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Short analysis of the story the fall of house of usher by edgar allan poe
Analysis of the fall of the house of usher by poe
Edgar Allan Poe's gothic fiction
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The Mood of the House of Usher Edgar Allan Poe is the skilled author of The Fall of the House of Usher, a story that especially emphasizes mood and has the theme that fear is your worst enemy. He brings a feeling of mystery and eeriness to his readers by describing with colorful words the location and condition of the the House of Usher, the narrator’s thoughts, Usher’s strange disposition, and the peculiar circumstances under which the narrator decides to visit him. Poe’s use of mood follows the Gothic Romantic way of exploring the darker side of human nature. Edgar Allan Poe illustrates the House of Usher in great detail to evoke a mood of eeriness. When riding up to the house, the narrator looks “upon the bleak walls- upon the vacant eye-like windows- upon a few rank sedges- and upon a few white trunks of decayed trees- with an utter depression of soul”(416). He uses particularly vivid words such as “bleak”, “vacant”, and “decayed” to convey the mood. Once inside, the narrator observes, …show more content…
The reader feels a certain morbid curiosity in the state of the house, and wonders what sort of person might be living there to let it go in such a way. The disturbed thoughts of the narrator and the nervous, outlandish disposition of Usher also contribute to the mood. His hysteria, manner of speaking, and constant nervousness rub off on the reader as “a tremulous quaver, as if of extreme terror, habitually characterized his utterance”(425). The narrator serves as the perfect vessel through which the story comes, bending it to his interpretation so that the reader is almost forced to think of Usher by his fixed perspective, unable to distinguish their own feelings from those of the narrator. The mood, designed to evoke so much anxiousness and fear into the reader to drive the point home, is used to show the theme that fear is a person’s worst enemy. Extremely frightened by the idea of his own death, Usher
In “Fall of the House of Usher”, the setting takes place at the house of Usher, whose friend, the main character, comes to visit because Usher is dying. He travels through the house, visiting the family members and sees the house is in a serious state of disrepair. A theory on the story
I believe the author choose a different kind of narrator to make the story seem more gloomy and mysterious, while also giving the reader the feeling of helplessness and claustrophobia. He did this to use the unity of effect to make the story more dark and mysterious. He achieved this effect by making the narrator more sane and giving us an outsider perspective of the House of Usher.
Writing to compare There are many similarities that we could obviously realize between the two stories “The Fall of the House of Usher” of Edgar Allan Poe and “House Taken Over” of Julio Cortazar. One of them is the settings of two stories, those were similar because they both took place in a creepy house. However, there also are many differences between two stories. For example, in Poe’s story, the setting was a dull and dark night, and the gloomy and dusty house of Usher was in the middle of nowhere. By contrast, Cortazar's setting was a warmer house, which was being carefully cleaned by the brother and sister every day.
“The Fall of the House of Usher” by Edgar Allen Poe shows how transformation are a critical of fear in a reader. At the beginning
From the onset of the story, it is apparent that Poe is employing a gothic theme upon his work. The narrator’s portrayal of the home of his longtime friend, Roderick Usher was as follows, “I looked upon the scene before me – upon the bleak walls – upon the vacant eye-like windows – upon a few rank sedges – and upon a few white trunks of decayed trees” (Poe, 75). T...
Edgar Allan Poe primarily authored stories dealing with Gothic literature; the stories were often quite dreary. Poe possessed a very sorrowful view of the world and he expressed this throughout his literary works. His goal was to leave an impression with every detail that he included in his stories. Although Poe’s stories seem very wretched and lackluster they all convey a certain idea. A trademark of Poe’s is his use of very long complex sentences. For instance, in his work The Fall of the House of Usher, Poe tried to ensure that every detail was as relevant as possible by integrating a wide variety of emotion. In the third paragraph, of page two hundred ninety-seven, Poe wrote, “Feeble gleams of encrimsoned light made their way through the trellised panes, and served to render sufficiently distinct the more prominent objects around…” This sentence illustrates the descriptiveness and complexity that Edgar Allan Poe’s works consisted of. The tormented cognizance of Poe led him to use a very gloomy diction throughout his writing. Edgar Allan Poe’s use of symbols and the way he conveyed his writing expr...
For example, in “Masque of the Red Death” the people are scared of the Red Death so they decide to hide in an isolated castle, “and with these retired to the deep seclusion of one of his castellated abbeys”. In “Cask of the Amontillado” fear is shown when Fortunato is being buried alive and asks Montresor to release him “But is it not getting late? Will not they be awaiting us at the palazzo, the lady Fortunato and the rest? Let us be gone”. In “Fall of the House of Usher” Roderick Usher describes to his friend his fears through the line, “To an anomalous species of terror I found him a bounden slave. “I shall perish,” said he, “I must perish in this deplorable folly”. In the poem “Alone” the narrator says “(When the rest of Heaven was blue), of a demon in my view”, this may represent how other people have a more peaceful, clear view of everything. But he has a fearful and chaotic view of things that blocks him from the clarity of the rest of the world. Fear helps better identify a specific trait that is similar within all of Poe’s
In “The Fall of the House of Usher”, Poe’s use of dark, descriptive words allow him to establish an eerie mood. Poe’s unique style of writing along with his foreshadowing vocabulary is significant in creating a suspenseful gothic story. At the beginning of the short story, Poe describes the House of Usher to be “dull”, “oppressive”, and “dreary” (1265). His choice of words strongly emphasizes a mood of darkness and suspense as he builds on the horrific aspects of this daunting tale. At first glimpse, the house itself is surrounded by the feeling of “insufferable gloom”, (1265) “[t]here was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart, an unredeemed dreariness of thought [...]” (1265). The atmosphere that Poe describes in the statement above establishes a spine-chilling mood. Poe uses words such as “insufferable gloom”
Edgar Allan Poe is undoubtedly one of American Literature's legendary and prolific writers, and it is normal to say that his works touched on many aspects of the human psyche and personality. While he was no psychologist, he wrote about things that could evoke the reasons behind every person's character, whether flawed or not. Some would say his works are of the horror genre, succeeding in frightening his audience into trying to finish reading the book in one sitting, but making them think beyond the story and analyze it through imagery. The "Fall of the House of Usher" is one such tale that uses such frightening imagery that one can only sigh in relief that it is just a work of fiction. However, based on the biography of Poe, events that surrounded his life while he was working on his tales were enough to show the emotions he undoubtedly was experiencing during that time.
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.
Edgar Allen Poe’s short story, “The Fall of the House of Usher”, sets a tone that is dark, gloomy, and threatening. His inclusion of highly descriptive words and various forms of figurative language enhance the story’s evil nature, giving the house and its inhabitants eerie and “supernatural” qualities. Poe’s effective use of personification, symbolism, foreshadowing, and doubling create a morbid tale leading to, and ultimately causing, the fall of (the house of) Usher.
He explains the outside of the house vividly when the narrator arrives by stating, “Upon the mere house, and the simple landscape features of the domain-- upon the bleak walls-- upon the vacant eye-like windows-- upon a few rank sedges-- and upon a few white trunks of decayed trees-- with an utter depression of soul”(Poe 474). The narrator goes into detail and puts an image in the reader's mind of the outside of the house and his first impression of it to create more of an eerie and depressed mood and to show how dark and plain the house is. This also helps show what kind of character Usher is and how sick he is because he is unable to take care of his house. It explains why Usher is always in an unhappy mood because his house is so dark and
The Fall Of The House of Usher is a terrifying tale of the demise of the Usher family, whose inevitable doom is mirrored in the diseased and evil aura of the house and grounds. Poe uses elements of the gothic tale to create an atmosphere of terror. The decaying house is a metaphor for Roderick Usher’s mind, as well as his family line. The dreary landscape also reflects his personality. Poe also uses play on words to engage the reader to make predictions, or provide information. Poe has also set the story up to be intentionally ambiguous so that the reader is continually suspended between the real and the fantastic.
The Depiction of Fear in The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe uses setting to create a melancholy and gloomy mood in the story. The story starts off with an unnamed narrator who is traveling on a “dull, dark and soundless day” (Poe 1). The story already has gloomy mood, without mention of the house of Usher. Before the narrator enters the house, he describes it as “inverted images of the gray sedge, and the ghastly tree-stems, and the vacant and eye-like windows” (Poe 2). The house of Usher looks run down, scary, and gloomy, like a haunted house. The setting in the first two pages creates this sad and scary mood throughout the rest of the story. Poe uses words such as “black, vacant, decayed, gray, gothic and sluggish” to create the atmosphere. This creates a very effective atmosphere in the entire story and the story revolves around the atmosphere in its entirety, showing that this is no ordinary house and there is evil involved.