The Dank Dark Setting of The Cask and Usher
            
             In many of Edgar Allan Poe's stories the atmosphere is dark and dreary. The settings in Poe's stories, "The Cask of Amontillado" and the "The Fall of the House of Usher," are cryptic and melancholy. In "The Cask of Amontillado," a underground vault is described as, "a deep crypt, in which the foulness of the air caused our flambeaux rather to glow than flame" (280). "The Fall of the House of Usher" was set on a cold, gray day in the middle of the countryside. In the story, Poe's beginning sentence is a good example of the setting: "During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country, and a length found myself, as the shades of evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher" (461). Edgar Allan Poe's use of setting in "The Cask of Amontillado" and "The Fall of the House of Usher" is dismal and morbid, contributing to the effect of horror in these stories.
             Poe's word use to describe the beginning of "The Fall of the House of Usher" gives the reader the feel of trepidation. Like noted before, the story enters upon the narrator describing the day as dull, dark, and soundless. Using the words dull and dark present a gloomy scenario in which the reader might picture a lifeless, calm before the storm, setting. His use of the word "soundless" gives a feel of loneliness and helplessness as if no one is around to help if any such thing should happen. As he approaches the house, he describes it as the "melancholy House of Usher"(461). "[He] look[s] upon the scene before [him]" and notices "bleak walls," "rank sedges" and "decayed trees" (462). Poe's word choice to illustrate the imagery and inert objects is vital to the story because it gives the house and its surroundings lifelike chara...