Bad Meets Evil In the gothic literature short stories “Prey”, “The Devil and Tom Walker”, “The Black Cat”, and “A Rose for Emily” composed by Richard Matheson, Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, and William Faulkner exercise their knowledge of gothic themes of entrapment and ambiguity to create a persuasive sense of exasperation and apprehension for the reader. Authors such as Richard Matheson, Washington Irving, and William Faulkner predominantly use the gothic theme entrapment in their writing. In fact, in “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner the central character Emily “no longer went out at all” (Faulkner 1066). This caused her to become extremely lonely in the later years of her life. This is due to the loss of her husband Colonel Sartoris. Faulkner states “A deputation waited upon her, knocked at the door through which no visitor had passed since she ceased giving china-painting lessons eight or ten years earlier.” (Faulkner 1068) in light of demonstrating the entrapment she created for herself as a means of dealing with her husband's death by …show more content…
In Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” the author uses ambiguity to make the reader question the true justification for Emily’s isolation. This can be seen when Faulkner writes “The day after his death… [Miss Emily was] dressed as usual and with no trace of grief on her face” (Faulkner 1072). This leads the reader to believe that she is not being melodramatic and is dealing with the death of a loved one very well only to find out she “closed [the front door] upon the last one and [it] remained closed for good” (Faulkner 1073). Likewise, in “The Devil and Tom Walker”, when Tom’s wife erratically leaves him in search for Old Scratch “night elapsed, another morning came; but no wife” (Irving 329). By stating this, Irving leaves the reader pensive as to where she would have gone and why she never came