Mental [In]Stability: Isolation and Hallucination in the Horror Genre

<p>This thesis is a critical analysis of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Black Cat" and <em>The Shining</em> by Stephen King. Mental [in]stability is defined and then used to describe how the protagonist in these stories moves from a place of realism, to a world where they no longer understand their reality. This idea of mental [in]stability is also demonstrated in the three short stories I have written.</p> <p>In Poe's "The Black Cat," his narrator tells the tale of how he lost his mental [in]stability. By moving away from his realistic world, the narrator lost his ability to reason as his mental [instability declined. Poe executes this decline with the use of isolation and hallucination in order to change his narrator's surroundings.</p>

Name thesis:degree_name

Art

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Art Department

Year dc:date.available

2015

Author dc:creator

• Krafthefer, Catherine Marshall

Contributors dc:contributor

• Aaron Sanders
• Patrick Jackson
• Courtney George

• Edgar Allan Poe
• Stephen King
• Catherine Krafthefer
• Horror
• Instability
• Arts and Humanities
• Modern Literature

Language dc:language

English

Repository record dc:identifier

https://csuepress.columbusstate.edu/theses_dissertations/193

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:csuepress.columbusstate.edu:theses_dissertations-1193