Southern gothic writers used imagery to establish themes of decaying southern culture in their work.

The appropriate response is grotesque. The grotesque in writing centers around the human body, and all the ways that it can be mutilated or misrepresented: its point is to at the same time evoke our compassion and sicken. Particularly like the uncanny, the unusual draws its energy from the mix of the natural and the new, or the recognizable mutilated.