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Edgar Allen Poe: The Twilight Connection, a la Shmoop.

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Edgar Allan Poe liked killing people.

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Not literally, of course, because then he would've ended up in an orange prison jumpsuit

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for the rest of his life, and orange was not his color.

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No, Poe liked to kill off the characters in his stories.

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Or have them go nuts. That worked, too. Poe is one of the best-known authors of the

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Gothic genre.

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Besides all the death and crazy in his stories, you can also count on creeptastic settings…

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…like houses that crumble for no apparent reason...

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...and lots of supernatural occurrences.

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Death pops in every once in a while to say “hola”…

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…as do reanimated corpses and random thumping noises from under the floor.

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While reading Poe, you should feel terrified...

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…but don't bother worrying about any of the characters because, chances are, they're

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toast. Gothic literature has been around for better

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than two centuries.

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Besides Poe's works, a couple of stand-outs in the genre are Frankenstein and Dracula...

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and if you haven't read those yet, no worries.

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That's what college lit is for.

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Today's authors still rely on the spooky and the supernatural for inspiration, which may

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leave you wondering: Is Twilight a Gothic novel?

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Ah, Twilight: a book that many love, and many love to hate.

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Stephanie Meyer did include some Gothic elements in Twilight, including the story's unsettling

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setting of Forks, Washington...

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...and some vampires. Those vampires may sparkle but, by golly, they're still supernatural

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creatures. Where Twilight falls down as a Gothic novel

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is on the thematic front. There's no madness or death in Twilight...

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...well, okay, Edward's dead, he's a vampire.

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However, he is the living dead, which means he'll stay topside, watching football and

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paying his mortgage and staring moodily into the sunset, for eternity.

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Once Bella gets her fangs, she'll be right there with him, forever.

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That's what Twilight's about: eternal life. And eternal life isn't generally considered

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scary or panic-inducing...

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...although we'd be frightened by the prospect of spending centuries with Bella, but maybe

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that's just us. Poe's stories should leave you cowering under

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your sheets at night, wishing you'd never even heard of

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The Tell-Tale Heart.

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Finishing Twilight either makes you want to take a trip to the bookstore as soon as possible

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so you can buy New Moon...

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...or convinces you that there is no hope left for humanity.

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And that, friends, is the difference between Grade A Gothic literature and… sorta-Gothic

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literature.

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