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Edgar Allan Poe style and significant techniques
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“The clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens”(passage) The first impression of The Fall of the House of Usher is a very gloomy tone. There are few ways to set the tone more effectively than a vivid description of the setting. In Edgar Allan Poe’s story The Fall of the House of Usher, Poe uses very descriptive language when describing the opening scene to set the theme for the rest of the story. Poe Describes the first scene very thoroughly using specific diction and figurative language and gives an impression of the story to come. He explains how the man is feeling and why he uses some words, like when he says “a insufferable gloom pervaded my thoughts. I say insufferable because; for the feeling was unrelieved by any of that half-pleasure, because poetic, sentiment, with which the mind usually receives even the sternest …show more content…
There is a very unnerving and gloomy atmosphere in the scene because Poe uses descriptions like “oppressively low”, “bleak walls” and “the hideous dropping off of the veil”(passage). This sort of dreary diction continues through the book when describing things Usher’s study. Poe describes the lighting in the study by saying “Feeble gleams of light made their way through the trellised windows,... the eye, however, struggled in vein to reach the remote angles of the chamber”(Poe 478) This makes the reader imagine the dark room and conjure up unnerving thoughts of things that could happen in hidden corners. This sort of description is in almost every scene, like the cellars, “The vault in which we placed it was small, damp, and entirely without means of admission of light… immediately below the section of the building where my bedchamber lay.”(Poe 487) This seems to foreshadow that this will lead to something evil happening, like a ghost or something. This causes the reader to be unnerved for the rest of the book, expecting something to happen that never
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...
Towards the middle of the nineteenth century, the Transcendentalism movement became a seminal force in literature. Originating in the New England region of America, transcendentalism emphasized the spiritual over the corporeal, and the power of individual intuition over organized doctrine as a means of attaining true spirituality. But one of the most notable writers of this period, Edgar Allan Poe, made no secret of his disdain for the tenets of transcendentalism. He mocked transcendentalist ideals by clearly expressing anti-transcendentalist themes in one of his most well known works, “The Fall of the House of Usher”. Although this work openly exhibits Poe's contempt for transcendentalism as a literary movement, it was nonetheless influenced by – and perhaps even based on – transcendentalist beliefs.
The primary objective in “The Fall of the House of Usher” is to give the reader a sense of horror. Through the creation of elaborate imagery and dreary circumstances Poe conveys a story that elicits in the reader the dark feelings he has hoped for. In this analysis I will focus on Poe’s characters and setting, and how he structures them to produce the overall effect.
Poe utilizes a gradual change in diction as the poem progresses. Initially, he begins the poem with melancholic diction when the narrator is falling asleep: “while I pondered, weak and weary,” “nodded, nearly napping,” and “of someone gently rapping” (1-4). The utilization of alliteration in these lines supply a song-like rhythm, which is soothing to the reader. This usage of diction conveys a mellow tone. Further into the poem, when the increasingly agitated narrator becomes vexed at the raven, he lashes out at the bird. Here, he states, “Get thee back into the tempest and the Night’s Plutonian shore! / Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken! / Leave my loneliness unbroken!--quit the bust above my door! / Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!” (98-101). Here, his uses archaic words and phrases such as “thee,” “Night’s Plutonian shore,” and “thy soul hath”. This usage of unorthodox language creates a theatrical, dramatic, and climactic effect, which leads to an impassioned tone. By presenting both tones, Poe is able to show the contrast between the two. This transformation from a tone that is mellow to one of frustration and anxiety represents the spiraling downward of the narrator’s mental state.
“One of his eyes resembled that of a vulture--a pale blue eye, with a film over it.” (203) The picture of the vulture creates a dark and scary menacing tone. It describes and helps the reader how and what the Old Man’s eye looks like and how evil and weird that eye is. “And every night, about midnight, I turned the latch of his door and opened it-- oh so gently! And then, when I made an opening sufficient for my head, I put in a dark lantern, all closed, closed, so that no light shone out, and then I thrust in my head.” (203) This piece of evidence shows a tone of menace because Poe describes vividly how he goes into the Old Man’s room so he can kill him. He uses his vivid description to lure the reader into the room with him and show him how “cunningly” he went into the room. “But even yet I refrained and kept still. I scarcely breathed. I held the lantern motionless. I tried how steadily I could maintain the ray upon the eye.” (204) As shown above, Poe shows menace through the narrator's choice of sneaking in the Old Man’s room. This creates the tone of menace because the image of that murder makes it easy to imagine yourself as the narrator and feeling what he
Setting in Edger Allan Poe’s short story The Fall of the House of Usher setting plays an important role in enlightening the reader to the inner ambitions of the characters in the story. After the narrator describes the physical house as he arrives the reader can see the similarities between the setting and Roderick Usher’s illness but as the story progresses, the narrator’s description of the settings that he encounters exhibit his decline as a rational thinker in the nightmarish surroundings he has found himself in. As explained in Short Fiction: An Introductory Anthology, Poe’s use of setting focus’ on emotion inflicted by the setting, “‘internal’ detail that places the emphasis squarely on the relationship between the observer and the setting.” (Lynch and Rampton xvi). Poe sets the rational narrator against the irrational world of the Usher’s and the reader can follow the narrator’s decline through the descriptions of setting. This is shown as he arrives at the house to console his boyhood friend, during his stay in the house, and in his escape from the collapsing home.
...on with setting and tone. Poe often forms a spine-chilling atmosphere through the setting of stories in specific isolated locations with a combination of bad weather and illness. All together, these elements are essential to many of his stories and make the stories systematically dark and abstruse. "The Fall of the House of Usher" and "The Raven" are two of Poe’s stories where atmosphere is an influential literary element.
In the story “The Fall of the House of Usher” the narrator is the main character who mainly speaks throughout the story, in the first sentence of the story he describes the day being “dull, dark, and soundless” as he is on his way to the House of Usher (McMichael). This could symbolize, and foreshadow, the dark secrets and doom he will soon face when he arrives to the house. As the narrator also describes the day being “dark as the clouds are hanging oppressively low in the sky” (McMichael), in the first sentence of the story I analyze this as a psychological allusion of him feeling depression and perhaps even anxious as he approaches the House of Usher not knowing of the things he will learn about Roderick Usher and the things he will soon experience. Throughout the story we begin to learn that Roderick Usher is suffering from some type of mental illness. The story “The Fall of the House of Usher” has many psychological and symbolic allusions that lead the reader to finding out about the mental illness or bipolar
One way that Poe achieved that is through how the narrator handled the physical conflict for him, which was the old man’s eye. The main way he dealt with the physical conflict was when he killed the old man with the bed. This enhances the atmosphere of fear by showing the narrator killing the man in such a brutal way such as killing him with the bed. Poe also adds to the atmosphere of the story by the way he writes about the narrator hiding the body and how he chopped off the limbs and hid it under the floorboards. I feel like this greatly amplifies the feeling of dread and fear he was trying to portray, because it lets the reader see that the narrator has no remorse for human life and the levels of violence he will go to. The final way Poe used physical conflict to portray fear and dread was through he descriptions of gore and violence throughout the story. The main example of this in the story comes with this quote “First of all I dismembered the corpse. I cut off the dead and the arms and the legs… that no human eye – not even his – could have detected any thing wrong. There was nothing to wash out –no stain of any kind – no blood-spot whatever.”(Poe ). The previous quote does a lot to add to the fear and dear of the story by allowing us to truly see how brutal and vicious the narrator is to the old man even after
Poe sets the setting as dark and gloomy, most likely to give the reader the death is in the air vibe in the beginning of “The Fall of the House of Usher”. “There was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart - an unredeemed dreariness of thought which no goading of the imagination could torture into aught of the sublime. What was it - I paused to think - what was it that so unnerved me in the contemplation of the House of Usher?” The narrator, who is nameless throughout the whole story, receives a letter from an old childhood friend. According to the letter Roderick, the narrator’s childhood friend, has invited the narrator
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 Fall of the House of Usher” is a frightening story, and the narrator is an intimate observer of the strange occurrences. Poe’s story begins in a cautious and tranquil way, maintaining detachment from indescribable situations and occurrences. The narrator is anonymous, suggesting that his main purpose is to simply do as his title suggests, which is to narrate. Inexplicably, the narrator repeatedly suggests that all efforts to precisely depict the strange activities of the House of Usher are in actual fact useless.
Poe uses numerous illustrative terms in his representation of the house. The reader’s first impression of the house comes from a direct observation from the narrator. This unnamed storyteller states, “With the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit.” As the narrator continues to describe the house, he uses various similar depressing adjectives. The eerie
Poe’s curiosity tone is evident in the narrator character through his observance of his surroundings. At the beginning of the story the narrator describes the day, “During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in autumn”(412). Right way the reader is drawn into the story with their imagining of what that day looks like. They can visualize what he sees and get a gist of where he is taking the story. He is very aware of his surroundings in this scene in heavy detail. If you were to read on, he then describes the house he now sees, “but, with the first glimpse of the building a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit”(412). Now at this point the reader can even start to feel what the narrator feels. They can now sense that this place is very eerie and can start to get some of the feelings you would normally find within gothic american literature. The reader now has curiosity to know what’s going to happen in the story so they read on to find the character Roderick.
Poe uses many more descriptive details to describe the setting, environment, and atmosphere of this story. “I know not how I was-but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit”. (Poe 654) Describing the setting as a dark and gloomy place helps bring the story alive because it infers the atmosphere was once dynamic and is now in the final stages of death, much like the two main