After reading some of his works in class, one realizes
of writing is greatly appealing. Although many critics
Poe's writing style, it was said, "Poe has an uncanny talent for exposing our common nightmares and hysteria lurking beneath our carefully structured lives.
In many of Poe's works, setting is used to paint a dark
and gloomy picture in our minds. I think that this was done deliberately by
Poe so that the reader can make a connection between darkness and death. For example, in the "Pit and the Pendulum" the setting is originally pitch black.
As the story unfolds, we see how the setting begins to play an important role in how the narrator discovers the many ways he may die. Although he must rely on his senses alone to feel his surroundings, he knows that somewhere in this dark,
gloomy room, that death awaits him. Though he lives on the brink of the pit, on the
very verge of the plunge into unconsciousness, he is still
unable to disengage himself from the physical and temperal world. The physical
oppresses him in the shape of lurid graveyard visions; the temporal oppresses
him in the shape of a great and deadly pendulum. It is altogether
appropriate, then, that this chamber should be constricting and cruelly ungainly.
Setting is also an important characteristic is Poe's "The Fall of the House
of Usher". The images he gives us such as how both the Usher family and the
Usher mansion are crumbling from inside waiting to collapse, help us to connect
the background with the story. Poe is able to sustain an atmosphere, which is dark and dull. This is one of the tricks that he adequately uses from the heritage of the Gothic tale. The whole setting in the story provides us with a feeling of melancholy. The Usher mansion appears vacant and barren. The same is true for the narrator. As we picture in our minds the extreme
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