GOTHIC ROMANTICISM:

In The Fall of the House of Usher the narrator's childhood friend, Roderick Usher, has invited him to stay at the Usher manor. The Usher manor is a dark and creepy place, there a disturbing images of he sees of desolated trees this makes it a very disturbing place for the narrator. Roderick wrote him that he was feeling ill and would love to be in the presence of his old boy hood friend. The man narrating states that Roderick looks pale and has a loss of energy. Roderick plays a song to the narrator with his guitar and one of the verses states, "But evil things, in robes of sorrow,
Assailed the monarch's high estate;
(Ah, let us mourn, for never morrow
Shall dawn upon him, desolate!)
And, round about his home, the glory That blushed and bloomed
Is but a dim-remembered story
Of the old time entombed.", (TFOHU pg 10), this verse can resemble the feelings Roderick truly has inside about where he is living and the things that go on in his house. The last key point of Roderick is that he is noted to be afraid in his own house. This may be because his sister is a vampire...... just sayin'. Madeline, Roderick's sister, is said to have been diagnosed with an in-curable illness that can not be reversed. Later in the short story Madeline dies, Roderick buries her under the house temporarily because he fears the doctors will dig her body up out of the ground to do tests. While Roderick and the narrator is putting Madeline in the tomb the narrator notices Madeline's rosy cheeks, he also notices then that Roderick and Madeline are twins. One night after the burial of his sister Roderick and the narrator find themselves uneasy and un able to sleep, so the narrator read "Mad Trist” by Sir Launcelot Canning to the two of them. As he is reading this story he find himself hearing the noises that are extremely similar to the noises that would be happening in the book. Roderick has passed out by now and is muttering that he has heard these sounds for days now. The most essential part to the theory that Madeline is a vampire is when the narrator believes Madeline was buried alive and as he came to the proclamation his old friend Roderick screams the "she is behind the door!!" at that instance the wind blows the door open and there stands Madeline covered in blood and the evidence of her struggle is very apparent on her appearance. She attacks Roderick and as she does this the life slowly drains out of both of them. T he narrator runs to the entrance of the house trying to escape but just as he is doing so the house begins to crack and the foundation breaks and the whole structure that was once a house collapsed. The fact that Madeline had the rosy cheeks that happens, in most cases, to a person freshly pronounced dead, and that fact that Madeline was presumed dead and buried but yet was alive and attacking her brother and chasing the narrator at the end makes it pretty clear that she was a vampire. 

Gothic writers like to express their dislike for human nature by indirectly stating it. In most of the stories we have read there is always one antagonist that has a personality to fit most humans. This person usually starts off showing that they are a good person but by the end of the story they are usually proven to be a manipulative and displeasing person. In The Life You Save May Be Your Own Mr. Shiftlet has the ability of showing that he is a good person in the beginning and that he is a man who believes he only serves God, as many people I know do, but by the end his true colors are revealed. In A Rose For Emily the towns people project that they care for Miss Emily and feel sorry for, yet they are disappointed when her engagement doesn't have a huge blow-off they can all witness and gossip about. These are two prime examples of how these writers project that they feel human nature is using a cover that you are a good person but as you read on to their souls that people as a whole are deceitful. In The Fall Of The House Of Usher Edgar Allen Poe shows a different interpretation of human nature. He shows that people have a soft side for their old friends that they care deeply about and will help them in their time of need. He does this by having the narrator go to help comfort his childhood friend in his time of need, this childhood friend he hasn't seen in many years. Although, Poe also expresses a dislike for human nature in  The Black Cat because in this story Poe shows people have a tendency to fall off the right path and go to the darker side of their emotions. He also shows that once that person is off his or hers path that they cant redeem themselves because when they try they cause greater devastation to the ones they originally loved. So, no writers express their feelings towards human nature in many different aspects and they each have individual feelings towards human nature.