Into the Nightmare. Essay on Literature

If you were wondering in what ways does transformation play a role in stories meant to scare us? The way it plays a role is it can make or break a story depending on the transformation because it puts people in that “fight or flight” response which make people more alert or anxious and when they get threw they feel great after.I have always thought that scare stories that were great because of the monster or person in the story and that is what made it so great.But I learned transformation is why those people/monsters were so scary because without them transforming to make them scary, you would not be scared of them and they would be regular people like you and I.All sorts of literature have some sorts of transformation which I’m going to show you.

In English we watched a movie called “The Others” by Alejandro Amenabar that featured transformation because the characters at the beginning were regular human beings. They also are very wealthy and the mom had two kids, one boy and one girl,but the husband is not home because he is at war. The girl and boy have a disease where they can’t be in a lot of light or it will kill them.The family is looking for a maid ,or to help around the house and to take care of kids, but three people show up coincidentally hoping they needed help saying they have worked in the house before. Later in the movie the dad comes back and is so tired and leaves for war again and the little girl says she has seen other people here before, but the mom does not believe it and the maid tries to convince her because she sees them too. They later figure out that the family were ghosts and that the mom killed the kids, she killed herself after that, the father died in war, and the workers workers were ghosts too. The people that the girl has been seeing was the real family living there and the median, but this shows a lot of transformation because the characters change by them realizing they already dead and were ghosts. I also change because my feelings toward the movie changed because it shocked me that they were ghosts and not humans plus I did not see it coming which why I liked the movie so well.

We also read the “The Fall Of The House Of Usher”By Edgar Allan Poe in English class where the narrator goes to see if there's anything he can help Roderick Usher with. The narrator sees the cracks in the foundation of the walls and the house which was a flaw that Usher saw. Usher shares his forms of expression like paintings, poetry, stories, and music with the narrator. Then the narrator learns that Usher and Madeline, who is User sister were twins and that they did not bond so well as twins and take care of each other the way they should.In the final storm Usher confesses that he buried his sister Madeline alive and when they opened the vault she was gone. Some of the transformation was that the narrator was changed by the experience because he becomes anxious and overwrought like Roderick based on what he saw. In page 28 paragraph 39 it says “At the termination… (although at once I concluded that my excited fancy deceived me)...” and the narrator begins questioning if the sounds he hears are real or not.Usher also transforms because he starts an interesting guy with a lot hobbies, but at the end he ends up committing a crime by burying his sister alive. The sister changes also because she goes from a regular human with a disease to a ghost or a person who broke out of the casket with blood on and attacks her brother.

I read a poem called “Windigo” by Louise Erdrich were the speaker of the poem is a Windigo which is like a demon dog. The Windigo comes to get little kids who lie or behave badly. The Windigo came from the woods and he came to get a little boy who lied about how the kettle got into the fire. The Windigo dragged towards the child and licked the soles of the child's feet and took the child to the Windigo’s home in the woods. He did eventually take the child home the next morning. This shows how the child transforms because he was a normal boy who then was taken by the Windigo for the night and I pretty sure he won’t lie about how the kettle got into the fire. The Windigo also transforms because he seems so scary and creepy at the beginning, but does take care of the child by bringing him home. I also change the way I look at the Windigo because I thought of him like a killer, but he is just creature who punishes kids who lie and behave badly, but he takes them home at the end.

I read “beware:do not read this poem” by Ishmael Reed and it is a poem that describes an “ol woman” who locked herself indoors with many mirrors. One day villagers broke into her house and she disappeared into a mirror and from then on each tenant who bought the house after that lost a loved in the mirror first a little girl, young woman, and young woman’s husband. It tells you to not read the poem in the title, back off in paragraph 4 lines 21 - 25, and to keep reading the poem in paragraph 7 line 36. It says the poem is the reader and the reader is the poem lines 42 and 43.The transformation that goes on here is the poem because it tells you not to read it, the story about the “ol woman” in the mirror,it tells you to back off from reading it, and at the end it tells you not to resist it.I as reader transform because from the start I wondered why it did not want you to read it and at the end I realized it sucks you in, not the mirrors because your inside it and that made feel anxious to read the rest.

Those were some ways that transformation plays a role in stories meant to scare us.I showed you a movie,short story, poetry. All of them have one thing in common and that's transformation.There a transformation in all the movies,stories, and poems because the authors or directors know that with some good transformation is the difference if your gonna make a lot of money or not.Transformation now helps me decide on if how good a story is and to look for it also.I really enjoy transformation because of the “fight or flight” response I get because the fear created by the transformation.