From the beginning of Edgar Allen Poe's, The Fall of the House of Usher, there is a sense of desolation and impending doom. Poe explores the inner workings of the human mind to show how "the imagination can turn rationality into irrationality and reality into fantasy". A basic element of human emotion is fear. Fear can affect both our physical body and our mental state of mind. The existence of fear motivates actions we take throughout our lives. It has the power to influence and even become contagious to others. Self-induced fear by the human imagination can lead to a destructive nature. The Fall of the House of Usher, revolves around this realm of fear and reveals the importance of recognizing what we perceive as being fear.
             As the story begins, the narrator has received a letter from a boyhood friend, begging that he come to him, explaining he is suffering from a terrible mental and bodily illness, referred to as "a morbid acuteness of the senses." He remembers his friend, Roderick Usher, as extremely reserved and possessing an eerie demeanor. As he approaches the home of his friend he refers to it as the "melancholy House of Usher." He sees the house as decaying with fungi growing all over, the windows as vacant and eye-like. He states, "there appeared to be a wild inconsistency between its still perfect adaptation of parts, and the utterly porous, and evidently decaying
             condition of the individual stones." An overwhelming sensation of oppression comes over the narrator. He describes feeling a sense of death and decay surrounding him..."insufferable gloom that pervaded my spirit."
             Once inside the house, the narrator feels "an atmosphere of sorrow...an air of stern, deep, and irredeemable gloom hung over and pervaded all." Shocked by Usher's haunting appearance he becomes very uneasy. He remarks "cadaverous of complexion; an eye large, li...