Nathaniel Hawthorne is one of my favorite authors. His blatant use of symbols and clear messages about life through his stories is refreshing since, being an English major, my professors often tasked me with finding “deeper meanings” in texts. The back of my mind always wondering, “Does there have to be a deeper meaning?”
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Anticipation is the greater part of pleasure
The Bloody Chamber (or The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories) is a collection of short Gothic novels by English writer Angela Carter. She bases the stories on fairy tales, especially the folk tales of French collector Charles Perrault, whose prose Carter translated beforehand. Carter rewrites the plots of famous fairy tales in a unique style. This article contains a few spoilers.
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Thousands of people the world over know and love Louisa May Alcott’s classic story of sisterhood, Little Women. But what not as many people know is Alcott wrote a follow-up book called Little Men. (There is also Jo’s Boys, but I won’t be getting into that travesty in this article.) Little Men follows the various adventures and mishaps of the young students at Jo Bhaer’s country school, Plumfield. One of these boys, Daniel Kean (‘Dan’), has become my favorite fictional character and I’m here to tell you why.
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“You can hear a miracle a long way after dark.”
So begins my favorite book by my favorite fantasy author, Maggie Stiefvater’s All the Crooked Saints. Call me biased, but I believe it’s a flawless opening line.
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Considered as one of the greatest trilogies of all time by many, The Dark Knight Trilogy by Christopher Nolan chronicles Bruce Wayne’s journey from vengeance into heroism. Each installment carries a theme that pervades the lives of all its characters.
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This issue challenged our contributors to pick a favorite creator or creation, and then explore what they love most about it. From Batman to Edith Warton, we hope you will love exploring these stories anew and perhaps may discover an unexplored favorite of your own!
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Aside from the comedy, there is only one film genre determined by the response it intends to elicit from the audience: the scary movie. These films terrify the viewer while not placing them in any real danger. They can be more suspenseful than gory when the story involves ghosts, and The Sixth Sense is a prime example. It achieves a thrilling effect on the audience through expected genre tropes and unexpected storytelling details.
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Based on Shirley Jackson’s novel of the same name, Netflix’s The Haunting of Hill House uses seven main characters to tell the story of how a house haunts the lives of the Craine family to keep itself standing. This article contains spoilers for all its twists, so read at your own discretion.
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I am not into horror films, but one sticks with me, because it has such an incredible twist at the end that makes me ponder the realities we invent for ourselves.
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“When hinges creak in doorless chambers, and strange and frightening sounds echo through the halls. Whenever candlelights flicker, where the air is deathly still — that is the time when ghosts are present, practicing their terror with ghoulish delight!”
Many years ago in the Victorian Era, the Louisiana located Gracey Mansion was alive with parties and guests, with love and hope. Wealthy landowner Edward Gracey was in love with Elizabeth Henshaw and asked her hand in marriage. At a grand fete Gracey proposes and Elizabeth sends a note with her response, apparently rebuffing a love he thought they shared. Finding her body after she takes her life with poison throws him into turmoil. He ultimately decides he cannot face life without her, and hangs himself in his garden atrium. And so the Gracey manor fell into disrepair, until a hundred years later when a descendant of the Gracey family who desires to sell the home contact a couple involved in Real Estate, Mr. and Mrs. Evers. Their own marriage is on some rocky ground due to long work hours, Mr. and Mrs. Evers along with their two children, stop at the house on the way out of town for vacation.
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