Gothic

Oates short stories usually follow young characters through their struggles in life. There are many family imperfections in Oates stories that mostly tend to have a disturbing image in the readers head. While it seemed that Joyce Carol Oates experienced dark childhood experiences, she seems to explore her thoughts according to similar events that had happened in her life. Written by Joyce Carol Oates, “Spider Boy” is an example that highly defines gothic horror. Many of her works deal with violence, rape, death, or a character that has gone completely mad. “Naked” has many dark and nightmare like scenes, Oates writes on how a normal day can be your worst; it is that Oates puts a woman in a scene that would be worse than an average nightmare by stripping the character of who they were. Joyce Carol Oates tests our minds by infusing strange actions within her stories that trigger psychological awareness in the human mind. “Spider Boy” is another well-written story by Joyce Carol Oates that underlines gothic horror, by giving a scenario of a young boy luring his father’s victims, so that his father rapes and then kills the victims. The short story has characters that seem to be insane. First, we have a pedophile father that takes advantage of smaller teens; he uses his son Philip to do so by interacting with them and them reeling them in as the father uses friendly words and gestures to trap the victim. The mother seems to be happy to be married to the husband; a little too happy. The mother seems to live in her own little world were everything around her is perfect, she ignores all bad from the father and pretends it’s a normal thing. Blinded by what it really is, Philips mother tries to keep a positive and perfect image on their families’ life. Philips sister is a shadowy character; not much is known about her. And finally there’s Philip; a young boy who only seeks the attention of his father by doing what he is commanded to do. Obedient as is, Philip does not want