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Date: Wed, 7 Nov 2001 2:29:46 PM Eastern Standard Time
Dark Romantics was a term coined in reference to the writers whose literary
content emphasized in the ideas of sin, guilt, and predestination. Three
writers encompassed this category, Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and
Herman Melville. Even though all three of these writers were considered Dark
Romantics, they all went about expressing themselves in different ways.
In Poes Fall of the House of Usher, Poe uses a multitude of adjectives,
adverbs, and sensory details to describe the characters and their
surroundings. In doing so, Poe creates an atmosphere for the reader and
transports then into the characters mind. For example when the narrator is
sitting in his room, he begins to describe his surroundings the bewildering
influence of the gloomy furniture of the room-of the dark and tattered
tapestries, which, tortured into motion by the rising breath of the tempest
The tempest that the narrator is referring to is the tornado that is going on
outside of the estate. Poe uses many spiraling vortexes in his stories; they
represent the reader going deeper and deeper into the mind and sub-conscience
of the characters. That is what the tornado in the Fall of the House of
Usher, serves as, a symbol of delving into the characters minds. Another sign
of the readers going deeper and deeper into the subconsciouses and minds of
rs is Poes use of stream of consciousness. Towards the end of the story, both
the narrator and Usher become crazed and paranoid. You will notice the
increased frequency of the use of the stream of consciousness. An example of
this technique is at the end of the story when Usher star
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