The Depiction of Fear in The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe

Poe allows the narrator to invite us directly into his twisted mind. The suspense increases when we fear that the home can be an unsafe place. The narrator then leads us down his path of drunkenness, violence and insanity, dragging behind him his poor wife and his beloved pets. The narration is first person, as told by the narrator. We never hear directly from the wife so we must use our imagination in order to acknowledge or sympathize with her character.

Poe suggested in the story that the denial of fears can lead to madness and insanity. This has clearly shown through the weakening of Roderick Usher's mind and the resulting impact on the narrator of the story. In the beginning of the story, Poe used images and descriptions to create a gothic picture of the Usher mansion and to set up a sense of fear and terror. The narrator looked "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 was disturbed. Once he saw these depressing characteristics of the house, he had an idea as to what he would find inside.

Hamlet's agonized worrying over his state of existence begins before his first encounter with the ghost. He reports first to his mother that "These but the trappings and suits of woe" (I,ii) do not begin to illumine his inner heartbreak over the death of his father. But it is soon revealed in his first soliloquy that he despairs more over the hasty remarriage of Gertrude than the death of King Hamlet. "...a beast, that wants discourse of reason, / Would have mourn'd longer." (I,ii) Gertrude's apparent disregard of his honorable late father causes his suicidal dejection.When he hears from the ghost of his father's murder, he does indeed vow revenge.

As a result, the line between sanity and insanity becomes blurred, which paves the way for the Narrator's own descent into madness. Fear: If we were to try to define Roderick Usher's illness precisely, we might diagnose him with acute anxiety. What seems to terrify Usher is fear itself. "To an anomalous species of terror," Poe writes, "I found him a bounden slave." Usher tries to explain to the Narrator that he dreads "the events of the future, not in themselves but in their results."

When hamlet says, "If his occulted guilt/ do not itself unkennel in one speech,/ it is a damned ghost that we have seen,/ and my imaginations are as foul/ as Vulcan's stithy." (Act 3, Sc. 2, ln. 85-89)(141) Hamlet h... ... middle of paper ... ...even though his heart believes. He hesitates because he is afraid of failure: failure to his father, mother, and to himself.

What if the Ghost is not a true spirit, but rather an agent of the devil sent to tempt him? What if killing Claudius results in Hamlet’s having to relive his memories for all eternity? Hamlet agonizes over what he perceives as his cowardice because he cannot stop himself from thinking. Words immobilize Hamlet, but the world h...

A Bad Seed According to the Collins English Dictionary, one that is considered a bad seed is “seen as being congenitally disposed to wrongdoing” (“Bad Seed”). Predisposed insanity is a character trait that Edgar Allan Poe often places within characters. In Edgar Allan Poe’s “Annabel Lee,” “The Cask of Amontillado,” and “The Fall of the House of Usher” all characters have an obsession that drives them to insane actions. In “Annabel Lee,” the speaker is predisposed to his obsessive love driving him to extreme actions. The speaker begins by insisting that Annabel Lee feels so strongly for him that their love is her only purpose for living.

From the wasting disease of the lady Madeline, to her brother's nervous affliction, one discerns a tangible connection with their dark family home. As it weakens, so also do both brother and sister diminish, until both finally perish in a horrible demise no less fantastic then that of their house. And it is these singular features which have contrived to brand the tale upon the mind of the reader, and so inspired generations of both readers and writers. There can be no doubt that future readers will also be inspired by this tale of the horror and mysterious connections between a house and its inhabitants, “The Fall of the House of Usher.”

In the narrator’s mind he sees the eye as being separate from the old man whom he loves; although in order to rid himself of the eye, the old man must die. The eye of the old man seems to have triggered the narrator’s madness. Poe uses the symbol of an eye once again in “The Fall of the House of Usher,” to signify another one of his character's insanities. When the narrator gets to the house of Usher he describes it as a “Mansion of gloom” with “Vacant eye-like windows”(1). The gloom and disrepair of the outside is a clear ... ... middle of paper ... ...es the repetition of mental illness throughout many of his stories, leaving readers with more questions than answers.

Through the entire short story that is “The Fall of the House of Usher”, the narrator spent much of the time at the beginning of the story describing the ominous appearance of the Usher family home, it turned out to be strong symbolism for the ways that Roderick and Madeline lived, and how it paralleled with their crumbling bloodline. As the children of a sinful and disgusting tradition of incest to keep the family blood line pure, they were destined to a shorter life of sickness and fear, destined to follow their ill-met