Title of the article
Introduction
The paper compares two short stories (Poe’s “the fall of The House of Usher” and Perkins-Gillman’s “the Yellow Wallpaper”), in order to develop arguments about the relationship between characters’ fears and the main theme of each story. In the two short stories, the characters are suffering from various forms of fear under different circumstances. Such fears include fear of fear, fear of death, fear of other people, fear of isolation, fear of punishment, and fear of loss of reputation. Such different forms of fears can assist readers in understanding the motives of the characters.
Poe’s the fall of the House of Usher (overview) An unnamed narrator comes into the House of Usher (a mansion house owned by his friend Roderick Usher). Of late, Roderick has been ailing by a sickness of the mind.
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They have one soul in two bodies. Though Madeline is mentally healthy, her body fails her, and she finally dies. Although Roderick has a healthy body, he is mentally ill. They started fading, even before they became old. As Madeline fades, Roderick also fades. Roderick and Madeline are born from a family lineage, known of suffering from mental sickness. Roderick’s madness (the main character) is the cause of supernatural events in the story. This means that his house is haunted, and his sister is back from the dead.
In “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the main theme is confinement. The narrator is confined to a single room in a huge house. Her husband often spends his nights in town, to fulfill his role as a doctor. The narrator attempts to deal with her fears and isolation. Due to her confinement, she starts losing her sanity (Perkins 175). It can be seen that the narrator slowly turns mad. Her mind turns into a chaotic situation and she starts seeing shapes in the wallpaper. However, in reality, there is no woman entrapped in the wallpaper. The narrator thinks that way because she starts losing her grip on
In Edgar Allan Poe’s, “The Fall of the House of Usher,” the three characters are the unknown narrator, the narrators old time friend Roderick Usher, and Roderick’s sister Madeline Usher. The three characters are unique people with distinct characteristics, but they are tied together by the same type of “mental disorder”. They all suffer from insanity but they each respond to it differently. Roderick and his sister seem to have a spiritual attatchment, and the narrator begins to get sucked into it.
An unnamed narrator visits his boyhood friend, Roderick Usher. The duality is expressed mainly between Roderick and his sister Madeline. The siblings have a rather bizarre relationship and are as close as twins. After Madeline collapses he starts to mimic her behavior. “The disease of the lady Madeline had long baffled the skill of her physicians. A settled apathy, a gradual wasting away of the person, and frequent although transient affections of a partially cataleptical character were the unusual diagnosis.” Madeline gave another reason not to be buried. It was possible with her condition to be mistaken as dead when really she was alive. “I know not how it was—but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit.” This quote shows Roderick’s suggestion that the house has its own intelligence. “To an anomalous species of terror I found him a bounden slave.” Roderick is now afraid and lost and terror over rules
The mind is a complicated thing. Not many stories are able to portray this in such an interesting manner as in Edgar Allan Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher". The haunting story of a man and his sister, living in the old family mansion. But as all should know, much symbolism can be found in most of Poe's works. "The Fall of the House of Usher" is no exception.
“The Fall of the House of Usher” by Edgar Allan Poe was published in 1839. In it, the short story’s narrator visits a childhood friend, Roderick Usher. The narrator travels to the Usher house, where the story takes place. As in other Poe stories, the settings reflect a character. Throughout the short story, there are many instances when the Usher house and Thought, the castle in Roderick’s poem, reflect Roderick Usher and his family. In “The Fall of the House of Usher,” the setting of the Usher house along with the setting in Roderick’s poem reflect Roderick Usher in appearances, relations with family, and physical existence.
As depicted in the “The Fall of the House of Usher,” Roderick Usher is a very delirious and unstable-minded man. Although limited information is released to us as readers, we can clearly understand Roderick is unable to comprehend the state of his mental and physical health. Immediately as the short story is begun, Poe uses the exterior of Roderick’s home to describe what living conditions our character is dwelling in. As the un-named narrator approaches the un-kept mansion of his friend, he immediately notices the house’s “eye-like” windows and senses an uninviting feeling sweep over him. When the narrator is reunited with his childhood friend, Roderick, he is very pale, feeble and cadaverous looking. Poe describes the narrator’s experience of seeing Roderick again as “ . . .half in pity and half in awe. Surely, man had never before so terribly altered, in so brief a period, as had Roderick Usher!” Roderick is hardly cap...
...h his sister or if he is, indeed, being possessed by evil forces. Nevertheless, Poe’s portrayal of Roderick’s deterioration raises important questions about the causes, stages, and effects of insanity (Paragraph from Wilson 56).
In “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the author, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, through expressive word choice and descriptions, allows the reader to grasp the concepts she portrays and understand the way her unnamed narrator feels as the character draws herself nearer and nearer to insanity. “The Yellow Wallpaper” begins with the narrator writing in a journal about the summer home she and her husband have rented while their home is being remodeled. In the second entry, she mentions their bedroom which contains the horrendous yellow wallpaper. After this, not one day goes by when she doesn’t write about the wallpaper. She talks about the twisting, never-ending pattern; the heads she can see hanging upside-down as if strangled by it; and most importantly the
"The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a self-told story about a woman who approaches insanity. The story examines the change in the protagonist's character over three months of her seclusion in a room with yellow wallpaper and examines how she deals with her "disease." Since the story is written from a feminist perspective, it becomes evident that the story focuses on the effect of the society's structure on women and how society's values destruct women's individuality. In "Yellow Wallpaper," heroine's attempt to free her own individuality leads to mental breakdown.
The wallpaper, the narrator's obsession, destroyed the peace of mind for all parties concerned. The imagery, used in the short story "The Yellow Wallpaper", paints a vivid picture and the reader becomes a front row spectator to the mental deterioration of the narrator to utter insanity.
“The Yellow Wallpaper” tells the story of a woman who is trapped in a room covered in yellow wallpaper. The story is one that is perplexing in that the narrator is arguably both the protagonist as well as the antagonist. In the story, the woman, who is the main character, struggles with herself indirectly which results in her descent into madness. The main conflicts transpires between the narrator and her husband John who uses his power as a highly recognize male physician to control his wife by placing limitations on her, forcing her to behave as a sick woman. Hence he forced himself as the superior in their marriage and relationship being the sole decision make. Therefore it can be said what occurred externally resulted in the central conflict of” “The Yellow Wallpaper being internal. The narrator uses the wallpaper as a symbol of authenticy. Hence she internalizes her frustrations rather then openly discussing them.
Roderick Usher feared his sickness, his “dead” twin sister, his hereditary “disease,” his house, and his fears themselves. His worrying and terror over his many fears, along with the insufferable atmosphere of the mansion, eventually lead to his demise. The narrator of this story also had his many fears, but exercised control over them until the very end of the story, when he fled of panic and horror. The two contrasting examples of fear in this story show that you must control your fears, or they will end up controlling
Edgar Allen Poe, a famous novelist from the 18th century, is known for being a treasure trove for allusions, illusions, clues, and all sorts of literary fun. Born in 1809, this Bostonian never had it easy. Marriage to a 13 year old cousin, family problems, and deaths surrounded him. Over time, such tremendous struggle began to reflect in his writing, creating the dark and moody tone we now see today. One such piece, The Fall of the House of Usher, tells the tale of a man who goes to visit a dying friend on his last days. Roderick Usher is the name of this dying man, although he doesn’t seem dead in the beginning. However, the deathly state should be of no importance to the reader; death is the very essence of Poe’s writing. Rather, the reader’s attention should be deviated toward the unusual twin of the story,
In the story “The Fall of the House of Usher”, Poe presents the history of the end of an illustrious family. As with many of Poe’s stories, setting and mood contribute greatly to the overall tale. Poe’s descriptions of the house itself as well as the inhabitants thereof invoke in the reader a feeling of gloom and terror. This can best be seen first by considering Poe’s description of the house and then comparing it to his description of its inhabitants, Roderick and Madeline Usher.
Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” and John Gardner’s “The Ravages of Spring” are two literary works which are unique; however, at the same time indistinguishably similar. Poe’s short story is a piece, which characterizes eighteenth century philosophy whereas Gardner’s tale is more modern. In fact, “The Ravages of Spring” is a story based on Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher,” which “contemporizes its horror” (Fenlon 481). Both stories are inexplicably gruesome and leave a reader overwhelmed by the bizarreness of the tales. Nevertheless it is the strangeness of the two stories that distinguishes them within the literary world and makes Poe and Gardner authors of gothic literature. “The Fall of the House of Usher” and “The Ravages of Spring” parallel within their eerie tones towards the stormy environments and the supernatural houses which set the basis for both of the stories. However, by the conclusion of both tales Gardner’s remake of “The Fall of the House of Usher” is still a considerably lighter version of Poe’s gothic story.
Everyone at some point in their life has felt like they were almost driven crazy by someone or something. This is the case for the main character in Charlotte Perkins Stetson’s short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper”. During this story, the protagonist is locked in a room in which she despises simply because of the wallpaper. As the story progresses, she starts to notice figures that seem to be trapped in the wallpaper. I firmly believe that the figures that seem to be trapped in the wallpaper not only represent the main character’s struggles, but also other woman who have suffered the horrible mistreatment of mental illness and women that were subject to punishment for trying to break out of their domestic spheres.