teristics that create horror for the characters and reader.
             From the very beginning, the reader, as a result of Poe's imagery, is aware of a sense of death and decay in "The Fall of the House of Usher":
             I say insufferable; for the feeling was unrelieved by any of that half-pleasurable, because poetic sentiment, with which the mind usually receives even the sternest natural images of the desolate or terrible...I looked upon the...house, and the simple landscape features... bleak walls...vacant eye-like windows...rank sedges...and upon a few white trunks of decayed trees. (462)
             The story begins on one "...dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year..." (461). The narrator, Roderick Usher's boyhood companion, describes "a sense of insufferable gloom [which] pervaded [his] spirit" as he approached the House of Usher. The term "House of Usher" refers not only to the crumbling mansion but also to the last of the all time-honored Usher race (462). Describing the emotion of the narrator, Poe has depicted a fearful setting where the narrator is frightened by his surroundings. The narrator seems to sense an evil presence surrounding the house. As the narrator "... approached closer, the house appeared even more formidable to the visitor" (Masterpieces 291). Portions of the house are made of discolored stone and the whole exterior is overspread with fungi, hanging like fine tangled webwork (463). The building gives the impression of decay, yet the masonry had not fallen. T
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