Gothic: The Darker Elements - a workshop with Helen Hagemann

This workshop will look briefly at the Gothic and especially how to create those darker effects in your writing. Friday, 24th March, 1pm-3pm. We will read an extract from Edgar Allan Poe's short story The Fall of the House of Usher. Writing exercises will look at the elements of the Gothic and its effect, particularly the effects Poe chiefly sought - terror, passion and horror. 
Venue: Fremantle Arts Centre, Upstairs Room 2.
Time: 1-3pm. What to bring: Notepad, pen, laptop or iPad Cost: OOTA $20 - NON-OOTA $25 (ask for membership form to save). Please note: No credit card facility and new attendees who arrive without the class fee will be asked to pay on the day via direct debit transfer.
For information on joining OOTA and what we do, please visit our website http://ootawriters.com

"The Fall of the House of Usher" is considered the best example of Poe's "totality", where every element and detail is related and relevant.
The theme of the crumbling, haunted castle is a key feature of Horace Walpole's Castle of Otranto (1764), which largely contributed in defining the Gothic genre. The presence of a capacious, disintegrating house symbolizing the destruction of the human body is a characteristic element in Poe's later work.
"The Fall of the House of Usher" shows Poe's ability to create an emotional tone in his work, specifically feelings of fear, doom, and guilt. These emotions center on Roderick Usher, who, like many Poe characters, suffers from an unnamed disease. Like the narrator in "The Tell-Tale Heart", his disease inflames his hyperactive senses. The illness manifests physically but is based in Roderick's mental or even moral state. He is sick, it is suggested, because he expects to be sick based on his family's history of illness and is, therefore, essentially a hypochondriac. Similarly, he buries his sister alive because he expects to bury her alive, creating his own self-fulfilling prophecy.
The House of Usher, itself doubly referring both to the actual structure and the family, plays a significant role in the story. It is the first "character" that the narrator introduces to the reader, presented with a humanized description: its windows are described as "eye-like" twice in the first paragraph. The fissure that develops in its side is symbolic of the decay of the Usher family and the house "dies" along with the two Usher siblings. This connection was emphasized in Roderick's poem "The Haunted Palace" which seems to be a direct reference to the house that foreshadows doom.
Reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fall_of_the_House_of_Usher