Violence in Southern Gothic
Slavery is a pretty violent thing. Owning other people, forcing them to work, and having the power of life and death over them? It's pretty extreme. And that means that violence has been a big part of Southern society for a long time.
So it's no surprise that there are a lot of depictions of violence in Southern Gothic literature. Sometimes this violence is about race, and sometimes it's not: the point is that the threat is always there. Southern Gothic writers, in fact, depict violence as part of the mentality, the culture, and the society of the South in general. So if you're squeamish about violence, you'd better get ready—there's lots and lots of it in Southern Gothic.
Shmoops:
In Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire, men are depicted as violent and aggressive. Check out how masculinity and violence come together in the play.
In Flannery O'Connor's short story "The Displaced Person," Mr. Guizac comes to work on a farm in the southern U.S. after fleeing Europe and WWII. He ends up being killed in a gruesome way by the other bigoted protagonists in the story. Here's the excerpt (Quote #5).