Southern Gothic Literature Southern gothic literature became famous by Edgar Allen Poe in the 1900’s. Then in the 1920’s and 1930’s William Faulkner made it popular again. Southern gothic literature is the writing about the American south such as, the plantations, dusty downtowns, and aging southern belles. Three southern gothic literature authors that have changed and twisted it to make it their own are William Faulkner, Harper Lee, and Eudora Welty. William Faulkner’s story “A Rose for Emily”, Eudora Welty’s story “A Worn Path”, and Harper Lee's book To Kill A Mockingbird are three southern gothic books that show southern gothic writing. In “A Worn Path”, “A Rose for Emily”, and To Kill A Mockingbird the authors use the element of horror to scare and surprise the reader. Without a doubt there are many ways to make someone think of what you want them to think of just by using words. Eudora Welty makes you think that someone is going to get killed and that the story will end sad. In “A Worn Path” the main character Phoenix goes on this journey to get her grandson’s medication. Phoenix is an old negro woman, she has hallucinations on her journey and isn’t afraid of anything. This story shows horror being used because on her journey she runs into a young white hunter and his dog. When she is walking, she hears a dog and turns around. The dog then jumps up and pushes her into a ditch. The dog’s owner comes along and helps her up. However,when he finds out where she is going,(into town), he tells her to go home because it is too far. When she refuses to go home he points his gun at her. She just stood there and stared at the gun. He said “Doesn't the gun scare you?” She replied, “No, sir, I seen plenty go off closer by, in my day, and for less than what I have done” You would think that she was going to get killed and that she would be scared but she isn’t. She is brave and strong. She just walked away like nothing ever happened. The woman didn’t cheat death but got lucky. The only way to cheat death would be to hide from it.This makes it southern gothic because it has all of the features that a southern gothic story would have. It was gruesome it had some racial involvement,and it was fiction. There is some racial involvement because it is a white man pointing the gun at a black woman and most of the time blacks and whites never got along. They was always a separation from each other, the whites were more superior than the blacks. In other stories such as “ A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner some authors decide to make the story more gruesome than the last story. In this story, the main character Miss Emily has died. Miss Emily grew up in Jefferson, never moved or left town, and she died in Jefferson. Since her father died she barely even left her own home. When her father was alive, Colonel Sartoris said that neither her or her father had to pay taxes. Since she never went out after her father's death she never learned that Colonel Sartoris had died too and that she needed to pay taxes. Colonel Sartoris said that her father loaned money to the town and in order to repay him he never had to pay taxes as long as he lived. She got the letters but never paid the taxes. She refused because she thought that Colonel Sartoris was still alive. After a while she met a black man named Homer Barron. After that you would only see her at certain times looking out the window. He never talked to anyone and no one knew anything about them. One day she went out to buy arsenic from the store. She didn’t tell the druggist what for, even though she was supposed to. When the druggist asked she looked up at him and gave him a long hard look, and then he gave her the arsenic. People thought that she was going to kill herself because arsenic was poison. When Miss Emily died, she was seventy four years old. When the town buried Miss Emily they went into her house and found Homer Barron’s dead body and on the side of him “a long strand of iron-gray hair ”, which was Miss Emily’s. This is what they saw in the room that they walked into “The man himself lay in the bed”,”What was left of him, rotted beneath what was left of the nightshirt, had become inextricable from the bed in which he lay” She used the arsenic to kill Homer Barron. In this story William Faulkner made it sad and gruesome. This proves how authors use horror to surprise the reader because you would have thought that a quiet person like Emily wouldn’t do something like killing someone. You may think that she is just be a normal human being and have used the poison for it’s actually purpose which would be to kill the rats. You could have thought that she had a few problems with her and that she could have been crazy, but that gruesome. In To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee the story is being told by Scout, a young girl. She is all grown up and she is telling the story of how her older brother,Jem broke his arm.They live in Maycomb County, Alabama with their father Atticus Finch. Their next door neighbors are the Radley family. The Radleys are a strange family and they have a son named Boo. He used to come out when he little kid but after a while Boo never came out. Atticus is a lawyer who takes on a case defending a negro man, Tom Robinson. Tom Robinson is being accused of raping Mayella Ewell. According to Mr. Ewell and Mayella’s father, Tom raped Miss Mayella. However Tom said that he didn’t rape Miss Mayella. He said that she just kissed him. Tom Robinson was found guilty of raping Miss Mayella. When Tom was being put in jail he tried to escape but he was shot and killed. A couple of months after the case, Mr. Ewell was mad one night, and decided to go after Scout and Jem. He was getting revenge on Atticus, by killing his kids. Scout,wearing a ham costume, started walking home from school with Jem. They walked through the woods when Jem thought they were being followed. When Mr. Ewell knew that they were being followed he attacked Jem and Scout. Jem pushed Scout out of the way and screamed ”Run, Scout! Run! Run!” Scout couldn’t see anything but the darkness, but she could hear fighting. Scout heard “ From somewhere nearby came scuffling, kicking sounds, sounds of shoes and flesh scraping dirt and roots.” Scout and Jem were up again after their fall, and tried to get away, but “More scuffling, and there came a dull crunching sound and Jem screamed”. While the fighting happened, Boo Radley came out to save Jem and Scout. Boo stabbed Mr.Ewell in the back with Mr. Ewell’s own knife. Boo then carried Jem to the Finch’s house.Scout got up and walked to the house. Boo was a hero and Jem was a kid with a broken arm. The near death experience was a horrifying thing to go through. The author ,Harper Lee, used irony to surprise the reader. You think that they are going to be killed but Boo, who no one has seen in a long time, saves the day. Who would have thought? Overall all three of these pieces of literature show how horror can be used to scare, surprise, worry, and make people think that anything can happen. William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, and Harper Lee all made you think that their stories would end in a bad way or that the characters would be killed. There are many different ways to make things horrifying while using Southern Gothic Literature. Everything in these stories could actually happen in real life. Many people do have near death experiences. They could have been held to gun point, or someone could have tried to hurt them. These stories are special and different because the unexpected happens. The authors use Southern Gothic Literature to make them special and different. Crimes like these happen all the time, and if you survive you would be considered lucky to be alive.