Gothic Literature- the Black Cat by Edgar Allen Poe and...

Dracula by Bram Stoker and The Black Cat by Edgar Allen Poe Any text that is composed is written to fit into the society that it is written for. A genre must evolve and modernise itself to remain relevant and interesting to the target audience. In â€Å"The Black Cat† by Edgar Allen Poe and â€Å"Dracula† by Bram Stoker, the composers have both adapted their stories to appeal the people of their time. â€Å"Dracula† by Bram Stoker used many of the conventions of the gothic genre to appeal to the Victorian Society. Stoker used the style of the novel, his characters and the tone to create an enticing text based on the beliefs of the novel’s era. The tone of the novel Dracula seemed to be fear. Fear is a very common theme in many gothic texts. A few†¦show more content†¦The nails were long and fine, and cut to a sharp point.† Upon Jonathon staring out the window, he inadvertently happens to spy Count Dracula â€Å"slowly emerge from the window and begin to crawl down the castle wall over the dreadful abyss, face down with his cloak spreading out around him like great wings†¦.move downwards with considerable speed just as a lizard moves along a wall.† Just after this Count Dracula brings back a small child to feed to the female vampires, which is the most barbaric deed that any character could do in a gothic novel. To lose a child was the greatest fear of many Victorian women, making this crime a truly abominable one. The many gothic conventions in â€Å"Dracula† played to the morals of the Victorian era to make it both controversial and acceptable, giving the novel the success it deserved. In comparison, the story â€Å"The Black Cat† by Edgar Allen Poe modernized the gothic genre even further to adapt it to the audience of the early 19th century. The composer used the questionable sanity of his character and the overtly violent acts committed by this character, to create an evil that was not embodied as a supernatural creature, but as a man. He created an idea of the perverse nature of humans to create an evil that was truly terrifying. In â€Å"The Black Cat† by Edgar Allen Poe, the narrator of the story starts to question his own sanity, though instead of taking responsibility for his own actions he shifted the blame onto the