelling sticky with sweat after a long day's work"" is probably very different sort of person than a man who is described as ""smelling like cheap cologne and stale cigars."" On the other hand, writers sometimes use sensory language to juxtapose (or contrast) the external appearance of a character with his or her ""true"" inner self. For instance, a writer may describe a character by saying, ""she was small and plain and mousey-looking,"" but then go on to reveal later in the story that her personality is actually dynamic and strong--the opposite of ""plain and mousey.""

How do writers use sensory imagery to reinforce theme? 

Answer:Writers use sensory language to reinforce theme by creating parallels between the internal experiences of characters and the external physical world they inhabit. For instance, if a writer's theme is the longing for lost youth, sensory images such as ""the smell of freshly mown grass"" or ""the taste of an ice cream sandwich"" could be used trigger a character's memories of long-gone childhood summers. In this example, the sensory language serves as a bridge that connects the writer's theme to the character's thoughts and feelings and to the actual physical world the character inhabits.

The Masque of the Red Death”

Setting

Setting  "The A castle cut off from the world, in a kingdom struck by a plague.

The story is set in Prince Prospero's luxurious "castellated abbey" (which is just a fancy way of saying it's an abbey built up with the fortifications of a castle), hidden somewhere in his kingdom. To call it "cut off" is an understatement. Not only is it "deeply secluded" (hidden in a hard-to-reach spot), but Prospero and his followers have also welded the doors shut, so no one can get in or out. Everyone inside is having one big party; everyone outside is dying to get in. Well, actually just dying.

The story's main action takes place in an elaborate suite of seven colored rooms within the abbey, where Prospero holds the masquerade ball. The suite, which Prospero designed, consists of seven rooms that run in a line from east to west. Roughly a line, at least – as the narrator tells us, their alignment is actually rather irregular, so that from any given room you can only see into one other room. The lighting's interesting too. Every room has one window on either side of it (facing roughly north and south), and the candles to light each room are placed outside the windows in the two hallways that run along either side of the suite. That way the light shines into the rooms through the windows, creates quite a neat effect, especially considering the ball takes place late at night.

The Red Masque of Death

The most memorable detail of the suite, of course, is that each room has a different "color theme." 

The most memorable detail of the suite, of course, is that each room has a different "color theme." The wall hangings, the decorations, and even the windows of a given room are all one color. The first room in the suite – the farthest room to the east – is blue, the second is purple, the third is green, the fourth is orange, the fifth is white, and the sixth is violet. (Yes, violet means something different than purple in this context; it's more of a blue-purple or gray-blue-purple color. Creepier than purple, in other words).

The seventh room – the room farthest to the west – is special. It's hung in all black, but its windows are a deep blood red. There's also a huge, threatening clock in it, which eerily chimes every hour and makes everyone's hair stand on end. So between that and the color scheme, you might as well think of the black room as the Horrifying Room of Death, which it turns out to be anyway.

The Masque of Death

Suite

Now we can all agree that the suite is seriously cool, but why does Poe make such a big deal out of it? After all, the story's not even five pages, yet Poe spends at least a quarter of it just describing the setting Why? We think it's because the setting is the most important thing in the story. But how could that be? Aren't the really important things in a story the plot and the characters?

Not in this case. Remember that Poe's main goal in writing was to produce an effect in his reader (see "In a Nutshell" for more on this). The effect is what matters: everything that gets put in the story gets put in for the sake of the effect. And it seems to us like Poe's most important tool for creating his effect in "Masque of the Red Death" is the setting. It's all about the atmosphere. And the setting is what you're most likely to remember about this story, isn't it?

How does the setting create the effect Poe wants (most basically, fear) in the Red Masque?

So how does the setting create the effect Poe wants (most basically, fear)?  First, there's the abbey, which is cut off from the world. Although it's supposedly safe, the people in it are actually trapped inside. There's something threatening about that sense of confinement. If anything should happen, there's no way out. And the suite itself is buried somewhere deep within the bowels of the abbey. So far as we know, it doesn't have any windows onto the outside world.

Second, we're not just trapped in any castellated abbey; we're trapped in Prince Prospero's castellated abbey. And Prince Prospero seems to be insane. Would you want to be locked up with him? Further, everything about the suite seems to reflect Prince Prospero's madness: the lack of alignment, the exaggerated color scheme, the creepy lighting effects, that really ghastly black room. At the very least that's enough to make us uncomfortable and a little weirded out. At the extreme – the ghoulish black room – it's actively frightening

Setting 

The Red Masque Color Scheme

Third, the color scheme of the suite has to mean something. The black room practically screams death. Shouldn't the other rooms mean something too? Many critics have suggested the suite actually symbolizes human life, moving from birth (the blue room) to death (the black room). (See "Symbols, Imagery, Allegory" for more on this.) And isn't there something a little too meaningful about it? The rooms symbolize "birth and death" – just about the most profound and weighty thing you could imagine – and here everyone is having a party? A party by definition is supposed to be fun and frivolous. Something doesn't feel quite right about that.

Finally, there's something else about the setting that feels disorienting. In many respects, it feels more like a dream world – or a product of madness – than reality. (For more on this, see "Symbols, Imagery, Allegory.") And on that subject, it's worth noticing something else. We have no idea where Prince Prospero's kingdom is, or when the story is set. (Knights and ladies don't tell us all that much, besides generic "Middle Ages.") Poe gives us no clues. It's as if Poe wants to keep us from making any ties to the real world at all. 

The Red Masque 

Analysis: Narrator Point of View

Who is the narrator, can she or he read minds, and, more importantly, can we trust her or him?

Third Person (Omniscient)

The narrator speaks in the third-person and doesn't occupy any particular character's point of view. In fact, he doesn't even have much to do with the characters at all. Most of the time he's more interested in describing the setup of Prospero's party (creating the "atmosphere"). He prefers taking a "bird's eye" view of the crowd of revelers to lodging himself in any of their heads, though he does take a few quick peeks into Prospero's now and then.

Analysis: Genre

Horror or Gothic Fiction, Fantasy, Literary Fiction

 The Masque of the Red Death" is about as Gothic as it gets. It's got the "Gothic feel" down pat –you know, that sense of "everything seems threatening and dark and vaguely scary" that nabs you write in the opening line? There's just no moment in the story when you're allowed to feel comfortable – even the protagonist (Prospero) seems a bit unhinged and puts you on edge. Like any Gothic classic, it's also got death on the brain, and a healthy dose of creepy old castles and "dark imagery." There's also a pinch of the supernatural, which is a common feature of many, though not all, Gothic stories. The supernatural elements and all that crazy dream imagery might also make it seem like a "fantasy," which is after all what Poe first called it. Finally, you can also call "Masque" a work of literary fiction, because of its highly unusual, almost experimental form. This story is really more about atmosphere and setting than about characters or plot: it's atmosphere that creates Poe's "effect."

The Red Masque

 Analysis: Tone

Take a story's temperature by studying its tone. Is it hopeful? Cynical? Snarky? Playful?

Dark, Grave, and Ominous; at moments Delirious

From beginning to end, the tone of "The Masque of the Red Death" is grave, as in dread-inducingly serious. It's ominous: you never quite escape the sense of a looming threat. And it's plenty dark. Poe sets the tone right away – just look at the opening lines:

The "Red Death" had long devastated the country. No pestilence had ever been so fatal, or so hideous. Blood was its Avatar and its seal --the redness and the horror of blood. (1)

See what we mean? It's as if the whole story were written to be read aloud by one of those slow-speaking, deep-voiced old guys who always pops up in the movies to issue dire warnings like "If he is not stopped, he will bring the greatest destruction the world has ever known."

Then again, there's also all that dream imagery, like: "And these – the dreams – writhed in and about, taking hue from the rooms, and causing the wild music of the orchestra to seem as the echo of their steps" (7). At those moments the narrator himself seems to be caught up in the dizzying whirl and delirium of the masquerade he's describing.

What themes and literary elements are found in “The Masque of the Red Death?”

Masque of the Red Death" is a short story told in a narrative, by Prince Prospero. The story has two primary themes:

What literary elements are found in “The Masque of the Red Death?”

"The Masque of the Red Death", there are multiple literary devices embedded as well.

In an assembly of phantasms such as I have painted, it may well be supposed that no ordinary appearance could have excited such sensation.

Here, the narrator admits that his descriptions of the scene are detailed (or exaggerated) to the point to excite the senses, mainly fear.

The Seven Colored Rooms

The Red Masque

The black and blood red room

Supposedly, the suite is an allegory of human life. Each room, in other words, corresponds to a different "stage" of human life, which its color suggests.

The first clue that the suite is allegorical is that the rooms are arranged from east to west. East is usually the direction associated with "beginnings," and birth, because the sun rises in the east; West (the direction of the sunset) is associated with endings, and death seems so obviously to represent death

No Red Room? 

The Red Masque

Notice how there's no red room? Why's that? You might think of red as a better color than orange for summer/autumn, or as a better color than purple for growth. But our guess is that Poe wanted to save the color red in this story especially for its association with blood, fear, and death. That means it's always goes with black, just like the Red Death and the darkness go together at the end of the story, and red and black go together in the seventh room. If there were a red room, it would confuse the color system and obscure the meaning of "red."

Character  Analysis Prince Prospero

The Red Masque

is a terrible ruler. Does leaving your peasants to die of the plague while you go and lock yourself up safely in a pleasure palace count as being a good prince in your book? Fortunately, Prince Prospero's got more to his character than that, quite a lot more, actually. He may be a party-animal and maybe even a madman, but he's also a twisted artistic genius. And possibly one huge allusion to Shakespeare.

Prince Prospero the Fool

On the surface, Prospero looks like shallow guy. All he seems to care about is pleasure, which is what it means to be a "hedonist." He doesn't want to spend his time doing anything but drinking, dancing, and laughing, and generally having fun. That makes him an awful ruler, because when the going gets tough, Prospero gets going. It makes him seem selfish too: he just doesn't care about the suffering of his people. He doesn't even want to think about it, because that would be too much of a downer. 

His basic philosophy is summed-up here:

The external world could take care of itself. In the meantime it was folly to grieve, or to think. The Prince had provided all the appliances of pleasure. There were buffoons, there were improvisatori, there were ballet-dancers, there were musicians, there was Beauty, there was wine. (2)

Prospero does not want to face death. He deliberately flees it with his followers and tries not to think about it at all, so he can revel in the good times. But his attempt to escape death is doomed to failure: everybody has to die eventually. Prospero's impossible attempt to ignore death and focus only on life's pleasures makes him a classic "fool" figure. Sadly, he learns his lesson the hard way at the end.

On the other hand, you might think that there's something heroic about Prospero's foolishness. His refusal to let anything get him down can also seem like a sign of the strength of his spirit. When he's first introduced, he is described by bold and heroic language: "But the Prince Prospero was happy and dauntless and sagacious" (2). It's not easy to be happy and "dauntless" (not scared) in the face of a lethal plague. Maybe Prospero even knows he's trying the impossible, but does it anyway. Couldn't there something kind of admirable in that foolishness?

It may also be the case that there's nothing Prospero could do to fight the Red Death if he stayed with his people. After all, the story gives us no indication that there's any way of resisting the disease. Maybe Prospero thinks creating one last outpost of "life" is the best way to fight death. We're not saying that Prospero's right to abandon his peasants. But his motivations might not be so bad as it seems.

We see that spectacular imagination at work in his castellated abbey, the product of his "own eccentric yet august taste" (2). The abbey is a palace of pleasure, but it's also a palace for art, which is why along with buffoons and wine we also hear the palace is full of "ballet-dancers," "musicians," and "Beauty" (2) (with a capital B – something of an obsession of Poe's).

Nowhere is Prospero's artistry on better display than in his suite of seven colored rooms, which is entirely the product of his own imagination. Weird as it is, there's something attractive and even beautiful about it. And if the colors do indeed symbolize the stages of human life, as many people think (see "Symbols, Imagery, Allegory"), it's safe to assume that symbolism is intended by Prospero.

In fact, we get the sense that everything at the masquerade ball is designed by Prospero, down to the costumes the people are wearing: "it was his own guiding taste which had given character to the masqueraders" (7). The masquerade is the product of his own ingenious imagination; it's his wild artistic masterpiece. It's a world entirely of his creation and under his control. Maybe that's why there's all the dream language, and why the masqueraders themselves are called a "multitude of dreams" (7).

Reference:

Shoomp.com

Analysis: Writing Style Meticulously Composed,

Colorful, and always Elegant

Plot Analysis

Conclusion

The Red Masque

"And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all" (14).

Analysis: What's Up With the Title? "The Masque of the Red Death"

Analysis: What's Up With the Ending?

And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all" (14). That's quite a last line, isn't it? The take-home message is "death conquers all." At the beginning of the story, the Red Death was all over Prospero's kingdom, but Prospero himself fled and created a place that was supposedly safe from death. Life, especially of the drunken and debauched variety, could continue there without fear. Prospero's holdout was life's last holdout. By the story's end, death has penetrated Prospero's holdout and completely destroyed it, and now holds "illimitable dominion." In other words, death's rule has no boundaries. It has conquered all.You can easily see the ending as warning against foolishness. It does drive home how foolish Prospero and his pals were to think they could escape from death. Death is inevitable; their attempt was bound to fail from the beginning. Perhaps they even got what they deserved for that nasty trick Prospero pulled of abandoning his people when they needed him most. On another level, if you see Prospero as an artistic genius figure, the ending might send the message that all the artist's attempts to create a perfect, controlled "artificial" world of art are doomed by human mortality, just like the artist himself is.

The End The Red Masque

In addition to what we say above about the message of the ending, it's also useful to remember that Poe's main goal in writing was to create an effect in the reader in the form of an intense emotion or experience. He often chose the themes of his works not for their own sake, but because he thought they were best suited to creating the effect he desired. (source). And if Poe's aim in this story was to unnerve his readers and fill us with dread, what better way to end than with "Darkness and Decay" and Death conquering all?

Prospero and Prospero and Shakespeare and Poe

It just so happens that there's another famous Prospero who makes his dreams become reality: Shakespeare's Prospero, from The Tempest. Shakespeare's Prospero (who's a little bit older, and a little less hedonistic) is actually a sorcerer, whose magic enables him to literally make the products of his imagination real. He's the ideal artistic creator figure: he speaks of his magic as his "art" at various moments. At one point, he even uses it to create a magical revel, essentially a ball replete with goddesses. And he ends it (when he realizes he has to attend to a plot against his life) with a famous monologue about dreams: Poe's Prince Prospero isn't a sorcerer, but he is a figure whose creative power as an artist borders on magic. Like Shakespeare's Prospero, he also uses his magic to create a dreamlike and beautiful revel. And like that other Prospero, Prince Prospero's revel is forced to come to an end. But unlike Shakespeare's Prospero, Poe's is not the one who ends it…and he himself doesn't end so happily.The sorcerer image suggests something else. You might say Prince Prospero's real flaw isn't hedonism or simple foolishness, but hubris (excessive pride), and specifically artistic hubris.

Prospero tries to create a perfect artificial world of art born of his own imagination. The seven rooms are that idealized world. They symbolize the whole of human life, re-envisioned by Prospero. And Prospero wants those rooms to contain not only life, but also death – which is why there's a black room. It's almost like Prospero wants to conquer death with his art. That may be way Prospero is so outraged when the Red Death shows up.

It's a kind of death that doesn't fit into his artwork, and that indeed offends his taste. The Red Death's arrival means that Prospero has lost control of the situation: it is real death, not just imagined death. And that death conquers Prospero, in the very spot where he had hoped to conquer it (the black room). Prospero's masquerade disappears shortly afterwards, in "Darkness and Decay."(If the Prospero-Prospero and Prospero-artist connection interests you, definitely check out the classic article on the subject: “Art and Nature in the Masque of the Red Death,'" by Kermit Vanderbilt.

Emphasis, association, clarification, and focus

include the literary devices

of allusion, symbol, theme, and allegory. Each of these devices are used by authors to emphasize a point, help the reader understand the ideas through association, clarification, and focus. Authors also not only use physical organization, transition, and arrangement to help make a text comprehensible, but it also helps make a text readable. Literary devices such as foreshadowing and progressive and digressive time help readers to understand the sequence of events to come.

Authors use Immagery and Tragedy to make their stories and ideas memorable by affecting the reader's emotions

 Powerful emotional responses will ingrain a story (and possibly a moral or lesson) in a reader's mind. Keep in mind that it is quite common for these literary devices to serve more than one purpose. For example, a tragedy not only creates an emotional response in the reader, but it can also help emphasize an idea as well.

The categories are intended to help you remember the general purpose of literary devices. Do not see these classifications as struct, but rather as a means of remembering why an author might use a literary device.

The Allegorical reading of the 7 rooms

The Red masque

another interesting thing about the allegorical reading of the rooms is that it gives an added meaning to other bits of the story. The fact that the revelers don't go into the black room indicates their fear of death (although you don't need to give a meaning to each room to figure that one out). But besides that, remember that the Red Death walks from the blue room to the black room – it walks the course of life, leading from birth to death. Prospero follows that course when he chases it: he runs from the blue room to the black room, where he dies. His followers also rush into the black room to unmask the Red Death, and also die. So the course the characters walk in the story is both literally and metaphorically the course from life to death.

Prospero and Poe

Speaking of twisted artist figures, isn't there an interesting overlap between Prince Prospero and Poe himself? When we read the story, it's Poe's remarkable imagination that strikes us; he's the one who created the world of the masquerade, and painted it in such vivid colors.

It's Poe who came up with all that nifty symbolism of death and life, and all the dramatic imagery. But within the world of the story, it's Prospero who creates the masquerade, and all the things that we admire Poe's story for. Poe's creative imagination and Prospero's, in other words, overlap to a remarkable degree.

Poe himself is something of a Prospero figure. Might Poe be trying to tell us something about himself through Prospero too? There's one respect in which Prospero's imagination and Poe's don't overlap though. Prospero is defeated by the Red Death; it's an external force that destroys Prospero's artwork. Poe, on the other hand, creates the Red Death through his own imagination. It's a part of his story. But who does that remind you of? Is Poe guilty of the same hubris as Prospero: trying to contain death in a work of art?

The Red Death Character Analysis

The Red Death may just be the biggest party pooper of all time. He's Death embodied, or something like that. It's not really clear just what he is, since there's no "tangible form" (touchable or solid form) underneath his costume. He doesn't seem to have any real motives besides bringing darkness and decay (and death) wherever he goes, particularly to fools who like to forget their own mortality.

That may be why he's never invited to parties. But he always shows up, kills the host, and turns the whole thing into one deadly disaster.He's not much of a talker, either. In fact, he doesn't say anything at all. When he shows up suddenly at midnight to Prospero's masquerade, he just starts slowly, silently "stalking" around, scaring people. (Notice how it's always "stalks," never just "walks"?) He doesn't need to do anything to scare people; his "costume" (and the stalking) is scary enough.

Corpses with staring dead faces all covered in blood are creepy all by themselves. The Red Death is not popular with Prospero's friends, who have shut themselves up just to avoid it. So everybody's outraged to see some guy show up in a Red Death costume. They just can't get over their disgust that somebody could show such poor taste. Until the man in the Red Death costume kills Prospero, and gets mobbed and unmasked. Then it turns out he's not a guy in a costume, after all – Poe makes no connection to reality in the beginning of his story. He does not tell us where the country that the Red Death devastates is located, nor when the story is set. And the disease he describes is a purely fictional one. We're immediately immersed in a different world, just vague enough to be a dream.e's the real Red Death.

What is the mood in

The Fall of the House of Usher?”

I had so worked upon my imagination as really to believe that about the whole mansion and domain there hung an atmosphere peculiar to themselves and their immediate vicinity--an atmosphere which had no affinity with the air of heaven, but which had reeked up from the decayed trees, and the grey wall, and the silent tarn--a pestilent and mystic vapour, dull, sluggish, faintly discernible, and leaden-hued. (4)

This atmosphere is like a physical manifestation of the mood Poe creates in his story.

The Fall of the House of Usher Themes

Madness

Family

Family Quotes

Isolation

Fear

Identity

Theme Madness

“The Fall of the House of Usher”

“The Fall of the House of Usher” is the story of a sick man whose fears manifest themselves through his supernatural, sentient family estate. (Sentient means able to perceive things.) The story explores both physical and mental illness, and the effect that such afflictions have on the people closest to those who are sick. One interpretation is that much of the seeming “madness” of the main character does turn out, in fact, to be the cause of truly supernatural events. That is, he’s not crazy – his house really is haunted, and his sister really is back from the dead. Another interpretation is that the madness really is imaginary.

Madness Quotes

Theme

The Fall of the House of Usher

During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year […] (1)

This is an appropriate setting given Usher’s overly-acute senses; he can’t handle bright lights or sounds, and so the story’s setting is dull and soundless.

Quote #2

…. with an utter depression of soul which I can compare to no earthly sensation more properly than to the after-dream of the reveller upon opium--the bitter lapse into everyday life--the hideous dropping off of the veil. (1)

The Usher estate is made to seem as though it is its own isolated world, different and separate from normal reality.

Quote #3

His voice varied rapidly from a tremulous indecision (when the animal spirits seemed utterly in abeyance) to that species of energetic concision--that abrupt, weighty, unhurried, and hollow-sounding enunciation--that leaden, self- balanced and perfectly modulated guttural utterance, which may be observed in the lost drunkard, or the irreclaimable eater of opium, during the periods of his most intense excitement. (9)

This is the second time the narrator has used the simile of an opium addict to describe Usher or the mood the mansion yields. There is a sense of mad delirium expressed here. 

Theme of Family

The Fall of the House of Usher

“Usher” explores a family so bizarre, so self-isolating, so removed from normalcy that their very existence has become eerie and supernatural. The bond between the featured brother and sister characters is intense and inexplicable – possibly it’s supernatural, possibly it’s incestuous. Their bond transcends even death. One interpretation of the tale is that the siblings are actually one person split in two; thus one is unable to survive without the other.

Theme Family Quotes

The Fall of the House of Usher

I reined my horse to the precipitous brink of a black and lurid tarn that lay in unruffled lustre by the dwelling, and gazed down--but with a shudder even more thrilling than before--upon the remodelled and inverted images of the grey sedge, and the ghastly tree-stems, and the vacant and eye-like windows. (1)

This is the second time that the narrator has used the words “vacant” and “eye-like” to describe the house of Usher.

House of Usher"--an appellation which seemed to

include, in the minds of the peasantry who used it, both

the family and the family mansion. (3)

House of Usher"--an appellation which seemed to include, in the minds of the peasantry who used it, both the family and the family mansion. (3)

This line gives us a hint to interpret the title as referring both to the physical house collapsing and to the metaphorical “fall” of the Usher family.

This line gives us a hint to interpret the title as referring both to the physical house collapsing and to the metaphorical “fall” of the Usher family.

The Fall of the House of Usher Isolation Quotes

Although, as boys, we had been even intimate associates, yet I really knew little of my friend. His reserve had been always excessive and habitual. (3)

And even as the narrator gets to know Roderick again, there remains a barrier between them. Roderick remains excessively reserved.

 He was enchained by certain superstitious impressions in regard to the dwelling which he tenanted, and whence, for many years, he had never ventured forth. (12)

Poe reiterates the Ushers’ isolation, and strengthens the connection between Roderick and his mansion.

I learned that the glimpse I had obtained of her person would thus probably be the last I should obtain--that the lady, at least while living, would be seen by me no more. (14)

Madeline, like her brother, responds to her illness by isolating herself to the greatest possible degree.

A small picture presented the interior of an immensely long and rectangular vault or tunnel, with low walls, smooth, white, and without interruption or device. (17)

Sounds a lot like the tomb that will eventually enclose Madeline…here, then, is another case of Roderick’s prophetic sight.

This story explores a family so isolated from the rest of the world that they’ve developed their own supernatural barriers to interacting with it. The House of Usher exists in its own reality, governed by its own rules and with no interest in others. Such extreme isolation forces the family members closer and closer to each other, again to a supernatural degree, and inexplicable to any outsider.

While the objects around me--while the carvings of the ceilings, the sombre tapestries of the walls, the ebon blackness of the floors, and the phantasmagoric armorial trophies which rattled as I strode, were but matters to which, or to such as which, I had been accustomed from my infancy--while I hesitated not to acknowledge how familiar was all this--I still wondered to find how unfamiliar were the fancies which ordinary images were stirring up. (6)

Fear has the ability to alter our perception of even the most ordinary of objects.

The windows were long, narrow, and pointed, and at so vast a distance from the black oaken floor as to be altogether inaccessible from within. (7)

There is a definite sense of confinement here; the windows are out of reach, to escape is impossible

The Theme of Fear

The Fall of the House of Usher

For Roderick Usher fear itself is worse than whatever you actually fear. In fact, fear is responsible for at least one of the deaths in this story. One possible interpretation of the tale is that the fear of some dreaded occurrence actually manifests it in reality; that is, because the protagonist fears his death, he brings about his death.

Theme of Fear Quotes

The Fall of the House of Usher

here was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart (1)

Look at how Poe uses alliteration in this sentence to set a rhythmic, spooky mood. Alliteration means using words in succession that begin with the same sound.

There can be no doubt that the consciousness of the rapid increase of my superstition—for why should I not so term it?--served mainly to accelerate the increase itself. Such, I have long known, is the paradoxical law of all sentiments having terror as a basis. (4)

The same is later true of Roderick’s fear…

While the objects around me--while the carvings of the ceilings, the sombre tapestries of the walls, the ebon blackness of the floors, and the phantasmagoric armorial trophies which rattled as I strode, were but matters to which, or to such as which, I had been accustomed from my infancy--while I hesitated not to acknowledge how familiar was all this--I still wondered to find how unfamiliar were the fancies which ordinary images were stirring up. (6)

Fear has the ability to alter our perception of even the most ordinary of objects.

Theme of Identity

The Fall of the House of Usher

One interpretation of “The Fall of the House of Usher” is that it presents a dramatized interpretation of a split-personality disorder. At the least, the tale explores different aspects of identity and the ways in which those aspects might be fractioned or made distinct. Differences between the physical and the mental parts of the self are emphasized and explored in the text, as well as the way that parts of the self interact.

Theme of Identity Quotes

The Fall of the House of Usher

The writer spoke of acute bodily illness--of a mental disorder which oppressed him. (3)

Notice that Usher is afflicted by a mental illness while his sister is afflicted with a physical illness.

Quote #2

I reined my horse to the precipitous brink of a black and lurid tarn that lay in unruffled lustre by the dwelling, and gazed down--but with a shudder even more thrilling than before--upon the remodelled and inverted images of the grey sedge, and the ghastly tree-stems, and the vacant and eye-like windows. (1)

This reflection is the first instance of doubling we see in the text. The motif is repeated in the inverted relationship between the Usher twins.

Quote #3

. Perhaps the eye of a scrutinizing observer might have discovered a barely perceptible fissure, which, extending from the roof of the building in front, made its way down the wall in a zigzag direction, until it became lost in the sullen waters of the tarn. (5)

This crack reveals that something is wrong in the Usher family, and of course foreshadows the collapse at the story’s ending

Character Analysis

the Narrator

The narrator is an enigmatic character. One way to explain his role is that the narrator’s job is simply to narrate the story. We don’t know his name, which is representative of us knowing nothing about him at all. He really only exists in relation to the Ushers, and that relation is primarily as an outsider.

When the narrator first arrives at the house, he notes several times the isolation and closed-off nature of the Usher family. Their bloodline has no branches, Usher never leaves his house, he and his sister have a special connection, Madeline is Roderick’s only companion. The narrator is on the outside of whatever eerie relationship the Ushers' share. He is also on the outside of the eerie goings-on inside the house of Usher. When Madeline passes by, for example, she doesn’t even notice or acknowledge the narrator’s presence. This could be because she’s too far away, or it could be because the narrator is intentionally being established as an outsider. When Madeline rises from the dead, she again disregards the narrator completely. He doesn’t even really partake in the story; he is unable to affect Usher in any way despite several attempts to cure the man of his melancholy. The narrator basically just watches the tale unfold before his eyes. You can start to see why some people suspect that he is a fictional creation in one of Usher’s stories – see “What’s Up with the Epigraph” for more.

An alternative point of view is that the narrator is significantly more important than just being a narrator. He is Usher's childhood friend and shows an incredible level of compassion towards the entire creepy situation (to agree give Roderick weeks of his life in the first place is pretty interesting, given that he clearly did not feel close to Roderick in the beginning). The fact that Roderick calls on him for help is interesting as his "only personal friend." Perhaps he was reaching out to help himself? Or did he just want an audience for his spookiness? (Again, check out “What’s Up With the Epigraph.”) You can also think about the way Roderick forms a foil to the narrator, which we discuss in “Character Role ID.”

Character Analysis

Roderick Usher

Roderick Usher is not well. While parts of his affliction seem to manifest themselves physically, in his overly-acute senses, his illness is primarily a mental one. While his sister is cataleptic and wasting away, Roderick is tormented by, to be quite honest, his own fear. By his own admission, he doesn’t so much fear any particular thing as he fears his own fear. And one day, he predicts, this affliction will kill him.

Which it does, pretty much. One conclusion to be drawn from the final scene is that Roderick dies of fear. Madeline rushes upon him and he falls to the floor a corpse, too terrified to go on living. As we’ll talk about in Madeline’s “Character Analysis,” it’s even possible that Madeline is just a physical embodiment of Roderick’s fears.

But let’s talk about this brother-sister connection. What exactly is going on there? Roderick claims that he and his twin share a special connection, one that others would scarcely understand. As we discuss in the “Sex” section, one interpretation is that they are incestuous. Another, less controversial interpretation is that they share a sort of extra-sensory bond. Those who approach “The Fall of the House of Usher” as a psychological tale posit that Roderick and Madeline are actually two halves of the same person: male/female, mental/physical, worldly/other-worldly, natural/supernatural. See, e.g., Supernatural and Horror Literature by H.P. Lovecraft. If this is true, we can see why Roderick cannot live while Madeline is dead, which explains why she comes back for him. Alternatively, if Roderick may have been intentionally speeding up his own death by burying Madeline early, making her burial something of a suicide attempt.

Another theory involves far less psychology and far more revenge. It’s possible that Roderick knew Madeline was alive when he asked the narrator for help in entombing her. This could be for any number of reasons, and you’re welcome to speculate. (Was he trying to end the Usher line once and forever? Tormented with guilt over the incest they may have committed together? Trying to kill himself by killing his doppelganger other half? (Doppelganger means ghostly double.)) In this scenario, Madeline comes back from the dead to get even with her brother for burying her alive.

We can also think about the spooky connection that Roderick shares with his house. He tells the narrator that he thinks it is sentient or conscious, and that the house is largely responsible for his feeling so dark and gloomy. Many of his artistic compositions revolve around his house (or thinly veiled haunted mansions that act as stand-ins for his own). We know that Roderick is a recluse to the extreme, so his existence is confined by the walls of his house. It might be that Roderick’s very identity has somehow meshed with his house, much the same way his identity might be shared with his sister Madeline. Madeline dies and so Roderick dies, too. Similarly, Roderick falls dead to the ground, and so does his house.

Another oddity to consider here is Roderick’s relationship with the narrator. He doesn’t know this guy that well – they were friends in childhood but haven’t seen each other in years. Roderick reaches out to him for help because he doesn’t have any companions. The fact that he turns to a distant friend is a testament to how very isolated Roderick is. But why reach out in the first place? Roderick knows that he’s going to die (or at least, he’s convinced himself of as much) – so why ask for help? Does he really think the narrator can do anything to help him? Not really, no. It seems more plausible that he invited the narrator as an audience – to watch the horrors that go down between him, his sister, and his house.

Character Analysis

Madeline Usher

There are several different directions you can go in your interpretation of Madeline Usher. One theory is that she doesn’t fully exist from the start, but is some sort of supernatural shade, a spiritual doppelganger half of Roderick. (Doppelganger means ghostly double.) This is why the narrator rarely sees her and why she doesn’t acknowledge or interact with him during those times. It’s why she can come back from the dead – because she wasn’t fully human in the first place.

If you like the psychological approach we discuss in Roderick’s “Character Analysis,” then Madeline and Roderick are two halves of the same person. Naturally, a person cannot live divided into two pieces, much as the House of Usher cannot stand with that crack running down the middle.

Another approach, this one blending psychology with the supernatural, argues that Madeline, at least the Madeline who returns from the dead, is the physical manifestation of Roderick’s worst fears. In fact, when Roderick is foreshadowing his death, he says "…the period will sooner or later arrive when I must abandon life and reason together, in some struggle with the grim phantasm, FEAR." Does FEAR = Madeline? In “What’s Up With the Epigraph” we discuss the way that Roderick’s artistic creations either predict or create the tale’s spooky outcomes. Notice that Madeline doesn’t appear at the door until Roderick claims that she is standing there – some good evidence for this last interpretation.

Literary Devices

The Fall of the House of Usher

Symbolism, Imagery, Allegory

You might have noticed a strange mingling of the fictional with the real in this story. Roderick’s artistic creations have a definite connection with what happens to the House of Usher. He paints an underground tomb; Madeline is entombed underground. He sings about the decline of a house; the House of Usher declines. He screams that the dead Madeline is standing at the door – and so she is at the door. In fact, way back the beginning of the story Roderick declares that will die from fear, which in fact comes true at the end of the tale.
One possibility is that Roderick, with his magic, lustrous eye, can foresee the future. He knows these events will transpire and so he prophecies them aloud. Another possibility is that Roderick actually causes these things to happen, so that he is consumed by fear he manifests his fear in reality, along with the help of some magic pixie dust from his haunted mansion.

Setting

The Fall of the House of Usher 

Setting Haunted Mansion, Several Dark and Stormy Nights

(To be fair, this was probably less of a cliché when Poe wrote “Usher.”) Notice that we don’t know the geographical location nor a specific year when these events go down. The fact is, the mood and atmosphere in the setting is far more important than the facts of time and place. And it certainly is a powerful atmosphere that Poe creates. The outside of the mansion is the first of many spooky settings Poe renders in his tale. You’ve got an ethereal glowing cloud and a dark and scary lake, not to mention the ominous fissure running down the center of the mansion. He creates a different but equally scary setting inside the mansion, where the corridors, though filled with seemingly ordinary objects, seem to scream “YOU ARE IN A HORROR STORY.” The dank underground tomb is yet another of the masterfully-crafted mini-settings in “Usher,” one we actually recognize from the Roderick’s painting earlier in the text (make sure you check out “Symbols, Imagery, Allegory” for some juicy, painting-related thoughts).

The house itself is carefully crafted to heighten the mood and atmosphere of the story, like the creepy tapestries and furnishings inside. The fact that Usher hasn’t left the house in ages lends the tale a sense of claustrophobia. In fact, the narrator himself doesn’t leave until the story’s end – which makes us, the reader, feel just as trapped as Roderick. The house’s sentience is also a big deal – the physical setting of the story is as supernatural as its action and themes. Then there’s the fall of the house itself, which we discuss in “What’s Up With the Title?”

Narrator Point of View

The Fall of the House of Usher

Who is the narrator, can she or he read minds, and, more importantly, can we trust her or him?

First Person (Peripheral Narrator)

The narrator is nameless, which suggests that his principal job is to narrate. We don’t know much about him, and our attention is drawn instead to the strangeness going down in the House of Usher; it’s the narrator’s place to take us on a tour of the Mansion de Fear.

One of the most interesting things this narrator does is insist, over and over again, that all attempts to accurately portray the weird happenings of the House of Usher are essentially futile.

Observe:

…an influence whose supposititious force was conveyed in terms too shadowy here to be re-stated. (12)

I should fail in any attempt to convey an idea of the exact character of the studies, or of the occupations, in which he involved me. (16)

I would in vain endeavour to educe more than a small portion which should lie within the compass of merely written words. (16)

I lack words to express the full extent, or the earnest abandon of his persuasion. (20)

It’s almost like he’s trying to make a point here. Poe renders his story even more horrifying, even more bizarre, by claiming that it’s even scarier and crazier than it sounds in his story. Whatever the narrator says was going on, take his word for it – what actually went down was worse.

You might want to think about the implications of this given that the narrator at one point reads aloud to Usher from a book and that the fictional sounds are manifested in reality. Here the narrator is insisting that words cannot describe reality… and yet the words he reads aloud to Usher come true! In fact, these fictional words he reads are prophetic. This is similar to the way that Usher predicts his own death early in the narrator’s tale. You might also want to think about the prophetic nature of narration in this text, given that Usher foretells his own death. We’ll talk about this more in Symbols, Imagery, Allegory.

Analysis: Genre

The Fall of the House of Usher

Horror or Gothic Fiction?

A sentient house, a dead body (or two), an underground tomb, dark and stormy nights…this is a horror tale. One of the sub-genres of Gothic fiction is “Supernatural Gothic,” in which the weird stuff that happens really can be attributed to bizarre supernatural happenings (as oppose to the figments of a crazy person’s imagination). The presence of inexplicable diseases – both of the body and of the mind, in Usher and his sister, is another great indication that we’re dealing with the horror genre.

Analysis: Tone

The Fall of the House of Usher

Take a story's temperature by studying its tone. Is it hopeful? Cynical? Snarky? Playful?

Deliberate

“The Fall of the House of Usher” tells a terrifying story, and the narrator is up front and center for the most bizarre parts. But it’s important to note that this tale is told in retrospect, so the deliberate authorial tone isn’t at all compromised by the frantic mania of a horrified narrator. For example, take a look at this second-to-last paragraph: “For a moment she remained trembling and reeling to and fro upon the threshold,—then, with a low moaning cry, fell heavily inward upon the person of her brother, and in her violent and now final death-agonies, bore him to the floor a corpse, and a victim to the terrors he had anticipated.” (41) Poe’s story unfolds in a careful and calm manner, keeping its respectful distance from the more inexpressible details (see “Point of View”) and maintaining perspective on all the crazy goings-on. In a way, this calm approach to such abnormal events is a bit horrifying in itself; the author treats the tale the same way you might disclose a trip to the grocery store.

Analysis: What's Up with the Title?

The Fall of the House of Usher

There are several levels on which we can interpret this title. First is the actual, physical House of Usher, the mansion the narrator visits and the setting for the story. At the end of the story, the House of Usher falls, literally, into the tarn or pool of water in front of the house. As we discuss in “Symbols, Imagery, and Allegory,” the small fissure that the narrator sees upon first arrival foreshadows this fall. We know there’s something wrong in the House of Usher, and it is indeed at this fissure that the House ultimately splits in two.

We can move on to the symbolic meaning of the title. The narrator makes a point of telling us that the term “The House of Usher” refers no only to the estate, but to the family as well, the Usher bloodline. The title refers not just to the literal fall of the physical house, but the metaphorical fall of the Usher family. The narrator revealed that Roderick and his sister were the last two alive in the family, so when they die, so dies the whole family.

This decline, too, is foreshadowed in the text. Usher prophecies his own death to the narrator in exactly the manner it takes place: he believes he will die from fear. It’s worth noting that Roderick’s death is yet another literal fall – he and Madeline collapse to the ground together.

It’s probably no coincidence that Roderick literally falls, the bloodline falls in the death of the twins, and the house collapses all at the same time at the story’s conclusion. This contributes to the story’s fantastical nature. The pieces fit together just a little too neatly; symbols are tied to action a bit too strongly, reminding us that we’re not in a realistic world here. Also remember Roderick’s insistence that the house is sentient – there’s a stronger tie between the Usher family and the Usher mansion than we might expect. You could think of the house as a third member of the Usher family: Roderick, Madeline, and the House. Or you could think of Roderick, Madeline, and the house as all being part of the same person (see “Character Analysis” where we discuss the theory that Roderick and Madeline share one soul).

Analysis: Whats up with the Epigraph?

The Fall of the House of Usher

Epigraphs are like little appetizers to the great entrée of a story. They illuminate important aspects of the story, and they get us headed in the right direction.

Son coeurest un luthsuspendu;
Sitotqu'on le toucheilresonne.
– De Beranger
Translation:

"His/her heart is a poised lute;
as soon as it is touched, it resounds".
These lines are a quote from Le Refus, a song by French songwriter Pierre-Jean de Béranger, a (roughly speaking) contemporary of Poe’s. Beranger’s lyrics actually read "Mon cœur" (my heart), but Poe changed them to read "Son cœur" (his/her heart).

Analysis: What's Up with the Ending?

The Fall of the House of Usher

Let’s talk about the freaky scene BEFORE the ending before we talk about the actual ending. First, Madeline is back from the dead. There are several different ways to think about this reappearance, which we talk about in “Character Analysis.” It could be that Madeline’s ghost is back to take vengeance on her brother for intentionally burying her alive. It could be that she and Roderick are really two halves of the same person, and so one cannot live without the other. It could be that she is a manifestation of Roderick’s fears, not an honest-to-goodness “ghost.”
  Then you’ve got Roderick’s death. Remember that he predicted his death earlier in the text, and supposed that it would be caused by fear. This is good evidence for the argument that Madeline is just a manifestation of his fears. As we discuss in “What’s Up With the Title?”, Roderick’s literal fall to the floor is tantamount to the fall of the Usher bloodline, and is accompanied by the physical fall of the house itself.

Plot Analysis

The Fall of the House of Usher

Most good stories start with a fundamental list of ingredients: the initial situation, conflict, complication, climax, suspense, denouement, and conclusion. Great writers sometimes shake up the recipe and add some spice.

Initial Situation

The narrator arrives at a creepy house…

Much of this stage has to do with the house itself, rather than Usher or his sister. The narrator notes the house's gloomy atmosphere and seemingly supernatural spook.

Conflict

Usher is sick; the narrator is supposed to help.

Usher’s illness is mysterious and potentially deadly. Suspense builds when he prophesizes his own death from sheer fear.

Complication

Madeline and the house’s sentience

Madeline complicates matters in that she provides another possible source for Roderick’s madness. Her illness is equally mysterious, and her death and burial are additional spook factors. That Roderick thinks his mansion is sentient also adds to the growing list of supernatural superstitions dominating the plot.

Climax

Usher freaks out, Madeline appears in the doorway

All those eerie sounds and superstitious feelings have been leading up to this moment. Usher’s prophesies about his own death come true as he dies of fear.

Suspense

The narrator flees the house

We are as frightened as the narrator at this point. His flight from the house of Usher is full of heart-thumping suspense.

Denouement

The House of Usher Falls

Man, we didn’t see that coming. This is FALLING ACTION taken quite literally. With the demise of the physical house and the demise of the bloodline, this story is pretty much done

Conflict and Complication

The Fall of the House of Usher

Usher is sick; the narrator is supposed to help.

Usher’s illness is mysterious and potentially deadly. Suspense builds when he prophesizes his own death from sheer fear.

Madeline and the house’s sentience

Madeline complicates matters in that she provides another possible source for Roderick’s madness. Her illness is equally mysterious, and her death and burial are additional spook factors. That Roderick thinks his mansion is sentient also adds to the growing list of supernatural superstitions dominating the plot.

Climax

The Fall of the House of Usher

Usher freaks out, Madeline appears in the doorway

All those eerie sounds and superstitious feelings have been leading up to this moment. Usher’s prophesies about his own death come true as he dies of fear.

Suspense

The Fall of the House of Usher

The narrator flees the house

We are as frightened as the narrator at this point. His flight from the house of Usher is full of heart-thumping suspense.

Denouement

The Fall of the House of Usher

The House of Usher Falls

Man, we didn’t see that coming. This is FALLING ACTION taken quite literally. With the demise of the physical house and the demise of the bloodline, this story is pretty much done.

Conclusion

The Fall of the House of Usher

The silent waters of the tarn

The House of Usher is totally gone; there’s not even any evidence that it once stood there.

Poe's inspiration for the story may be based upon events of the Usher House, located on Boston's Lewis Wharf. As that story goes, a sailor and the young wife of the older owner were caught and entombed in their trysting spot by her husband. When the Usher House was torn down in 1800, two bodies were found embraced in a cavity in the cellar.
Guide to Boston, by Susan and Michael Southworth

Analysis of Major Characters

The Yellow Wallpaper 

Themes, Motifs and Symbols

The Yellow Wallpaper 

Themes

The Subordination of Women in Marriage

In “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Gilman uses the conventions of the psychological horror tale to critique the position of women within the institution of marriage, especially as practiced by the “respectable” classes of her time. When the story was first published, most readers took it as a scary tale about a woman in an extreme state of consciousness—a gripping, disturbing entertainment, but little more. After its rediscovery in the twentieth century, however, readings of the story have become more complex. For Gilman, the conventional nineteenth-century middle-class marriage, with its rigid distinction between the “domestic” functions of the female and the “active” work of the male, ensured that women remained second-class citizens. The story reveals that this gender division had the effect of keeping women in a childish state of ignorance and preventing their full development. John’s assumption of his own superior wisdom and maturity leads him to misjudge, patronize, and dominate his wife, all in the name of “helping” her. The narrator is reduced to acting like a cross, petulant child, unable to stand up for herself without seeming unreasonable or disloyal. The narrator has no say in even the smallest details of her life, and she retreats into her obsessive fantasy, the only place she can retain some control and exercise the power of her mind.

The Importance of Self-Expression

The mental constraints placed upon the narrator, even more so than the physical ones, are what ultimately drive her insane. She is forced to hide her anxieties and fears in order to preserve the façade of a happy marriage and to make it seem as though she is winning the fight against her depression. From the beginning, the most intolerable aspect of her treatment is the compulsory silence and idleness of the “resting cure.” She is forced to become completely passive, forbidden from exercising her mind in any way. Writing is especially off limits, and John warns her several times that she must use her self-control to rein in her imagination, which he fears will run away with her. Of course, the narrator’s eventual insanity is a product of the repression of her imaginative power, not the expression of it. She is constantly longing for an emotional and intellectual outlet, even going so far as to keep a secret journal, which she describes more than once as a “relief” to her mind. For Gilman, a mind that is kept in a state of forced inactivity is doomed to self-destruction.

The Evils of the “Resting Cure”

As someone who almost was destroyed by S. Weir Mitchell’s “resting cure” for depression, it is not surprising that Gilman structured her story as an attack on this ineffective and cruel course of treatment. “The Yellow Wallpaper” is an illustration of the way a mind that is already plagued with anxiety can deteriorate and begin to prey on itself when it is forced into inactivity and kept from healthy work. To his credit, Mitchell, who is mentioned by name in the story, took Gilman’s criticism to heart and abandoned the “resting cure.” Beyond the specific technique described in the story, Gilman means to criticize any form of medical care that ignores the concerns of the patient, considering her only as a passive object of treatment. The connection between a woman’s subordination in the home and her subordination in a doctor/patient relationship is clear—John is, after all, the narrator’s husband and doctor. Gilman implies that both forms of authority can be easily abused, even when the husband or doctor means to help. All too often, the women who are the silent subjects of this authority are infantilized, or worse.

Motifs

Irony

Almost every aspect of “The Yellow Wallpaper” is ironic in some way.Irony is a way of using words to convey multiple levels of meaning that contrast with or complicate one another. In verbal irony, words are frequently used to convey the exact opposite of their literal meaning, such as when one person responds to another’s mistake by saying “nice work.” (Sarcasm—which this example embodies—is a form of verbal irony.) In her journal, the narrator uses verbal irony often, especially in reference to her husband: “John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that in marriage.” Obviously, one expects no such thing, at least not in a healthy marriage. Later, she says, “I am glad my case is not serious,” at a point when it is clear that she is concerned that her case is very serious indeed.

Dramatic irony occurs when there is a contrast between the reader’s knowledge and the knowledge of the characters in the work. Dramatic irony is used extensively in “The Yellow Wallpaper.” For example, when the narrator first describes the bedroom John has chosen for them, she attributes the room’s bizarre features—the “rings and things” in the walls, the nailed-down furniture, the bars on the windows, and the torn wallpaper—to the fact that it must have once been used as a nursery. Even this early in the story, the reader sees that there is an equally plausible explanation for these details: the room had been used to house an insane person. Another example is when the narrator assumes that Jennie shares her interest in the wallpaper, while it is clear that Jennie is only now noticing the source of the yellow stains on their clothing. The effect intensifies toward the end of the story, as the narrator sinks further into her fantasy and the reader remains able to see her actions from the “outside.” By the time the narrator fully identifies with the trapped woman she sees in the wallpaper, the reader can appreciate the narrator’s experience from her point of view as well as John’s shock at what he sees when he breaks down the door to the bedroom.

Situational irony refers to moments when a character’s actions have the opposite of their intended effect. For example, John’s course of treatment backfires, worsening the depression he was trying to cure and actually driving his wife insane. Similarly, there is a deep irony in the way the narrator’s fate develops. She gains a kind of power and insight only by losing what we would call her self-control and reason.

The Journal

An “epistolary” work of fiction takes the form of letters between characters. “The Yellow Wallpaper” is a kind of epistolary story, in which the narrator writes to herself. Gilman uses this technique to show the narrator’s descent into madness both subjectively and objectively—that is, from both the inside and the outside. Had Gilman told her story in traditional first-person narration, reporting events from inside the narrator’s head, the reader would never know exactly what to think: a woman inside the wallpaper might seem to actually exist. Had Gilman told the story from an objective, third-person point of view, without revealing the narrator’s thoughts, the social and political symbolism of the story would have been obscured. As it is, the reader must decipher the ambiguity of the story, just as the narrator must attempt to decipher the bewildering story of her life and the bizarre patterns of the wallpaper. Gilman also uses the journal to give the story an intense intimacy and immediacy, especially in those moments when the narrative is interrupted by the approach of John or Jennie. These interruptions perfectly illustrate the constraints placed on the narrator by authority figures who urge her not to think about her “condition.”

Symbols

The Wallpaper

“The Yellow Wallpaper” is driven by the narrator’s sense that the wallpaper is a text she must interpret, that it symbolizes something that affects her directly. Accordingly, the wallpaper develops its symbolism throughout the story. At first it seems merely unpleasant: it is ripped, soiled, and an “unclean yellow.” The worst part is the ostensibly formless pattern, which fascinates the narrator as she attempts to figure out how it is organized. After staring at the paper for hours, she sees a ghostly sub-pattern behind the main pattern, visible only in certain light. Eventually, the sub-pattern comes into focus as a desperate woman, constantly crawling and stooping, looking for an escape from behind the main pattern, which has come to resemble the bars of a cage. The narrator sees this cage as festooned with the heads of many women, all of whom were strangled as they tried to escape. Clearly, the wallpaper represents the structure of family, medicine, and tradition in which the narrator finds herself trapped. Wallpaper is domestic and humble, and Gilman skillfully uses this nightmarish, hideous paper as a symbol of the domestic life that traps so many women.

Sparks Notes.com http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/yellowwallpaper/themes.html

Important Quotations Explained

The Yellow Wallpaper

Key Facts

The Yellow Wallpaper

TITLE · “The Yellow Wallpaper”

AUTHOR · Charlotte Perkins Gilman

TYPE OF WORK · Short story

GENRE · Gothic horror tale; character study; socio-political allegory

LANGUAGE · English

TIME AND PLACE WRITTEN · 1892, California

DATE OF FIRST PUBLICATION · May, 1892

PUBLISHER · The New England Magazine

NARRATOR · A mentally troubled young woman, possibly named Jane

POINT OF VIEW · As the main character’s fictional journal, the story is told in strict first-person narration, focusing exclusively on her own thoughts, feelings, and perceptions. Everything that we learn or see in the story is filtered through the narrator’s shifting consciousness, and since the narrator goes insane over the course of the story, her perception of reality is often completely at odds with that of the other characters.

TONE · The narrator is in a state of anxiety for much of the story, with flashes of sarcasm, anger, and desperation—a tone Gilman wants the reader to share.

TENSE · The story stays close to the narrator’s thoughts at the moment and is thus mostly in the present tense.

SETTING (TIME) · Late nineteenth century

SETTING (PLACE) · America, in a large summer home (or possibly an old asylum), primarily in one bedroom within the house.

PROTAGONIST · The narrator, a young upper-middle-class woman who is suffering from what is most likely postpartum depression and whose illness gives her insight into her (and other women’s) situation in society and in marriage, even as the treatment she undergoes robs her of her sanity.

MAJOR CONFLICT · The struggle between the narrator and her husband, who is also her doctor, over the nature and treatment of her illness leads to a conflict within the narrator’s mind between her growing understanding of her own powerlessness and her desire to repress this awareness.

RISING ACTION · The narrator decides to keep a secret journal, in which she describes her forced passivity and expresses her dislike for her bedroom wallpaper, a dislike that gradually intensifies into obsession.

CLIMAX · The narrator completely identifies herself with the woman imprisoned in the wallpaper.

FALLING ACTION · The narrator, now completely identified with the woman in the wallpaper,spends her time crawling on all fours around the room. Her husband discovers her and collapses in shock, and she keeps crawling, right over his fallen body.

THEMES · The subordination of women in marriage; the importance of self-expression; the evils of the “Resting Cure”

MOTIFS · Irony; the journal

SYMBOLS · The wallpaper

FORESHADOWING · The discovery of the teeth marks on the bedstead foreshadows the narrator’s own insanity and suggests the narrator is not revealing everything about her behavior; the first use of the word “creepy” foreshadows the increasing desperation of the narrator’s situation and her own eventual “creeping.”

Plot Overview

The Yellow Wallpaper

Plot Overview

The Yellow Wallpaper

Theme of Freedom and Confinement

The Yellow Wallpaper

Theme of Madness

The Yellow Wallpaper

Theme of Gender

The Yellow Wallpaper

Theme of Writing

The Yellow Wallpaper

In "The Yellow Wallpaper," writing is a healthy means of self-actualization denied to the narrator. The narrator portrays writing positively in the story, believing that it will help her depression. Others around her, however, heavily disapprove of her writing, believing it to be a tiring activity.

Settng

The Yellow Wallpaper

Rambling, isolated countryside estate, around 1885.

The tangible setting of "The Yellow Wallpaper" reinforces all of the intangible feelings and attitudes expressed in the story. What do we mean by this? Let’s start with this passage: "[The house] is quite alone standing well back from the road, quite three miles from the village. It makes me think of English places that you read about, for there are hedges and walls and gates that lock, and lots of separate little houses for the gardeners and people." It’s a fancy house, yes, but more saliently, it stands back away from the road and contains many "locks" and "separate little houses." Overall, this is a very isolating place. It’s separate from the road and therefore, we would argue, separated from society; the house itself is described as a place that binds and restricts. Now think about the narrator’s emotional position: isolated and restricted. Her emotional position mirrors the house’s physical set-up.

Within the house itself, the narrator is primarily confined to a "big, airy room... with windows that look all ways." In keeping with the themes of isolation and restriction, the windows that look out everywhere are barred, preventing any sort of escape. The narrator is able to see, but not participate in, what happens outside her room. 

There is yet another connection to draw between the narrator and her physical setting, however. Do you notice how John tends to infantilize his wife? Calling her his "blessed little goose" is only the least of it. He treats her more like a child than an adult; it comes as no surprise that the narrator’s bedroom used to be (gasp!) a nursery. 

Lastly, don’t forget that the story was written in the late 19th century, which anchors it in a very specific historical moment in terms of women and their (erroneously) perceived lack of abilities. Except for the wallpaper madness at the end, the narrator’s story would have been rather typical at the time of publication.

Narrator Point of View

The Yellow Wallpaper

Who is the narrator, can she or he read minds, and, more importantly, can we trust her or him?

Literary Fiction, Gothic or Horror Fiction

Ring the alarm, there’s a woman trapped in the wallpaper! Or is that just a figment in the narrator’s imagination? When "The Yellow Wallpaper" first came out, the public didn’t quite understand the message. The piece was treated as a horror story, kind of like the 19th century equivalent to The Exorcist. Nowadays, however, we understand "The Yellow Wallpaper" as an early feminist work. 

As we wrote in the "Book," Gilman never intended "The Yellow Wallpaper" to be a Gothic horror, but as a cautionary tale about what supposed rest cures could do to the mental stability of patients. As Gilman stated in "Why I Wrote the Yellow Wallpaper," the story "was not intended to drive people crazy, but to save people from being driven crazy, and it worked." As such, we think it always was a work of literary fiction, but that people back in the 19th century just didn’t get that.

Shmoop.com http://www.shmoop.com/yellow-wallpaper/genre.html

Analysis: Tone

The Yellow Wallpaper

Take a story's temperature by studying its tone. Is it hopeful? Cynical? Snarky? Playful?

Slow Descent Into Madness

Over the course of the story, we witness the narrator gradually losing her mind. In the beginning, she can offer calm and logical descriptions of her surroundings. Soon, however, she attempts to have a rational conversation with her husband but ends up crying and pleading. By the end of the story, she is convinced that the wallpaper is moving, as a woman trapped inside attempts to break free. As the story unfolds, however, the prose remains very crisp and factual. We can ascertain the narrator’s listlessness as she lies in bed and follows the pattern of the wallpaper. As her delusions increase and she becomes more convinced that a woman is trapped within the paper, the prose becomes more urgent and more secretive.

Slow Descent Into Madness

Over the course of the story, we witness the narrator gradually losing her mind. In the beginning, she can offer calm and logical descriptions of her surroundings. Soon, however, she attempts to have a rational conversation with her husband but ends up crying and pleading. By the end of the story, she is convinced that the wallpaper is moving, as a woman trapped inside attempts to break free. As the story unfolds, however, the prose remains very crisp and factual. We can ascertain the narrator’s listlessness as she lies in bed and follows the pattern of the wallpaper. As her delusions increase and she becomes more convinced that a woman is trapped within the paper, the prose becomes more urgent and more secretive.

The title refers to the wallpaper in the room where the protagonist spends most of her time. Since she is essentially trapped in her room with nothing to do, she spends her time staring at the pattern of the wallpaper, becoming more and more obsessed with the paper.

Shmoop.com (2015) http://www.shmoop.com/yellow-wallpaper/title.html

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Most good stories start with a fundamental list of ingredients: the initial situation, conflict, complication, climax, suspense, denouement, and conclusion. Great writers sometimes shake up the recipe and add some spice.

Initial Situation

The narrator feels uneasy on the estate she and her husband have rented for the summer.

Do you sense the beginning of a horror story? We do: a woman moves into the house; the house is spooky; the woman has serious misgivings; etc. We also learn in this stage that the narrator’s husband makes all the decisions for her, telling her when she is sick and what she is suffering from. This is part of the initial situation as it highlights a certain path that the story may follow.

Conflict

The Yellow Wallpaper

The narrator wishes to spend her time writing and socializing, but her husband tells her she must rest.

The narrator tries to express her own opinion to her husband, but is overruled on every count. This is conflict, yes, but note its one-sided nature: John doesn’t take his wife seriously. In other words, this conflict results in the narrator’s repression.

Complication

the Yellow Wallpaper

The narrator wishes to spend her time writing and socializing, but her husband tells her she must rest.

The narrator tries to express her own opinion to her husband, but is overruled on every count. This is conflict, yes, but note its one-sided nature: John doesn’t take his wife seriously. In other words, this conflict results in the narrator’s repression.

Shmoop.com (2015) http://www.shmoop.com/yellow-wallpaper/plot-analysis.html

Complication

Climax

The Yellow Wallpaper

The narrator strips off all the wallpaper in her room.

This is the ultimate moment of rebellion for the protagonist as she takes action towards freedom. She is finally upsetting the status quo and declaring her own sense of agency. This all adds up to one heck of a climactic moment.

Shoomp.ccom (2015)  http://www.shmoop.com/yellow-wallpaper/plot-analysis.html

Suspense

The Yellow Wallpaper

John attempts to find out what his wife is up to.

All of this upsetting of the status quo comes with a certain amount of backlash. When John comes home to find the door to his bedroom locked, he begins freaking out. The uncertainty of the narrator’s fate leads us to conclude that this is the moment of suspense.

Shmoop.com (2015) http://www.shmoop.com/yellow-wallpaper/plot-analysis.html

Denouement

The Yellow Wallpaper

John faints.

The narrator’s actions are so extraordinary and so shocking that her husband faints. This is the denouement because it answers our questions about how John will react to his wife’s craziness. Rather than bullying her or trying to talk to her, he simply faints.

Shmoop.com (2015) http://www.shmoop.com/yellow-wallpaper/plot-analysis.html

Conclusion

The Yellow Wallpaper

The narrator continues to strip off the wallpaper, convinced that she has achieved liberation at last.

This is the conclusion of the story because it’s how we leave the scene of the story. It functions a bit oddly as a conclusion, however, because it doesn’t exactly wrap up loose ends. For instance, we’re wondering if the narrator ever gets her sanity back. Does her husband regain consciousness? Does she get tired of creeping? Wait a minute. This doesn’t seem like a conclusion at all!

Shmoop.cim (2015) http://www.shmoop.com/yellow-wallpaper/plot-analysis.html

Analysis: Three Act Plot

The Yellow Wallpaper

For a three-act plot analysis, put on your screenwriter’s hat. Moviemakers know the formula well: at the end of Act One, the main character is drawn in completely to a conflict. During Act Two, she is farthest away from her goals. At the end of Act Three, the story is resolved.

Act I

The narrator and her husband arrive at a country estate for a "rest" vacation. She is bothered by their room’s ugly yellow wallpaper.

Act II

Stuck in the room with orders to do nothing but rest, the narrator becomes more obsessed with the wallpaper and less trusting of her husband. She begins to sense a "yellow smell" in the room.

Act III

Convinced there’s a woman stuck behind the wallpaper, she strips it off the walls in order to free her. She then declares that she has escaped from the paper, and her husband faints when he finally sees how insane she has become.

Shmoop.com (2015) http://www.shmoop.com/yellow-wallpaper/three-act-play.html

Analysis: Allusions

The Yellow Wallpaper

When authors refer to other great works, people, and events, it’s usually not accidental. Put on your super-sleuth hat and figure out why.

Shmoop.com(2015) http://www.shmoop.com/yellow-wallpaper/three-act-play.html

Symbolism, Imagery and Allegory

The Yellow Wallpapers Pattern

Symbolism, Imagery, Allegory

The Paper

Symbolism, Imagery and Allegory

The Yellow Wallpaper

Symbolism, Imagery, Allegory

Moonlight

Symbolism, Imagery and Allegory

The Yellow Wallpaper

In "The Yellow Wallpaper," moonlight represents as time for the feminine. During the day, the narrator writes that the woman trapped in the wallpaper is motionless and immobile. As moonlight strikes the wall, however, the woman begins to move or, perhaps more accurately, to creep. This pattern mirrors the narrator’s own daily movements. During the day, she sleeps; at night she lies awake, alert, and invested in the intellectual activity that she must suppress during the day while her husband is watching.

The Bed

Symbolism, Imagery and Allegory

The Yellow Wallpaper

It’s big, heavy, and chained down to the floor. Some critics argue this represents repressed female sexuality, probably because a bed is where people have sex, and chains are a repressive measure. We think it’s a bit of a stretch, but it’s your call.

Conflict

Sometimes it looks like the character doesn’t really have a choice - he DOES - but it may not be a choice that looks appealing. However, within the narrowest limits he chooses to act.

All of the characters don’t always agree with each other. This helps to make it a good story. It is called conflict. Conflict is the struggle or opposition experienced by the main character in a story. Conflict can be external and occur between the main character and another character or between the main character and another force such as the environment. The main character can also experience internal conflict. Internal conflict occurs when the character experiences some sort of struggle with him or herself, such as making a difficult decision.

Basic Definition of Conflict: A conflict is a struggle between opposing forces. Internal conflict is a struggle within oneself and external conflict is a struggle with opposing forces which are outside of oneself.

The main character of a story is called the protagonist. The force that conflicts with the main character, whether it is external or internal, is called the antagonist. In a good story, conflict grows out of the events in the story that uncover the relationship between the protagonist and antagonist. The main character can experience more than one conflict throughout a story.

Four Types of Literary Conflict

Character 

Within a fictional story there are two types of characters. The first is Static or Flat Characters. They exist only in two dimensions and can be regarded as card board figures. They present only a single view and they do not change. Consider the classic Disney story of “Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.” Throughout the story these characters remain the same. They do not grow or change in a meaningful way. Snow White is always pure and good. Happy is always happy. Grumpy is always grumpy.

Characters that change and grow are called Dynamic or Round Characters. They exist in three dimensions and may surprise the reader in convincing ways. The reader gains new insights into the character’s true self as he changes vantage point. Think of another classic Disney tale “Beauty and the Beast.” At the beginning of the story, the arrogant Prince Adam is cursed to a beast form until he can learn to love another and earn her love in return. When Belle first meets the beast, she considers him a monster and is frightened of him. But over time, Belle begins to see a new side of the Beast, and the Beast begins to see that he can change.  In the end, they fall in love, and the Beast is transformed back into Prince Adam, but he is no longer the self-centered, conceited person he once was.

There are many ways in which an author reveals a character’s inner qualities.

These include:

·         Title of the story

·         The character’s appearance (be careful to not jump to conclusions)

·         The character’s actions (be tuned in to repeated actions)

·         The character’s ideas (pay attention to the difference to what he thinks and what he does)

·         The character’s manner (how he acts, speaks, and feels)

The reactions of others to the character (this may confirm or contradict what the reader thinks)

Setting

Basic Definition of Setting: The setting includes the place and the time period in which the story takes place.

Setting may or may not have an important influence on the story:

    An integral setting is essential to the plot; it influences action, character or theme.

    A backdrop setting is relatively unimportant to the plot; it is like the featureless curtain or flat painted scenery of a theater.

    Readers may interpret the importance of the setting differently; one may say that the setting is integral because the story must happen in a big city; another may say the same thing is backdrop because it may happen in any big city. (The former statement is probably more accurate, but either is acceptable if the meaning is clear.)

Setting can clarify conflict, illuminate character, affect the mood, and act as a symbol. The setting itself can be an antagonist in a person-against-nature conflict.

Point of View

Imagine a camera resting on the shoulder of the protagonist in the story. Whatever that camera sees, the reader experiences. But anything outside the range of the camera, the reader does not know. This limited view is called first person point of view.

Basic Definition of Point of View: The Point of View is the narrator that the author uses to tell his story.

In first person point of view, the narrator is a character in the story and tells it from their perspective. In third person point of view, the narrator is outside of the story. Third person point of view may be limited to a narrow perspective, or see all of the characters' perspectives. This perspective is called third person omniscient. There are several advantages and disadvantages to using each one.

First Person Point of View Advantages

1.      It is easier for the author to use his/her voice.

2.      There is often more power and emotion in the voice of the narrator because he is in the story as the events are taking place.

3.      The author assumes the protagonist's role, therefore it is easier for him to discern the character's motivations and emotions.

Disadvantages

1.      The author can only reveal what the protagonist sees, hears or thinks. He can't reveal the thoughts of the other characters.

2.      The narrative is restricted to only what the narrator knows about or experiences.

Allusion

    Symbolism

    Theme

    Allegory

    Foreshadowing

    Progressive and digressive time

    Imagery and Sensory Language

    Tragedy

It is important to understand both the meaning and application of these literary devices so that you can more easily recognize them in a text and understand how to use them to compose your own texts.

Writers create stories for a variety of purposes, the most logical being to make a statement about a topic or theme that is interesting, clear, persuasive, and memorable to readers. An author develops a writing style that is appropriate for the audience by carefully selecting words that will have the most impact on the reader.

 Often times, words choice is selected with one of three purposes in mind:

    Emphasis, association, clarification, and focus for comprehensibility (ease of understanding)

    Physical organization, transition, and arrangement for comprehensibility (ease of understanding) and readability (ease of reading)

    Decoration and variety for affectivity (emotional response)

Literary devices help authors achieve these purposes with flair and elegance that demands thought beyond the literal meaning of words. In a sense, much of the comprehensibility, readablility, and affectivity of a text doesn't come from words themselves, but the meaning the reader finds buried within those words. As you read novels and short stories, you will encounter a variety of literary devices and gain a strong understanding of the literary device and its purpose.

Although authors can choose from a multitude of literary devices, we will explore four that relate to purpose of emphasis, association, clarification, and focus. Keep in mind that emphasis referes to an author's attempt to stress an important word, phrase, or idea. An author may emphasize a point to help the reader recognize its importance. Associations, on the other hand, help readers understand a text better through connections. If a reader can connect an idea with something, someone, some place the reader knows, it will be easier to understand and more memorable. Clarifications are used to make an important point more clear to the reader.

And last, focus is used to direct the reader's attention to an important word, phrase, or idea.

Literary devices that fall under these purposes are allusion, symbolism, theme, and allegory. Both allusion and symbolism are examples of associations. When an author uses allusion, he or she is making a reference to a familiar person, place, thin, or event. In the novel Of Mice and Men Steinbeck referes to the city Soledad and the Salinas River in the first chapter. These are references and associations to a familiar place and thing.

When an author uses symbolism, he or she is using a concrete or touchable object to represent an idea. We'll use Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men again as an example of symbolism. George is one of the main characters in the novel. Why do you think George is always playing the card game solitaire? Why not poker or Go Fish? Solitaire is a game associated with one person. Since George is a solitary, lonely person who really only has one friend, the card game Solitaire is a perfect symbol of George.

Both theme and allegory are used for the purpose of focus because the author wants to specifically direct the reader's attention to a word, phrase, or idea. Although we have studied the literary device of theme, and you know it refers to a statement about life the author is trying to make through the story, theme also acts as a focusing element for readers. All of the word choices, places, characters, conflicts, and other literary elements relate to and are focused on theme.

Likewise, allegory has the same effect. An allegory is a story where people, things, and actions represent an idea or generalization about life. Usually a strong moral or lesson about lifes characterizes an allegory. Although theme and allegory look very similar, keep in mind that an allegory is a specific type of story with a moral or lesson, while a theme is contained within a story. In other words, it is possible to find multiple themes within an allegory.

The second purpose of literary devices involves physical organization, transition, and arrangement in order to make the ideas comprehensible and readable. Physical organization involves the visual representation of text on the page. How is font style, color, alignment, and contrast used so that the reader can easily identify key ideas? Transitions help the reader to move smoothly from one point to another within a text. Arrangement refers to the sequence of events.

If we look at Of Mice and Men again, we will see several examples of these three literary devices. The literary device of foreshadowing uses hints or clues to help the reader make logical predictions about what will happen later in the story. The title itself, Of Mice and Men is an explain of foreshadowing because we know that the plans of mice and men often go awry. This means that the main characters, George and Lennie, will have their plans go awry, too. Progressive and digressive time relate to arrangement and transition because they involve whether the sequence of events moves smoothly forward or back in time. Of Mice and Men moves forward in time, so the novella uses a progressive time sequence.

The last literary device focuses on the purpose of decoration and variety. Decoration and variety refer to choosing words for their power and elegance, and using different sentence structures and word combinations to affect people's emotions. When an author affects the reader's emotions in some way, the story becomes more memorable and interesting.

Two literary devices, imagery and tragedy, fit within the purpose of affecting the reader's emotions. Imagery is used to create a specific picture in the reader's mind through powerful sensory details. Although imagery could also fall under the purpose of association because the word choice helps the reader to picture a familiar place or idea, imagery is often used to create setting, which is connected to the mood or feeling of the story. In Of Mice and Men, Steinbeck uses imagery at the beginning of each of his chapters to help the reader visualize the setting and to set the tone. Tragedy as a literary device that does exactly what the word implies. A tragedy is a literary work, typically a story, where the hero is destroyed by a character flaw or forces beyond his control. Of Mice and Men is considered a tragedy. You already know from the title that something goes wrong with the dreams of George and Lennie.

As you read, keep in mind the literary devices and their definitions and purposes.

Emphasis, association, clarification, and focus include the literary devices of allusion, symbol, theme, and allegory. Each of these devices are used by authors to emphasize a point, help the reader understand the ideas through association, clarification, and focus. Authors also not only use physical organization, transition, and arrangement to help make a text comprehensible, but it also helps make a text readable. Literary devices such as foreshadowing and progressive and digressive time help readers to understand the sequence of events to come.

Finally, authors use imagery and tragedy to make their stories and ideas memorable by affecting the reader's emotions. Powerful emotional responses will ingrain a story (and possibly a moral or lesson) in a reader's mind. Keep in mind that it is quite common for these literary devices to serve more than one purpose. For example, a tragedy not only creates an emotional response in the reader, but it can also help emphasize an idea as well. The categories are intended to help you remember the general purpose of literary devices. Do not see these classifications as struct, but rather as a means of remembering why an author might use a literary device.

What is sensory language?

Sensory language refers to any appeal a writer makes to one of the five physical senses: sight, sound, smell, touch, and taste. Many of the other devices writers use appeal mainly to our intellect or to our emotions, but sensory language has the added power of appealing to our physical selves as well. When writers use sensory language well, they can almost make us ""feel"" the things they describe.

What are the uses of sensory language?

Authors use sensory language to create imagery, establish setting, evoke character, advance plot, and even develop theme.

How do writers use sensory language to create imagery?

 Writers use sensory language to create imagery in many different ways. Chiefly, sensory imagery makes descriptions more specific. For example, saying, ""the air smelled bad"" is much less vivid and interesting than saying, ""the air smelled of rotten bananas."" Likewise, saying that ""the sunlight shone on the surface of the lake"" is much less evocative than saying something like, ""the sunlight faded from gold to red as it danced across the surface of the lake.""

How do writers use sensory language to establish setting?

Writers probably use sensory language more than any other tool for establishing scene. Sensory language contributes to establishing setting by making a place seem unique, by contributing to the tone (or mood) of the story, and by building strong connections between characters to their surroundings.What would a story about the beach be like without sensory details like ""the gritty touch of coarse sand between your toes"" or ""the tangy salt air that made his lips sting""? What would a ghost story be like without sensory details such as ""the moaning of the cold wind across the deserted moors"" or ""the creaking of the rusty hinges"" as the door swings open? Likewise, science fiction stories need ""the stars scattered like glittering jewels across the black velvet night"" to capture the reader's imagination; mystery stories need "the creak of unknown feet on the staircase" to create suspense; and fantasy stories need ""the chorus of silver trumpets ripping open the sky"" to evoke a sense of grandeur.

How do writers use sensory language to advance plots?

 Writers can use sensory language to advance plot by focusing on the senses as stimuli that prompt characters into action. For instance, imagine a character who walks through the front door of her apartment only to be greeted by the unique scent of natural gas. What will her response be to that stimuli? Perhaps she rushes to the kitchen to check the stove; maybe she immediately calls the fire department; possibly she is stricken with panic because she thinks her depressed roommate might be trying to hurt herself; or maybe she becomes convinced that it's time to look for a new, more well-maintained place to live. All of these possibilities can be extracted from one single use of sensory language, and each possibility opens the door to a completely different kind of story!

How do writers use sensory language to evoke characters?

Answer: Writers can use sensory language to tell readers a lot about the kind of person a character is. For example, a man who is described as ""smelling sticky with sweat after a long day's work"" is probably very different sort of person than a man who is described as ""smelling like cheap cologne and stale cigars."" On the other hand, writers sometimes use sensory language to juxtapose (or contrast) the external appearance of a character with his or her ""true"" inner self. For instance, a writer may describe a character by saying, ""she was small and plain and mousey-looking,"" but then go on to reveal later in the story that her personality is actually dynamic and strong--the opposite of ""plain and mousey.""

How do writers use sensory imagery to reinforce theme?

Answer: Writers use sensory language to reinforce theme by creating parallels between the internal experiences of characters and the external physical world they inhabit. For instance, if a writer's theme is the longing for lost youth, sensory images such as ""the smell of freshly mown grass"" or ""the taste of an ice cream sandwich"" could be used trigger a character's memories of long-gone childhood summers. In this example, the sensory language serves as a bridge that connects the writer's theme to the character's thoughts and feelings and to the actual physical world the character inhabits.

Plot Overview

Young Goodman Brown

Goodman Brown says goodbye to his wife, Faith, outside of his house in Salem Village. Faith, wearing pink ribbons in her cap, asks him to stay with her, saying that she feels scared when she is by herself and free to think troubling thoughts. Goodman Brown tells her that he must travel for one night only and reminds her to say her prayers and go to bed early. He reassures her that if she does this, she will come to no harm. Goodman Brown takes final leave of Faith, thinking to himself that she might have guessed the evil purpose of his trip and promising to be a better person after this one night.

Goodman Brown sets off on a road through a gloomy forest. He looks around, afraid of what might be behind each tree, thinking that there might be Indians or the devil himself lurking there. He soon comes upon a man in the road who greets Goodman Brown as though he had been expecting him. The man is dressed in regular clothing and looks normal except for a walking stick he carries. This walking stick features a carved serpent, which is so lifelike it seems to move.

The man offers Goodman Brown the staff, saying that it might help him walk faster, but Goodman Brown refuses. He says that he showed up for their meeting because he promised to do so but does not wish to touch the staff and wants to return to the village. Goodman Brown tells the man that his family members have been Christians and good people for generations and that he feels ashamed to associate with him. The man replies that he knew Goodman Brown’s father and grandfather, as well as other members of churches in New England, and even the governor of the state.

The man’s words confuse Goodman Brown, who says that even if this is so, he wants to return to the village for Faith’s sake. At that moment, the two come upon an old woman hobbling through the woods, and Goodman Brown recognizes Goody Cloyse, who he knows to be a pious, respected woman from the village. He hides, embarrassed to be seen with the man, and the man taps Goody Cloyse on the shoulder. She identifies him as the devil and reveals herself to be a witch, on her way to the devil’s evil forest ceremony.

Despite this revelation, Goodman Brown tells the man that he still intends to turn back, for Faith’s sake. The man says that Goodman Brown should rest. Before disappearing, he gives Goodman Brown his staff, telling him that he can use it for transport to the ceremony if he changes his mind. As he sits and gathers himself, Goodman Brown hears horses traveling along the road and hides once again.

Soon he hears the voices of the minister of the church and Deacon Gookin, who are also apparently on their way to the ceremony. Shocked, Goodman Brown swears that even though everyone else in the world has gone to the devil, for Faith’s sake he will stay true to God. However, he soon hears voices coming from the ceremony and thinks he recognizes Faith’s voice. He screams her name, and a pink ribbon from her cap flutters down from the sky. Certain that there is no good in the world because Faith has turned to evil, Goodman Brown grabs the staff, which pulls him quickly through the forest toward the ceremony. When he reaches the clearing where the ceremony is taking place, the trees around it are on fire, and he can see in the firelight the faces of various respected members of the community, along with more disreputable men and women and Indian priests. But he doesn’t see Faith, and he starts to hope once again that she might not be there.

A figure appears on a rock and tells the congregation to present the converts. Goodman Brown thinks he sees his father beckoning him forward and his mother trying to hold him back. Before he can rethink his decision, the minister and Deacon Gookin drag him forward. Goody Cloyse and Martha Carrier bring forth another person, robed and covered so that her identity is unknown. After telling the two that they have made a decision that will reveal all the wickedness of the world to them, the figure tells them to show themselves to each other. Goodman Brown sees that the other convert is Faith. Goodman Brown tells Faith to look up to heaven and resist the devil, then suddenly finds himself alone in the forest.

The next morning Goodman Brown returns to Salem Village, and every person he passes seems evil to him. He sees the minister, who blesses him, and hears Deacon Gookin praying, but he refuses to accept the blessing and calls Deacon Gookin a wizard. He sees Goody Cloyse quizzing a young girl on Bible verses and snatches the girl away. Finally, he sees Faith at his own house and refuses to greet her. It’s unclear whether the encounter in the forest was a dream, but for the rest of his life, Goodman Brown is changed. He doesn’t trust anyone in his village, can’t believe the words of the minister, and doesn’t fully love his wife. He lives the remainder of his life in gloom and fear.

Sparks Notes.com (2015) http://www.sparknotes.com/short-stories/young-goodman-brown/summary.html

Themes, Motifs, and Symbols

Young Goodman Brown

Themes

The Weakness of Public Morality

In “Young Goodman Brown,” Hawthorne reveals what he sees as the corruptibility that results from Puritan society’s emphasis on public morality, which often weakens private religious faith. Although Goodman Brown has decided to come into the forest and meet with the devil, he still hides when he sees Goody Cloyse and hears the minister and Deacon Gookin. He seems more concerned with how his faith appears to other people than with the fact that he has decided to meet with the devil. Goodman Brown’s religious convictions are rooted in his belief that those around him are also religious. This kind of faith, which depends so much on other people’s views, is easily weakened. When Goodman Brown discovers that his father, grandfather, Goody Cloyse, the minister, Deacon Gookin, and Faith are all in league with the devil, Goodman Brown quickly decides that he might as well do the same. Hawthorne seems to suggest that the danger of basing a society on moral principles and religious faith lies in the fact that members of the society do not arrive at their own moral decisions. When they copy the beliefs of the people around them, their faith becomes weak and rootless.

The Inevitable Loss of Innocence

Goodman Brown loses his innocence because of his inherent corruptibility, which suggests that whether the events in the forest were a dream or reality, the loss of his innocence was inevitable. Instead of being corrupted by some outside force, Goodman Brown makes a personal choice to go into the forest and meet with the devil; the choice was the true danger, and the devil only facilitates Goodman Brown’s fall. Goodman Brown is never certain whether the evil events of the night are real, but it does not matter. If they are a dream, then they come completely from Goodman Brown’s head—a clear indication of his inherent dark side. If they are real, then Goodman Brown has truly seen that everyone around him is corrupt, and he brought this realization upon himself through his excessive curiosity. Goodman Brown’s loss of innocence was inevitable, whether the events of the night were real or a dream.

The Fear of the Wilderness

From the moment he steps into the forest, Goodman Brown voices his fear of the wilderness, seeing the forest as a place where no good is possible. In this he echoes the dominant point of view of seventeenth-century Puritans, who believed that the wild New World was something to fear and then dominate. Goodman Brown, like other Puritans, associates the forest with the wild “Indians” and sees one hiding behind every tree. He believes that the devil could easily be present in such a place—and he eventually sees the devil himself, just as he had expected. He considers it a matter of family honor that his forefathers would never have walked in the forest for pleasure, and he is upset when the devil tells him that this was not the case. He himself is ashamed to be seen walking in the forest and hides when Goody Cloyse, the minister, and Deacon Gookin pass. The forest is characterized as devilish, frightening, and dark, and Goodman Brown is comfortable in it only after he has given in to evil.

Motifs

Female Purity

Female purity, a favorite concept of Americans in the nineteenth century, is the steadying force for Goodman Brown as he wonders whether to renounce his religion and join the devil. When he takes leave of Faith at the beginning of the story, he swears that after this one night of evildoing, he will hold onto her skirts and ascend to heaven. This idea, that a man’s wife or mother will redeem him and do the work of true religious belief for the whole family, was popular during Hawthorne’s time. Goodman Brown clings to the idea of Faith’s purity throughout his trials in the forest, swearing that as long as Faith remains holy, he can find it in himself to resist the devil. When Goodman Brown finds that Faith is present at the ceremony, it changes all his ideas about what is good or bad in the world, taking away his strength and ability to resist. Female purity was such a powerful idea in Puritan New England that men relied on women’s faith to shore up their own. When even Faith’s purity dissolves, Goodman Brown loses any chance to resist the devil and redeem his faith.

Symbols

The Staff

The devil’s staff, which is encircled by a carved serpent, draws from the biblical symbol of the serpent as an evil demon. In the Book of Genesis, the serpent tempts Eve to taste the fruit from the forbidden tree, defying God’s will and bringing his wrath upon humanity. When the devil tells Goodman Brown to use the staff to travel faster, Goodman Brown takes him up on the offer and, like Eve, is ultimately condemned for his weakness by losing his innocence. Besides representing Eve’s temptation, the serpent represents her curiosity, which leads her into that temptation. Goodman Brown’s decision to come into the forest is motivated by curiosity, as was Eve’s decision to eat the forbidden fruit. The staff makes clear that the old man is more demon than human and that Goodman Brown, when he takes the staff for himself, is on the path toward evil as well.

Faith’s Pink Ribbons

The pink ribbons that Faith puts in her cap represent her purity. The color pink is associated with innocence and gaiety, and ribbons themselves are a modest, innocent decoration. Hawthorne mentions Faith’s pink ribbons several times at the beginning of the story, imbuing her character with youthfulness and happiness. He reintroduces the ribbons when Goodman Brown is in the forest, struggling with his doubts about the goodness of the people he knows. When the pink ribbon flutters down from the sky, Goodman Brown perceives it as a sign that Faith has definitely fallen into the realm of the devil—she has shed this sign of her purity and innocence. At the end of the story, when Faith greets Goodman Brown as he returns from the forest, she is wearing her pink ribbons again, suggesting her return to the figure of innocence she presented at the beginning of the story and casting doubts on the veracity of Goodman Brown’s experiences.

Sparks Notes.com (2015)  http://www.sparknotes.com/short-stories/young-goodman-brown/themes.html

Historical Context

Young Goodman Brown

In “Young Goodman Brown,” Hawthorne references three dark events from the Puritans’ history: the Salem Witch Trials of 1692, the Puritan intolerance of the Quakers, and King Philip’s War. During the Salem Witch Trials, one of the most nightmarish episodes in Puritan history, the villagers of Salem killed twenty-five innocent people who were accused of being witches. The witch hunts often involved accusations based on revenge, jealousy, botched child delivery, and other reasons that had little to do with perceived witchcraft. The Puritan intolerance of Quakers occurred during the second half of the seventeenth century. Puritans and Quakers both settled in America, hoping to find religious freedom and start their own colonies where they could believe what they wanted to. However, Puritans began forbidding Quakers from settling in their towns and made it illegal to be a Quaker; their intolerance soon led to imprisonments and hangings. King Philip’s War, the final event referenced in Hawthorne’s story, took place from 1675 to 1676 and was actually a series of small skirmishes between Indians and colonists. Indians attacked colonists at frontier towns in western Massachusetts, and colonists retaliated by raiding Indian villages. When the colonists won the war, the balance of power in the colonies finally tipped completely toward the Puritans.

These historical events are not at the center of “Young Goodman Brown,” which takes place after they occur, but they do inform the action. For example, Hawthorne appropriates the names of Goody Cloyse and Martha Carrier, two of the “witches” killed at Salem, for townspeople in his story. The devil refers to seeing Goodman Brown’s grandfather whipping a Quaker in the streets and handing Goodman Brown’s father a flaming torch so that he could set fire to an Indian village during King Philip’s War. By including these references, Hawthorne reminds the reader of the dubious history of Salem Village and the legacy of the Puritans and emphasizes the historical roots of Goodman Brown’s fascination with the devil and the dark side.

The Dark Romantics

Young Goodman Brown 

In the nineteenth century, American writers, including Nathaniel Hawthorne, were influenced by the European Romantic movement but added their own nationalistic twist. The most famous European Romantics included William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and William Blake. The characteristics of the movement, which began in Germany at the beginning of the eighteenth century, included an interest in the power of the individual; an obsession with extreme experiences, including fear, love, and horror; an interest in nature and natural landscapes; and an emphasis on the importance of everyday events. Some writers in America who drew from the Romantic tradition were James Fenimore Cooper, Washington Irving, and the transcendentalists Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson. American Romantics in the early nineteenth century tended to celebrate the American landscape and emphasize the idea of the sublime, which glorified their beautiful home country. They also created the concept of an American Romantic hero, who often lived alone in the wilderness, close to the land, such as Cooper’s Leatherstocking or Thoreau himself at Walden Pond.

“Young Goodman Brown” fits into a subgenre of American Romanticism: the gothic or dark romance. Novels and stories of this type feature vivid descriptions of morbid or gloomy events, coupled with emotional or psychological torment. The dark Romantics joined the Romantic movement’s emphasis on emotion and extremity with a gothic sensibility, hoping to create stories that would move readers to fear and question their surroundings. Edgar Allen Poe, who wrote “The Fall of the House of Usher” (1839) and “The Tell-Tale Heart” (1843), was probably the most famous of the writers to work in the American dark Romantic genre. Goodman Brown’s encounter with the devil and battle with the evil within himself are both classic elements of a dark Romance.

Sparks Notes.com (2015) http://www.sparknotes.com/short-stories/young-goodman-brown/section2.rhtml

The Fall of Man

Young Goodman Brown

“Young Goodman Brown” functions as an allegory of the fall of man, from which Hawthorne draws to illustrate what he sees as the inherent fallibility and hypocrisy in American religion. Hawthorne sets up a story of a man who is tempted by the devil and succumbs because of his curiosity and the weakness of his faith. Like Eve in the book of Genesis, Goodman Brown cannot help himself from wanting to know what lies behind the mystery of the forest. And like Eve, Goodman Brown is rewarded for his curiosity with information that changes his life for the worse. In the course of the ceremony in the forest, the devil tells Goodman Brown and Faith that their eyes will now be opened to the wickedness of themselves and those around them. Adam and Eve were exiled from the Garden of Eden and forced to undergo all the trials and tribulations of being human, and Goodman Brown returns from the forest to find that the joy in life has been taken away from him. He has become suspicious of those around him, even the woman he once loved.

Important Quotations Explained

Young Goodman Brown

Context

Young Goodman Brown

Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in 1804 in Salem, Massachusetts, and raised by a widowed mother. His ancestors were some of the earliest settlers of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. John Hathorne (the original spelling of the family name), one of his great-grandfathers, had served as a judge at the Salem witch trials of 1692 and condemned twenty-five women to death. Hawthorne felt both fascination with and shame for his family’s complicity in the witch trials and incorporated those feelings into his fiction, much of which explores the social history of New England and the Puritans.

Hawthorne attended Bowdoin College in Maine, where he met Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, who would go on to become a famous poet, and Franklin Pierce, who would become president of the United States. After college, he also met several other important New England writers of the early nineteenth century, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Herman Melville, and Henry David Thoreau. Melville dedicated his masterpiece Moby-Dick (1851) to Hawthorne in appreciation for the help Hawthorne gave him in writing it. Emerson and Thoreau were active in transcendentalism, a religious and philosophical movement of the early nineteenth century that was dedicated to the belief that divinity manifests itself everywhere, particularly in the natural world. It also advocated a personalized, direct relationship with the divine in place of formalized, structured religion. Hawthorne incorporated many elements of transcendentalism into his writing, including the belief in free will as opposed to divine intervention. In 1842, he married a fellow transcendentalist, Sophia Peabody.

Hawthorne held a variety of jobs after college, including editor and customs surveyor, while he began developing his writing. Hawthorne first published “Young Goodman Brown” anonymously inNew England magazine in 1835 and again under his own name in his short-story collection Mosses from an Old Manse in 1846. Like most of the stories in Mosses, “Young Goodman Brown” examines Hawthorne’s favorite themes: the loss of religious faith, presence of temptation, and social ills of Puritan communities. These themes, along with the story’s dark, surreal ending, make “Young Goodman Brown” one of the Hawthorne’s most popular short stories. The story is often seen as a precursor to the novels Hawthorne wrote later in his life, including The Scarlet Letter (1850), The House of the Seven Gables (1851), The Blithedale Romance (1852), and The Marble Faun(1860).

In 1853, Pierce, Hawthorne’s college friend, became president and appointed Hawthorne a United States consul. Hawthorne moved to Europe for six years and died in 1864, shortly after returning to America.

SparkNotes Editors. “SparkNote on Young Goodman Brown.” SparkNotes.com. SparkNotes LLC. 2007. Web. 14 Dec. 2015.