An Analysis Of ' Fall Of The House Of Usher ' By Joyce Carol Oates

"Every story would be another story, and unrecognizable if it took up its characters and plot and happened somewhere else... Place is the crossroads of circumstance, the proving ground of, what happened? Who 's here? Who 's coming?” Eudora Welty stated this, emphasizing the importance setting has on a story. Authors of all kinds, young and old, famous and not famous, boy or girl—they all have at least one thing in common: setting. In every story a setting is described, sometimes in exceeding detail. Some authors make an attempt to give their audience full understanding of the setting their story is taking place. Many do this by describing the smells, colors, textures, sounds, and sometimes even tastes, to the reader. In many early-American writings, authors go ‘above and beyond’ to help their reader understand the setting, so as to feel what the writer is feeling. Setting often stirs a sense of empathy in the reader’s mind if the descriptions are well-written and captivating. Authors such as Joyce Carol Oates and especially Edgar Allan Poe are well-known for their use of description in the setting. Two very successful stories, written by these authors, are excellent examples of setting. Furthermore, “The Fall of the House of Usher,” by Poe, and “Where is Here?” by Oates both display how the author uses setting to help the reader visualize the situation, create

When writing “The Fall of the House of Usher,” Poe used the setting outside of the mansion to illustrate the theme of the fear of death. From the outset, the Rodrick Usher’s home is portrayed in a way that gives the reader a feeling of alarm. For example, the narrator mentions the house gives him a feeling of “insufferable gloom” (Usher 1). By pointing this out, the reader begins to feel on edge as the connotation of “gloom” is unwelcoming and distressing. The home is also said to have “vacant eye like windows” (Usher 1) which make the narrator

Thirdly, Edgar Allan Poe’s, gothic fiction story “The Fall of the House of Usher,” the setting causes individuals to feel unnerved. Having a setting of a ,“dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year,” can cause individuals to be anxious. As the narrator arrives at his old friend house

How does setting create atmosphere? It can show the attitude of the author or narrator and cause readers to feel certain emotions to therefore, experience the story better. In Edgar Allan Poe’s novel, The Fall of the House of Usher, the setting is an old, beaten down, ancestral house. As seen in the following quote, Poe creates a dark and gloomy atmosphere when he describes the first day the narrator arrives at the house, “...a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens…” (Poe 13). However, the atmosphere is quite different in Julio Cortazar’s story, House Taken Over. This work of fiction also had an old ancestral home as the setting, but Cortazar uses a different tone when describing it to make the readers imagine a better atmosphere. One example of this is when he mentioned the memories the narrator

The Fall Of the House Of Usher is a short story written by Edgar Allen Poe in 1839. The short story is complexly written, with challenging themes such as identity and fear. Poe utilises many elements of the Gothic Tradition such as setting and supernatural elements to create a more mysterious story, and uses language to his advantage, employing adjective filled descriptions of literal elements that also serve as metaphors for other parts of the story.

An important element in any story is setting. Authors use setting to convey certain feelings brought on by the character’s surroundings. It also subliminally serves to illustrate the character’s intentions. In “The Cask of Amontillado” Edgar Allen Poe uses the dark, imposing setting to do just that, communicate the underlying theme of the story, being death, revenge and deception.

A Sense of Tension in The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe

The Fall of the House of Usher and Where is Here, are two short stories that have similar settings. They are similar because for one, the authors were both dark, and mysterious, which would mean that they enjoyed dark and mysterious things. So in return, they're writings came out to be dark and mysterious. One of the similarities between the settings of the two short stories is that they were both written in the 1800's, so all of the houses were much more extravagant, and much more detail, so houses the characters are living in are very magnificent. Another similarity between the two is where the stories take place; in the 1800's, where if you did anything remotely bad, you were sinned for the rest of your life. The last similarity between the setting of the short stories is the characters in the stories. In each of the stories a visitor shows up, and is somewhat forced to help in completing a task with the main character that they came to visit.

As with many of Edgar Allan Poe's pieces, "The Fall of the House of Usher" falls within the definition of American Gothic Literature. According to Prentice Hall Literature, American Gothic Literature is characterized by a bleak or remote setting, macabre or violent incidents, characters being in psychological or physical torment, or a supernatural or otherworldly involvement (311). A story containing these attributes can result in a very frightening or morbid read. In all probability, the reason Poe's stories were written in this fashion is that his personal life was fraught with depression, internal agony, and despair. Evidently this is reflected in "The Fall of the House of Usher." Conjointly, Edgar Allan Poe's "The

Edgar Allen Poe’s short story, “The Fall of the House of Usher”, sets a tone that is dark, gloomy, and threatening. His inclusion of highly descriptive words and various forms of figurative language enhance the story’s evil nature, giving the house and its inhabitants eerie and “supernatural” qualities. Poe’s effective use of personification, symbolism, foreshadowing, and doubling create a morbid tale leading to, and ultimately causing, the fall of (the house of) Usher.

There are a number of literary elements that successful authors creatively and effectively combine so as to demonstrate their style, technique, and knowledge of writing fundamentals. In the short stories, "The Lottery" and "The Fall of the House of Usher" written by Jackson and Poe respectively, the authors depend heavily upon the settings within each story to enhance or explore elements such as mood, atmosphere, conflict, and theme. Jackson's "The Lottery" takes place in small town middle America, while Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher" presumably takes place in the countryside or suburbs of the eastern seaboard of America. The authors absolutely embody the physical location of each story with the sentiments and desires of the characters within the settings, from the overall geographical location, such as a town, to specific edifices such as the actual House of Usher as well as the path into the town square where the crowd gathers for the lottery. The paper demonstrates awareness of the authors' deliberate use of setting to contribute to other important aspects of the story and the writing. The paper references textual evidence for support. The successful emotional affect of "The Lottery" and "The Fall of the House of Usher" are contingent on the effective and detailed use of the settings to make prominent aspects of the works such as character and atmosphere.

In the Fall of the House of Usher, by Edgar Allan Poe, the writer creates a setting by describing the gloomy, isolated, and unpleasant atmosphere that the narrator encounters himself in. Poe writes: "During the whole of a dull, dark and soundless day in the autumn of the year" (pg. 675) and "the simple landscape features of the domain, upon the bleak walls... the vacant eye-like windows... a few rank sedges, and upon a few white trunks of decayed trees" (pg. 675). These two quotes are examples of mood the reader is induced into. Poe also uses words as "deficiency", "Gothic", "decayed", "strange" "mystic" and "mansion of gloom" to create a consistent mood throughout the story. Without further inspection to the story, it is easy to say that

The fall of the house of Usher is a gothic, short story written by Edgar Allan Poe in 1839. At the beginning of the story Poe creates horror and mysterious mood. He uses phrases like “dull, dark, and soundless day; shades of the evening; melancholy.” When the narrator looks at the house, he says “with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit.”

The setting contributes to the overall effectiveness of the story. First setting readers perceive is a jail cell where the narrator is sitting awaiting his execution. “But to-morrow I die, and to-day I would unburden my soul” (Poe 496). Already, a reader is under the impression that something bad has happened which contributes to the whole mystery factor. Later on, the setting changes drastically when the narrator’s house burns down,  which creates a somber mood and establishes a haunting tone.“On the day succeeding the fire, I visited the ruins. The walls, with one exception, had fallen in. This exception… against which had rested the head of my bed” (Poe 498). The symbolism of only his wall standing up after the fire impacts the story

Magical realism on the other hand, expresses fantastic events in which could be realistic. Bleak setting and gloomy mood are represented in The Fall of the House of Usher when Poe describes the setting with “bleak walls”, “eyelike windows”, “rank sedges” and “decayed trees”. (14) This description portrays a more fearful approach towards the reader . A more realistic setting used in House Taken Over by Julio Cortázar.