Theme: decay
Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea / Eastern Wonders
I cannot express my astonishment at the beauties of these new regions. Here the grouping formed an oriental town, with innumerable mosques and minaret...
Dracula / Life and Death
Into two of these I went, but saw nothing except fragments of old coffins and piles of dust; in the third, however, I made a discovery. There, in one ...
Frankenstein / Transformed Perception
Before, I looked upon the accounts of vice and injustice that I read in books or heard from others as tales of ancient days or imaginary evils; at lea...
The War of the Worlds / Urban Dichotomy
The church bells were ringing for evensong, and a squad of Salvation Army lassies came singing down Waterloo Road. On the bridge a number of loafers w...
The War of the Worlds / Decay and Ambition
The pit was still in darkness; the mighty engines, so great and wonderful in their power and complexity, so unearthly in their tortuous forms, rose we...
Dracula / Grotesque Survival
He looked very sad at this, so I said that he must clear out some of them, at all events. He cheerfully acquiesced in this, and I gave him the same ti...
Frankenstein / Decay and Mortality
My attention was fixed upon every object the most insupportable to the delicacy of the human feelings. I saw how the fine form of man was degraded and...
The War of the Worlds / Survival in Darkness
Here we happened on no dead, though the night was too dark for us to see into the side roads of the place. In Sheen my companion suddenly complained o...
The War of the Worlds / Urban Conflict
Going on towards Brompton, the streets were quiet again. Here I came once more upon the black powder in the streets and upon dead bodies. I saw altoge...
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes / Urban Decay
Upper Swandam Lane is a vile alley lurking behind the high wharves which line the north side of the river to the east of London Bridge. Between a slop...
Dracula / Dreadful Transformation
If I was shocked when I saw her yesterday, I was horrified when I saw her to-day. She was ghastly, chalkily pale; the red seemed to have gone even fro...
The War of the Worlds / Nature and Decay
The red creeper swarmed up the trees about the old palace, and their branches stretched gaunt and dead, and set with shrivelled leaves, from amid its ...
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes / Decay and Observation
These articles, with two small wicker-work chairs, made up all the furniture in the room save for a square of Wilton carpet in the centre. The boards ...
The War of the Worlds / Natures Sublime Encounter
The thought that had flashed into my mind grew real, grew credible. I felt no fear, only a wild, trembling exultation, as I ran up the hill towards th...
Gulliver's Travels / Societal Degradation
Hence it follows of necessity, that vast numbers of our people are compelled to seek their livelihood by begging, robbing, stealing, cheating, pimping...
A Journey to the Centre of the Earth / Despair and Isolation
Again I made the old ruins resound with my cries, and finally so exhausted myself that I fainted. How long I lay in a kind of trance or sleep I cannot...