William Faulkner (Contributed)

To begin with this year’s spooky story times, I figured we’d start with something I have been very interested in over the summer break: Southern Gothic literature.

For those of you who might not have a complete understanding of what Southern Gothic literature is, it is a subgenre of fiction set in the South that uses grotesque imagery to explore different regional issues and traumas. Many of these stories explore slavery, including the plantations, poverty and the immoral corruption that occurred in and around this period in the South. 

Many authors are known for writing Southern Gothic literature, but two that you might have heard of are William Faulkner and Flannery O’Connor. They use storytelling to delve into these issues, often using the scenery to establish how disturbing the times were. 

While I will not get into any specific books that I have read today, I would like to recommend “Beloved” by Toni Morrison if you were interested in getting into the Southern Gothic literature. It is a fascinating book to start with because it does something I believe Faulkner and O’Connor were not able to do, write about the haunting within the house instead of from the house.

That brings me to my biggest point: The purpose of Southern Gothic literature is to point out that, yes, the house is haunted, and that is because the land — the country itself — is haunted.

I’ll be honest: Before I actually got into Southern Gothic literature, I believed it was simply a creepy story in a creepy environment. I thought of Spanish moss and rundown plantations. While that is part of it, the genre goes so much deeper.

There’s history behind it. The South started a war that it lost while defending slavery. Afterward, The South attempted to defend itself and rewrite what had happened. Southern Gothic literature fights back against this defense by telling what actually happened. It begins to put the truth back into storytelling, but it does so in a way that once again highlights how grotesque what actually happened was, through hauntings and abnormal family dynamics.

In different Southern Gothic texts, depending on the writer, the story doesn’t boldly say that what the South has been telling itself is wrong. Instead, it points out all the flaws within that narrative.

Some of these are fairly obvious. For example, how does a poor white man end up owning one of the biggest plantations in the South if he claims there was no corruption within the plantation?

Other stories bring religion into the discussion, showing how the South holds religion to a high standard while its actions completely disobey everything what it preaches. 

Now, if you’re sitting here thinking that some of this sounds familiar to you or you are interested in the genre but aren’t sure where to begin, I’ll meet you halfway and say that if you have watched “Sinners”, you have already begun.

“Sinners” is a great movie adaptation of Southern Gothic literature. It incorporates the Ku Klux Klan through vampires and shows how religion affected different people at the time, and what they believed and how they functioned. It also explores the sacrifices people made to be themselves during a time when not everyone was welcomed or accepted, not just within a building but within a society.

 

It shows the downfall of everyone involved and how there were no winners.

 

Ultimately, Southern Gothic literature is a genre that is American through and through. It is one of the art forms that America holds purely and truly to itself.

 

If you are interested in the genre, I highly recommend exploring it. It may make you think deeply and process information differently from what you have learned all throughout your life.

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