Analysis Of Edgar Allen Poe 's ' The Cask '

The language of Edgar Allan Poe’s story “The Fall of the House of Usher” sets the creepy setting of the story from the very first paragraph. Poe uses a multitude of descriptive words to let the reader see what the setting looks like. His description is so thorough, that the reader gets the sense that they are there with the narrator. In fact the descriptions are so detailed, that when the reader think of the story in question, the reader can see the setting in their mind’s eye. Poe uses words like “dark,” “dreary,” and “bleak” and fully establish the creepy Gothic mood. The setting itself is creepy enough. The narrator travels to this house in a particularly lonesome part of the country. The house itself is in decay. The thought of this kind

The Usher mansion is slowly deteriorating, just like Roderick Usher himself. The “sombre tapestries,” “ebon blackness,” and “phantasmagoric armorial trophies” did not just start showing in the house; these elements have had time to develop and is now represented as a never ending darkness, which is just like Roderick Usher’s mental illness. Not only does Poe create an image of the house, he also uses lucid details describing the Usher’s mansion and the rooms inside the home to show that Roderick’s mental illness has physically and mentally trapped him. Roderick is a gloomy and mysterious character who looks as if he is dead. Poe describes Roderick’s appearance as one to not easily be forgotten (Poe 152). In Roderick’s mind, he feels as if he has no escape from this illness, which terrifies him. His biggest fear is fear himself. The evil that has overcame his body will take a toll on his life and he is aware of it because he says “I shudder at the thought of any, even the most trivial, incident, which may operate upon this intolerable agitation of soul. I have, indeed no abhorrence of danger, except in it absolute effect-in terror” (Poe 153). As described in the story, the Usher house has rooms that create a somber life and with this creation, Poe is able to portray the kind of life that Roderick Usher is living and will live. Not only is this technique used in “The Fall of the House of

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 Allan Poe is an American author whose writing style, full of mysteries and macabre, has fascinated generations. However, his works are more than just thrillers and morbidities. The writings of this author often contain other themes such as companionship, family bonds, longing passion, and perhaps the strongest of these is revenge. “The Cask of Amontillado” and “Hop-Frog; or, The Eight Chained Ourang-Outangs” are two short stories that certainly demonstrate a recurring theme of revenge. Poe not only presents his signature pattern of cold fate in both works but also displays the struggle of a lower social class against the higher social class to the extent that it almost hints at a call for revolution.

Poe’s 1846 work, “The Cask of Amontillado,” details the manipulative and vengeful actions of the narrator, Montresor, including luring his victim, Fortunato, into his family catacombs with alcohol in order to bury him alive. Poe reflects his foster father as the murderer of the story, and shows the sardonicism of his life through dramatic and verbal irony. When Poe was in school, his foster mother died. She instructed her husband to wait until Poe returned home before her burial, but John Allan disregarded this and buried her before Poe returned. Although the real-life event is not as literal as Poe describes in his work, both his foster mother and Fortunato are prematurely buried. The exaggeration of his foster mother’s death is shown

In fact, the first five paragraphs of "The Fall of the House of Usher" are devoted to creating a gothic atmosphere. An ancient, decaying castle paints an eerie, moldy picture. The surrounding moat seems stagnant and sullen. The time period also ties into this mood. It's autumn and the weather is cool and dreary. How many horrors take place in the daytime? Not many, and this story is no different. It's dark, or at least semi-dark. Immediately Poe entraps the reader. There is a sense of being confined within the walls of the Usher house. Outside a storm is raging and inside there are mysterious rooms where windows suddenly whisk open, blowing out candles. Creaking and moaning sounds fill the air. The wind is whipping, and the landscape is barren. This is gothic writing and these are its trappings. The darkness of everything symbolizes death to come. Upon entering the gothic archway of the deteorating mansion, the narrator is led "through many dark and intricate passages" filled with "somber tapestries" and "ebon blackness". Over everything, Poe drapes his atmosphere of sorrow and irredeemable gloom. He evokes his primary effect, the anticipation that some fearful event will soon transpire.

Oftentimes in order to understand a story further, it is extremely important to understand the background and context of the story. This holds true for “The Cask of Amontillado,” by Edgar Allen Poe. Through researching the Freemasons and Poe, the reader is able to understand the minute details Poe gently places in the story to ridicule a rival, embed a statement about alcohol and satirize Freemasons.

Edgar Allan Poe, a famous romanticism writer, created a gothic tone in his stories by describing the setting of his stories with vocabulary that helped create the dark plots of stories such as “The Cask of Amontillado”, “The Raven” and “The Pit and The Pendulum”. Poe’s own foster father, John Allan, stated that “His (Poe’s) talents are of an order that can never prove comfort to their possessor”. How did Poe create such gothic tones in his stories with only describing the foul settings and wicked plots? Edgar Allan Poe was born Edgar Poe on January 19th, 1809. Edgar Allan Poe lived a very rough life his father left Edgar and his mother when Edgar was barely a year old. Poe’s mother died of tuberculosis when he was two years old, his foster mother and late wife also died of Tuberculosis while Poe was in the room. Poe lived with his foster parents John and Frances Allan until he joined the army in 1827, Poe was only 18. Poe then left the army and started to attend the University of Virginia where he later dropped out in order to follow his writing career. At first, he could not make a good living off of being a writer, not until 1843 when he won the 100 dollar prize for his short story “The Gold Bug”. Poe later died October 7th, 1849. Edgar Allan Poe was capable of creating immoral and twisted tones in the writing of his stories by the way he described the dreadful and appalling settings as well as the grim and serious plots.

A grudge towards someone is really hard to overcome sometimes especially towards someone that you really trusted, but the results very at times. The grudge towards someone goes away at some point. The pain or betrayal that may have been received may not always be forgotten but forgiven instead. Edgar Allan Poe describes this in the short story “The Cask of the Amontillado.” The short story is about a cold and ruthless killer who is wanting to commit crime. Through characters and the them, Poe tells the story of “The Cask of Amontillado” in being a revenge story.

Edgar Allen Poe is said to be one of the darkest writers of the eighteenth century. His use of Gothic and the unconscious in “The Fall of the House of Usher” was something that took many forms. The most important one being Roderick, the entire being of Roderick and the house is a form of the unconscious that Poe created. Roderick, from what I believe, was in an unconscious state of mind throughout the entire story and the house is a representation of that unconscious. As Leslie Fiedler once said: “It is the gothic form that has been most fruitful in the hands of our best writer: the gothic symbolically understood, its machinery and décor translated into metaphors for a terror psychological, social, and metaphysical” (Fiedler, 28).

Edgar Allan Poe is a well-known fixture in American literature; whose stories have made sizeable contributions to the Gothic literary element. Many of Poe’s stories contain more than one Gothic element. “The Fall of the House of Usher” is a prime example of this. In this story Poe presents the themes of death and the accompanying supernatural. Poe often uses his proficiency in Gothic to invoke deep reading. For many, this proficiency causes Poe’s stories to be difficult to fully understand at first glance.

The opening of the story depicts and sets the gloomy atmosphere of the short story “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” (Poe 109). That is, rather than having the transcendentalist ideas that build to an optimistic ending, The Fall of the House of Usher presents a lifeless plot that comes to be gloomier as the story develops. For instance, the description of the house and its residents are presented as a sarcastic criticism of that

Edgar Allan Poe is famous for writing short stories that are themed particularly around death and the macabre. His writing includes horrific scenes with gruesome deaths and murders. Poe’s style of writing is very much on a podium of its own. He was a brilliant writer for his time period. His wicked works continue to grab the attention of readers with his dark and scary form of writing. His short stories are typical of describing the twisted events that led up to a murder. Some of his plots include a premature burial or the dismemberment of a body under the floorboards of a home. Adversity and mishap are two words that can greatly describe his short stories. Negativeness seemed to follow his literature, like a shadow, but he seemed to embrace it well. He has allowed readers to explore their deepest and most malicious thoughts through his vivid way of expressing his dark ideas and thoughts onto paper. Poe wrote some of the darkest stories in American literature history. Readers will find evidence of Poe’s dark, horrendous short stories in his literary works like, “The Cask of Amontillado,” “The Black Cat,” “The Tell-Tale Heart”.

A friendship is based on trust, but do we truly know anyone in the way we think? In “The Cask of Amontillado” written by Edgar Allan Poe, a man named Fortunato is about to find out what kind of ‘friend’ Montresor really is. Montresor shows himself to be friendly with Fortunato, but deep down he feels nothing but hate for him. In different ways, both of these men are proud and appear upper class, yet both have faults which will be there undoing. Edgar Allan Poe uses language in a way which provides an understanding of the true nature of the relationship between the two men. The two men are described differently, but they both have something in common; quenching the thirst for something long awaited. Poe reproduces great literary elements with eloquence, the theme of deception and revenge, is justified through the use of Irony and symbolism.

The American Romantic/ Gothic period was basically the Renaissance of American literature. American romantics were influenced by eras that before them, and their writings were a different reaction against the philosophy of the previous eras. With this being said, American Romanticism grew from salvation, and guilt, as they excitedly developed their own unique style of writing. American romantic authors had a strong sense of general identity and pride in being American. For this reason, American authors during this time had a discrete desire to develop their own unique character separate from British literature. In order to accomplish this goal, the poet Edgar Allan Poe was rebellious and personal in his writing; and this explains the extraordinary creativity found throughout his work. Edgar Allan Poe had a unique and dark form writing style the mysterious style of writing showed emotion and drama. He used the themes of Gothic, death of the women he loved, and good vs. evil. These forms of writing styles are shown in “The Cask of Amontillado”, “The Raven”, and “Tell Tale Heart.” It demonstrates all the major aspects of the American Romantic revolution: rejection of classicism, eager naivety, and unusual detachment regarding time and space.