Gothic Short Stories

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        English Coursework         Gothic Short Stories

Gothic Short Stories

Gothic stories are usually dark and mysterious, set mostly at night, and frequently have the appearance of bad weather. Gothic stories hit a peak in Victorian times, when Jack the Ripper and other famous lawbreakers struck fear into peoples hearts.

This grim time was not helped by the very inefficient police force, this left people wanting to hear of more heroes in their world. I have read 3 famous gothic short stories, and in my essay I am going to explore them in detail to decide how suspense has been created, and how effective this is.

The three stories are:

The Body-Snatcher

The Red Room

The Adventure of the Speckled Band.

        All of these titles start with “The”; this is to show it is a more definite article. All of these titles give away as little about the story as possible, adding mystery to the stories. The Red Room conjures up lots of different images, for example, blood, danger, evil and pain. But then again, it could just be about a room painted red! This makes the reader want to continue to find out how the title actually relates to the story. The Body-Snatcher immediately gives images of mystery, graveyards, bodies and moonlight. This gives the title a spooky and mysterious touch, which is vital for a gothic story as it gets the reader interested in what the story is about so they want to read more and more. This is a very effective gothic story title. The Adventure of the Speckled Band’s title sets up what the story is about, although the use of “Adventure” is very uncommon in gothic short story titles, “the Speckled Band” links in with the key clue given to Sherlock Holmes (the main character) in the story. All of these story titles are very effective at gaining the readers interests, and adding to the overall gothic aspects of the stories.

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        All gothic short stories need to have an interesting start that makes the reader want to look deeper into the book. In “The Body Snatcher” by Robert Louis Stevenson the narrator starts the story off as if he is retelling a past event. “Every night in the year, four of us sat in the small parlour of the George at Debenham – the undertaker, the landlord, Fettes and myself.” This immediately sets the scene and tells us that the narrator is a main character in the story. The story quickly gets into action as the meeting between Fettes and ...

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