The House of Usher and The Raven
             Many great writers have written questionable works that have made their name in the world renowned. One such brilliant writer, Edgar Allen Poe, has continued to be thought of as the most influential and widely read writer during his time. However, Poe's works that attributed to his fame are based on characters who seem predisposed to fall into their own personal insanity. In Poe's works, The Fall of the House of Usher and "The Raven," Poe creates characters who are lost between the world of reality and the fantasy of their own minds.
             In The Fall of the House of Usher, Poe has the story told by a character who visits an old friend who has grown extremely ill. The narrator of the story travels to help his friend but even as he arrives at the house, he is struck," with an utter depression of soul which I can compare to no earthly sensation more properly than to the after-dream of the revelers upon opium."------- Here Poe alerts the reader right from the beginning that ominous happenings are possible in such bleak surroundings. The narrator describes the windows as "vacant eye-like"------ openings, suggesting perhaps that the house itself, or the inhabitants, are not connected to the outside world. The owner of this house, Roderick Usher, shocks his childhood friend with his appearance. He is appalled by the paleness of his skin, and the startling gleam in his eyes. The narrator learns of his sister, Lady Madeline, who makes one brief appearance and then become catatonic and dies shortly thereafter. Usher and the narrator carry her coffin to be entombed in a vault underneath the Usher house.
             Later, Roderick Usher is haunted by the thought that he has possibly buried his twin sister alive. He cries out, "We have put her living in the tomb!"(205). This horrific thought brings madness close to both of them and
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