Edgar Allan Poe’s short stories are now believed to be the foundation of modern horror. However, admiration of Poe and his specific style came after his death, as his contemporaries considered his writing too grotesque to be Gothic literature. Why, then, do modern critics now classify his works as Gothic? My thesis disagrees with identifications of Poe’s writings as typical Gothic literature, and instead asserts that his stories utilize a unique style that has set his writings apart for centuries. This specific method, described by Poe himself, focuses on unifying a story to create true terror, wherein each aspect plays a role in generating fear within his readers. My thesis will prove Poe’s unification of terror by analyzing two distinct aspects of his stories: the eerie diction and specific characterization. Drawing from Marshall W. Alcorn’s study of linguistic methods and Brett Zimmerman’s psychological analysis of Poe’s characters, I compare three of his short stories (The Masque of the Red Death, The Tell-Tale Heart, and The Fall of the House of Usher) using reader-response oriented inquiry. I conclude that the language used obscures relatable aspects of the settings and characters, while the accurate psychological theories used to portray these characters simultaneously reveal fear-generating details to the reader. The dichotomous relationship between obscurity and revelation consequently alienates the reader from the fictional story and emphasizes the potential horrors that exist within our own reality. This surpasses the traditional structure and outcome of a gothic horror story, therefore classifying it as such disregards the unique traits of Poe's style.
