The Fall of the House of Usher
Edgar Allen Poe was an American writer that lived and wrote in the 19th century. Poe's writings are known for their macabre subject matter. The dark imagery in his "The Fall of the House of Usher" gives the reader an intense environment of pure terror to reside in while he is in the story, as well as giving him a view into the mind of Poe himself. In this story, Poe uses the life-like characteristics of an otherwise decaying house and other inanimate objects as a device for giving the house a very supernatural atmosphere. (Baym)The first five paragraphs of the story present the arrival of the narrator and describe the House of Usher and its bleak surroundings. The narrator, who is a childhood companion of Roderick Usher's, arrives to find an old mansion with "the remodelled and inverted images of the gray sedge, and the gastly tree-stems, and the vacant and eye-like windows. (Poe 350)" His first view of the house comes in a large pool of tarn, or swampy, dead matter, surrounding the house. The narrator, who remains nameless throughout the story, immediately says that he is filled with "a sense of insufferable gloom. (Poe 350)" This is Poe's way of foreshadowing the dark, dreary conditions he is going to be displaying fo
However, he becomes confused as to why familiar objects such as the tapestries on the wall and the tall archways make him feel even more superstitious. In her death-throes, she lands on her brother, causing him to die of fright. (Bloom 19)As the narrator's visit continues, he learns more of Usher's illness. She suffers from cataleptical spells, which render her to appear dead and to lack any pulse. This knowledge turns "The Fall of the House of Usher": a tale of the introverted, artistic soul tormented and unable to function in the ordinary world, into a brief glance into Poe's own struggles as a writer. These, however, fail to "give any vitality to the scene. He reads Roderick a story out of the first book he picks up. (Poe 350)" He uses all his logic and reason to try and view everything he sees in a rational manner, yet upon looking over the house and its surroundings, he has a heightened sense of superstition. He has come to show the narrator a storm brewing outside the house. As the narrator reads the story it mirrors some great struggle somewhere else in the house. The real action in the plot occurs when the narrator is asked by Roderick to help him place his recently deceased sister in a vault under the house for a fortnight(two weeks). It has often been noted that Roderick Usher's features closely resemble those of Poe himself. (Baym)"The narrator, upon entering the house, sees a typically furnished 19th century dwelling. (Bloom 19)Throughout the story, Poe's imagery of the house and the inanimate objects inside serve to give a supernatural atmosphere to the story. Roderick requests this under the fear that she might be exumed by the sinister family doctor.
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Acceptance Essays
