A Peek into a Magical and Gothic Comparison

The house disappeared with every other step, until, finally, it was nothing more than a

speck of dust in the grasslands. Gothic literature and magical realism are two genres that can

follow very similar ideas, though both have their own twists and spins that make them far

different from the other. To start off, gothic literature was started in the 18th century, first

referred to as a ‘sophisticated joke’ by the original author of the beginning gothic literature book,

Horace Walpole. Magical realism, on the other hand, had been first created to criticize politics

and the American mentality. Even putting those two points aside, both genres have very set rules

to follow, and, despite the similarities, handle them very differently. To put some attention to just

a part of it, gothic literature treats the supernatural as genuinely supernatural- things like ghosts

and crumbling houses due to death are seen as strange and pointed out as not normal. The

supernatural in magical realism is treated as something normal. It never has attention drawn to it

and it is just seen as something that occurs naturally- sometimes the things aren’t ever given

names to add even more familiarity to it.

The short stories “The Fall of the House of Usher” and “House Taken Over” are

examples of gothic literature and magical realism, and the two have many similarities in their

tellings. Two of the similarities are the giant houses and the siblinghood, two characteristics that

fit into typical gothic literature traits. Both stories mention that there are siblings. “A striking

similitude between the brother and sister now first arrested my attention; and Usher, diving,

perhaps, my thoughts, murmured out some few words from which I learned that the deceased

and himself had been twins, and that sympathies of a scarcely intelligible nature had always

existed between them” (Poe, 24). “Irene and I got used to staying in the house by ourselves…”

(Cortázar, 38). There is a deeper connection when the attention is brought to the sibling
relationship, as it now shows that there is a more personal feeling between the characters. The

giant houses also add a different view to the writings, as the reader is then aware of just how

much empty space is in both houses. “‘Her decease,’ he said, with a bitterness which I can never

forget, ‘would leave him (him, the hopeless and the frail) the last of the ancient race of the

Ushers’” (Poe, 19). “...which was crazy, eight people could have lived in that place and not have

gotten in each other’s way” (Cortázar, 38). The giant houses are used as a way to add an eerie

feel and bring light to how isolated these people are, giving an even stronger feeling of the fear

that both stories evoke.

However, even with these things practically overlapping each other, the genres have two

very different ways of handling the ‘supernatural.’ Gothic literature likes to look at the

supernatural and treat it as such, explaining that it isn’t welcome in any case. Magical realism

tends to welcome the ‘supernatural’ but does not treat it as such. “‘...with blows, made quickly

room in the plankings of the door for his gauntleted hand; and now pulling therewith sturdily, he

so cracked, and ripped, and tore all asunder, that the noise of the dry and hollow-sounding wood

alarumed and reverberated throughout the forest’...At the termination of this sentence I started

and, for a moment, paused; for it appeared to me…from some very remote portion of the

mansion, there came, indistinctly, to my ears, what might have been, in its exact similarity of

character, the echo (but a stifled and dull one certainly) of the very cracking and ripping sound

which Sir Launcelot had so particularly described” (Poe, 28). “I had to shut the door to the

passage. They’ve taken over the back part” (Cortázar, 40). The two different responses to the

situations, one where it is treated as normal and the other where it is treated as different, show

just how much the two genres can differ, simply in something so small.
 All in all, while the genres have many similarities and can be put together quite easily,

there are still several characteristics that differentiate the two from each other. Even when their

characteristics overlap, things so easily pull them apart and make them their own, individual

genre, which makes them that much more intriguing. When dwindled down to only the reason

they were created, magical realism and gothic literature still hold so many differences.

Everything about them can be cut into its own little part, and yet they still hold so many similar

traits. However, these two are not easy to mistake for one another, since the traits that are

different are so far different.

Works Cited

Cortázar, Julio. "House Taken Over." My Perspectives English Language Arts, Savvas
 Learning Company LLC, 1946, pp. 37-42.

Poe, Edgar Allan. “The Fall of the House of Usher.” My Perspectives, English Language

Arts, Savvas Learning Company LLC, pp. 13-30.