Exploration of Fear in Poe and Bierce's Literature

Edgar Allan Poe is known to observe humans reaction to… Both Poe, in his short stories “The Fall of the house of Usher”, and Bierce, in his short story “One of the Missing”, expose their characters to fear.
In Bierce’s “One of the Missing”, the protagonist, Jerome Searing, is expose to fear when he is trap under a building that has collapse on him. His evolution, from perfectly sane to completely crazy, is clearly visible.
As mentioned by Bierce, Searing, before the building collapses, is “an incomparable marksman, young, hardy, intelligent and insensible to fear” (p.1). This statement from Bierce explains the situation and the conditions in which the protagonist lives. As a scout in the army, Searing is the soldier who has the most freedom.

This sudden change in his conditions completely transforms his way of seeing things, as he passed from a completely free man to a still person who cannot “move more than six inches at the elbow” (p.4 Bierce). Even in this situation, Searing is still optimist, because his reason, which comes from the brain, still prevails on his emotions, which come from the heart. “He began an intelligent survey of the situation” (p.4 Bierce) “to plan his defense” (p.4 Bierce). It proves that Searing has always his entire mind and that he is not yet affected by fear or any other emotions, just as he used to

It is clear that he is not a completely sane person, because he has a tremendous fear, the fear of ending the Usher’s family line. This fear occupies his entire mind and it keeps him from thinking straight. As Poe mentioned it, Usher’s fear causes “a mental disorder which oppressed him” (p.874) that leads him to behave in a strange way. He has two sides in his personality, a solemn side, when he is rational, and a hype side, when fear overruns him. This phenomenon causes a lot of contradictions in his words and actions, as it can be seen when the narrator explains Usher’s malady. “It was, [Usher] said, a constitutional and an evil, and one for which he despaired to find a remedy- a mere nervous affection, [Usher] immediately added, which would undoubtedly soon pass off”