Recategorize the key elements, themes, and motifs of American Gothic literature into Northern and Southern Gothic. (6 each, you will NOT use any more than once)
plantations, intense heat, heavy trees, agricultural motifs
anxieties around a judgemental society / wrathful God
oppression, exhaustion, decay, lasting ruins; isolation, endurance
guilt (of one's sins; shame)
vengeful ghosts, hauntings; violent personalities; mob/community violence
witches, demons, vampires, and ghosts
the grotesque; the mentally or physically disabled or disturbed; bigotry
themes on religion, predestination, and free will
anxieties around race, inheritance, and poverty
themes on social issues and inequities
dark forests and bitter cold
madness, corruption, severe guilt, horror, hopelessness
Nothern Gothic
Southern Gothic
Recategorize the paintings below of American Gothic artwork into Northern and Southern Gothic.
(click on the images to zoom)
Edwin Harleston, Boone Hall Plantation (1925)

"American Gothic" painting by Grant Wood

Still shot from the movie "The VVitch"

"Man and Woman Contemplating the Moon" by Caspar David Friedrich
Nothern Gothic
Southern Gothic
Which of the following motifs is NOT an identifiable motif of Southern Gothic?
What "haunts" the south in Southern Gothic lit?
What is the most "iconic" symbolic imagery of Southern Gothic movement?
Which of the following is NOT an immediately recognizable setting for Southern Gothic.
Flannery O'Connor coined the term "generational trauma" to refer to the way you have to be from the South to truly understand its history, culture, and truth.
Most Southern Gothic texts center around the ruling class, or the powerful/dominant group.
In Southern Gothic lit, you might come into Nature seeking Truth, but you're not going to find it, or, if you do, it will be by accident or grace.
Southern Gothic rarely includes the supernatural and monsters, magic, and ghosts are atypical of this movement.
While not technically a Southern Gothic text, Steinbeck ascribes southern gothic themes, and imagery onto migrant workers in California in order to compare migrant worker experience to post-bellum south in the novella Of Mice and Men.
Consider this excerpt from Their Eyes Were Watching God:
What sentence here BEST supports the assertion that this text is Southern Gothic?
Consider this excerpt from Other Voices by Truman Capote:
Which THREE phrases BEST supports the assertion that this text is Southern Gothic?
Consider this excerpt from Other Voices by Truman Capote:
In this passage, what literary device really heightens the horror?