Anti-Transcendentalist Themes in Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher

The Evocation of Terror in Edgar Allan Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher

While most of the primary characters in the American Gothic cannon are members of the aristocracy, their societally dominant position does not guarantee them satisfying lives. The focus of this analysis will be the portrayal of the individual as it relates to his or her economic status: does having wealth mean that upper class characters are more likely to lead fulfilling lives than middle/lower class characters? Through a close reading of Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher,” Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The House of the Seven Gables, Kate Chopin’s “Désirée’s Baby,” and Edith Wharton’s Ethan Frome, readers can clearly see a pattern of social commentary in which the members of the aristocracy are—in general—the most restricted,

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

Poe wrote in the literary movement of Dark Romanticism. The Romantic Movement was intellectual and artistic, but Poe’s work took that and added a gothic twist to it. This was a start to the recognition of disarray and darkness. ”The Fall of the House of Usher” evident characteristics of the Dark Romantics was it was a haunting

Edgar Allan Poe was a unique man that most people could not understand. Many recognize that he is a talented writer with a very strange and dark style. One of his most well known short stories is “The Fall Of The House Of Usher.” Many argue the different meanings of this story and how it is symbolic to his life. Poe was a very confused individual who needed to express himself, he accomplished this through the short story of “The Fall Of The House Of Usher.” Through this story, Edgar was trying to show the fear he had for him self, he did not understand him self so therefore Poe ran from his own personality and mind. This story enables the reader to take a look at Poe’s mind and

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.

The main themes of Edgar Allan Poe’s works are death, perversity, revenge and destruction. The settings he employed in the given short stories, especially in The Fall of the House of Usher and The Black Cat are Gothic. Therefore, naturally the mood of these stories would be dark and sepulchral. However, this is not a trivial employment undertaken to put the reader in a certain kind of zone.

The narrator comes to the House to aid his dying friend, Roderick Usher. As he arrives at the House he comes upon an “aura of vacancy and decay… creating a pathologically depressive mood” (Cook). The state of the House is daunting to the narrator – he describes it with such features as “bleak walls”, “eye-like windows”, “rank sedges”, “decayed trees”, and “an utter depression of the soul”. These images foreshadow a less than pleasant future for the narrator and his dear friend Roderick. Poe continues to foreshadow the narrators turn of events with a description of the House’s “dark” and “comfortless” furniture. The House becomes a living hell for the narrator as he watches Roderick’s condition evolve and struggles to understand the mystery tying unfortunate events together. However, as the narrator gradually becomes more enveloped in Roderick and the House’s malady, he seems to develop a malady of his own. While the narrator’s illness is less prominent than that of Roderick and his sister Lady Madeline, the sicknesses are one in the same.

After evaluating the work of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher, he utilizes with imagery to build up the feeling of terror. First of all, the passage is about an ill man, Roderick Usher, who invites his old friend of his to come meet him. In this passage both him and his sister, Madeline Usher, are the last remaining of the Usher race and is diagnosed with an unnatural illness. The narrator begins to feel terror with the supernatural things going on in the house of Usher and the illness of the Ushers. Although the narrator feels the sense of terror from the moment he entered the house, through the use of imagery, Poe is able to bring emotion to the reader. Throughout the passage, the author continues to build up the sense of terror by asserting the image and setting of both the passage and the atmosphere. For instance, he starts the passage by stating “a dull, dark, and a soundless day...clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens” (Poe 194). In relation to the previous quote, the quote illustrates the image of the atmosphere and the setting of the story. In particular, because Poe expresses the sense of terror by describing the atmosphere as dark, quiet, and gloomy, the reader can get an image of the surroundings and get the feeling of the darkness and horror. In addition, according to Poe, during the first glimpse of the house of Usher, the narrator describes it as gloomy and unpleasant. In particular, Poe states “the shades of the evening drew on… a sense of insufferable gloom” (Poe 194). Additionally, the description of the house adds on to the sense of terror that Poe established in the beginning of the story. Based on the past two quotes stated by the author, the reader can begin to picture a dark and dull day with a gloomy house adding on to the darkness. Lastly, in regards to Edgar Allan Poe, the house of Usher is

Sensations of the Sublime in Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” Edgar Allan Poe’s, “The Fall of the House of Usher” utilizes the sensation of the sinister sublime to approach the circumstances of human mortality, to show how immense fear of death manifests itself into reality. Death is inevitable for all living entities; individuals should not live in a continuous state of terror of dying. One cannot live if they are ruled by fear.

Poe’s gloomy and ominous short story, “The Fall of the House of Usher,” begins with the nameless narrator (most likely Poe himself) describing his journey to the House of Usher after Roderick, one of the last two remaining members in the Usher family and proprietor of “the melancholy House of Usher” (3), summons the nameless narrator to visit him: “I looked upon the scene before me—upon the mere house, and the simple landscape features of the domain—upon the bleak walls...with an utter depression of soul which I can compare to no earthly sensation [to]” (3). Here, we see the first signs of the house as a supernatural entity whose beauty can only be seen by people on opium. Without the use of opium, however, the house remains depressing and lifeless. Poe uses the house as a symbol of society at the time: forsaken without the use opium.

Pearing through the lense of different perspectives of criticism allows new light to be shined on elements of literature that readers may not have considered before. Analyzing Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” through the biographical perspective allows readers to recognize the similarities between the short story and Poe’s life. The biographical perspective shows the house symbolizing tuberculosis that was a motif in Poe’s life and the use of inbreds in “The Fall of the House of Usher” parallels Poe’s life of marrying his cousin.

Poe criticizes the transcendentalist views strongly in the short story The Fall of the House of Usher. Poe

Edgar Allan Poe is an American poet from the early 1800s who has been regarded in many literary handbooks as “the architect of the modern short story” (Poetry Foundation). Since his death in 1849, Poe has become world renowned for his critical theories as well as his many haunting poems and short stories. But Poe 's work hasn’t always been as popular as it is today. In 1827, Poe published his first collection of poetry, Tamerlane, and Other Poems. Unfortunately, Poe’s first collection was unsuccessful and went virtually unnoticed by the public. Two years later, Poe published a second collection of poetry, which he titled Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems. Although this collection received slightly more attention than his first publication, it was still unsuccessful and seen as a failure. Poe’s third publication was released in 1831 and was yet another collection of poetry, ironically entitled Poems. This publication was significantly more successful than its predecessors, and in 1835 its success even landed Poe an editorship at The Southern Literary Messenger, a literary magazine based in Richmond, Virginia. Only a few years later, in 1839, Poe got a job as an editor for Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine. He stayed with the magazine for about a year before accepting another position in 1841 as the editor of Graham’s Magazine. This was the peak of Poe’s

Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) born in the United States was a poet, writer, critic, and journalist recognized as one of the greatest exponents of the Dark Romanticism (Ultan and Olson, 51). Dark Romanticism is an American literary subgenre emerged in the nineteenth century from the philosophical movement called transcendentalism. Dark Romanticism, broadly speaking, rely very little on perfection as an innate quality of the human being, a key idea of the transcendentalists (Howard, 1). As consequence, its characters are prone to sin and self-destruction, since by nature, they are not wise or divine beings. One of the most representative authors of the current is Poe, who is