Horror and Fear in Ghost Stories: A Comparison between Henry James’s “The Turn of the Screw” and Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House Usher”

Jasim Mohammed, Mohammed Nasif; Lateef, Waad Adil

doi:10.25130/jls.4.4.32

Horror and Fear in Ghost Stories: A Comparison between Henry James’s “The Turn of the Screw” and Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House Usher”

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

Mohammed Nasif Jasim Mohammed ¹

Waad Adil Lateef ²

¹ University of Tikrit -College of Education for Humanities

² University of Samarra -College of Education for Humanities

10.25130/jls.4.4.32

Abstract

The Present paper discusses Horror and fear in Henry James’ “The Turn of the Screw” and Poe’s “The fall of the House Usher”, which are ghost stories. It compares and contrasts the two stories in accordance with American school. The aim of the compararison is to find out the implications and the underlying identities of both similarities and differences so that even the differences can be given their proper place in a deeper and more comprehensive understanding of the artist. The study applies the theory of suspense to analyze the theme of the unknown in the two stories of mystery and suspense. The objective of the study is to find the similarities and differences in the universal theme. The similarities include the supernatural and horror, mystery, suspense and surprise. The differences are in the tragedy and pathetic and sexual relationship.