Writing an essay

Isolation, Alienation and Monstrousness in HP Lovecraft’s ‘The Outsider’
One of the main themes addressed in Gothic writing is loneliness and how it creates an atmosphere of alienation and demonizes the characters within its settings. This element of Gothic is eerily highlighted in HP Lovecraft’s short story ‘The Outsider’. This story in its entirety features only one character, who is also the narrator, and through his narration we discover the plight of his isolation and the horror of his self-discovery as a monster.
Gothic writing is characterized by dark fiction that offers a sense of fear and horror. ‘The Outsider’ contains a sense of fear that is inherently strangling in nature. For creating this effect, Gothic fiction often makes use of old buildings that are used to depict human decay. This is very true of Lovecraft’s story, where the narrative of the entire story is based on the creepy buildings and towers that the narrator describes are his residence and the second castle where the narrator discovers his reality as a ghoul.
In this story, the narrator relates his life story, where he has been living in an old castle for as long as he could remember. He recalls nothing of his childhood and knows of no one residing in a huge castle that is haunted and forlorn. He dreams of moving out into a bustling world full of light and sunshine. One day, he gathers the courage to climb one of the towers of the castle and ends up coming out above the ground into another castle where humans are celebrating. Upon seeing the author, the humans are horrified and run away. The author is terrified that there is something deadly and dangerous behind him. However, as he looks into the mirror, he finds out that it is his own image that is hideous. He discovers that he is a ghoul. Later he starts living with other ghouls and monsters above the ground.
The entire story basically focuses on three main elements: isolation, alienation and monstrousness. All three of these elements are inherently Gothic in nature. So, we can immediately conclude that the protagonist of the story is lonely, rejected from society and not a human.
Throughout the story,...