The Fall of the House of Usher and The Scarlet Letter
Authors often use metaphors and symbols as techniques to make statements about characters. Character often lives parallel lives in novels and short stories and it is with great pleasure that we learn from them. Writers employ several different techniques to engage readers. Two stories that illustrate powerful symbolism are "The Fall of the House of Usher" by Edgar Allan Poe and The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Each of these stories bring us into characters by allowing us see them change n a radical way. In "The Fall of the House of Usher," Poe uses the house as a metaphor for the narrator and Roderick's condition. The readers' attention is initially drawn to Roderick, whom we suspect might be mentally unstable. Through careful technique and xxx, Poe manages to illustrate how the fall of the house represents the fall of both the narrator and Roderick. In the same way, The Scarlet Letter demonstrates how one person can fall through another type of symbol and that is hidden but, nevertheless, powerful. Both stories demonstrate how the human mind can break down over time, given the right circumstances. At the beginning of "The Fall of the House of Usher," the narrator appears to be perfectly sane; however, this
He is unable to resist the guilt and he cannot escape it at all. While Poe, in "The Fall of the House of Usher," merges a particular physical incident to achieve his effect, Nathaniel Hawthorne focuses on the psychological drama of an to achieve his as seen in The Scarlet Letter. Roderick's deteriorating mental state is analogous with his crumbling home and the narrator's mental decline is directly related to Roderick's. We are told that after the incident, the narrator experiences the "full power of such feelings" (Poe 46). These are the readers' clue that the narrator is losing his mind. In this Gothic tale, Poe conjures up the right ingredients to treat us to a twisted plot. The narrator's mental instability can also be associated with Roderick's in that as he witnesses it, he also becomes a victim to it. "The Fall of the House of Usher" is a griping tale that allows us too how a man can lose his mind through the influence of another. As the story progresses, Roderick's madness is projected onto the narrator. Roderick's significance cannot be overlooked. Beniot also maintains that "Poe has established for the reader what the narrator must do to unearth what haunts him: look inward" (Beniot). It is significant to not that the house is the cause of these sounds because the house and Roderick work together to achieve one end. By utilizing this technique, Poe is confirming the "autonomy of the unconscious, by whose inexorable powers are revealed the deepest truths of the soul" (Hoffman 175). His world is not his own, and his mind is lost, for that matter.
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