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Poe - King of Gothic Literature

            When one thinks about gothic literature, one certain name comes to mind: Edgar Allan Poe. He is one of the strikingly phenomenal American authors that dared to write about gore and horror that most people suppress in our subconscious minds. We fear what we don't know and try to keep that hidden from others; but what we don't understand is why. Poe uses our repressed nightmares to inflict a subconscious grieving in our emotions. .
             The subconscious is something that is very hard to understand. We don't exactly know why we lee things so suppressed even though it should be something that we can think of when we're awake. In our dream-like states, we can see everything in our suppressed subconscious because our dreams are vulnerable to what our minds want us to see. In our dreams we can see this vision of a perfect girl or anima. Poe's short stories are a great example of the anima that we suppress in our minds.
             A great example of this anima is in Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher." Usher, the main character, is a sickly looking man due to so much fear that he constantly lives in. His sister, Madeline, is deathly ill with a sickness that restrains her movements which causes Usher a lot of fear. Every time he sees her, his movements and breathing stops due to the fact that he is looking at the anima that he tried to hard to conceal for a long time. .
             During the time-lapse of the story, we get subtle clues from Poe that Usher and Madeline had a little more of a relationship than just being siblings. We pick up on a little bit of incestuous behavior which is why Usher is so afraid of Madeline being in the house with other people. He is perceiving Madeline as an anima that are his deepest fear and secrets. He is constantly living in fear that Madeline will tell everyone about the incestuous relationship that they had together at one point in their lives. So like he does with his memories, he tries to conceal the anima form the rest of the world.


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