PAPER Topics

Start of Term Paper
Fear, terror and suspense are the most vivid emotions created by Poe's stories and by Hitchcock's films. Several themes are common to both: the madness that exists in the world, the paranoia caused by isolation which guides people's actions, ....

Middle of Term Paper
... quite different. They are victims of their fears and their obsessions. Norman who seems agreeable and shy is, in reality, a homicidal maniac who has committed matricide. He suffers from schizophrenia — he acts as both himself and his dead mother. Roderick Usher appears strange from the beginning, almost ghost-like, with his "cadaverousness of complexion" — however, he is not a murderer. He suffers from a mental disorder which makes him obsessed with fear: fear of the past, of the house, of the dead. He finally dies, "victim to the terrors he had anticipated." The way in which madness is projected in both stories is quite simi ...