Literary Analysis Essay On The Fall Of The House Of Usher

In this extract an unknown narrator has just arrived at the home of his childhood friend Usher, who has acquired a mysterious illness. The narrator observes the house and takes in its antique and dilapidated state. He is then lead “through many dark and intricate passages” to meet the master. It is stated that “an atmosphere of sorrow […] and irredeemable gloom hung over and pervaded all”. This atmosphere is present throughout the whole extract and thus sets the general mood of the story.

Often times, people believe fear comes from a simple jump-scare or phobia. However, a sudden change in a situation can largely affect how the situation is viewed. In the short story "The Fall of the House of Usher," transformation creates the entire atmosphere of fear depicted. The popular Gothic poem "The Raven" develops the story through the narrator's changes throughout. In the online anthology known as the SCP Foundation, the various "SCPs" create terrifying and otherworldly effects through their extraordinary changes and behaviors. All of these demonstrate a simple concept: shifts within a story or plot, whether subtle or dramatic, often add new conflicts or levels of fear and danger to the characters' lives or the reader's experience.

Edgar Allan Poe was a dark person, full of gloomy thoughts and madness creeping in through the edges of his mind. His story, “The Fall of the House of Usher”, beautifully uses a gothic setting where this gloominess is truly exemplified. Poe uses many details and specific descriptions in his writing that bring the setting to life, and the way it is described influences the way you think while reading, setting the scene of this terrifying tale.

A Literary Comparison of “The Fall of the House of Usher” and “The Masque of the Red Death”

The gothic narrative and concepts of psychoanalysis are often linked in literature as psychoanalysis can create a space for tales and themes on which the gothic plays. One trope of psychoanalysis in the uncanny. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines uncanny as: fearfully and mysteriously strange or fantastic (“Uncanny”). In 1919, Sigmund Freud published “The Uncanny,” making Freud one of the first theorists behind this feeling of unfamiliar familiarity. Freud uses Jentsch’s definition of the uncanny, and “he ascribes the essential factor in the production of the feeling of uncanniness to intellectual uncertainty; so that the uncanny would always be that in which one does not know where one is, as it were” (Freud, 154). Edgar Allen Poe’s short story, The Fall of the House of Usher, provides its readers a glimpse into how the uncanny is exemplified in the American Gothic. Poe creates a tale of two reunited school fellows, catalepsy, and a home that is bewitching in its deterioration that leaves the reader in uncertainty. The uncanny is depicted through the narrator’s mixing of pleasure and displeasure in the tension between his conscious and unconscious, Roderick Usher’s epitomization of “the double,” and Madeline Usher’s living death.

Firstly, Edgar Allan Poe uses many different subtle details to give the story it’s Gothic tone. This may be when he is describing the setting of the story: “There was an insufferable gloom.”() This helps describe the feeling one would get from being there, it’s a feeling that many people are familiar with. “The windows were long, narrow, and pointed, and at so cast a distance from the black oaken floor as to be altogether inaccessible from within.”(16) Poe now tries to show the size of the house through a description of the house’s windows, showing how oddly tall and long they are, and how they are so high up that the floor seem ‘inaccessible from within.’ Poe’s description of Usher’s everyday life also brings a comfortable eeriness to the writing. In “The Fall of the House of Usher,” Poe decides to put a

Throughout, The Fall of the House of Usher, Poe utilized his romantic philosophy on shallowest level to immerse the reader in a depressing environment, encapsulating his mind and plunging him into a strange story of ancestral tension

The Fall of House of Usher is a novel written by Edgar Allan Poe. It starts with description by the narrator. The narrator is unnamed and there is no information about his background. He was childhood friends with Roderick Usher, The Fall of House of Usher is a sincere expression of horror. There are important parts the first part speaks about the element of horror in a novel. The second part explain how the writer is mocking the reader. The element of horror in a novel is the atmosphere the place. The narrator description the house. It is"Dark dull and soundless It color is black and shades drew on. The window like vacant eye. The narrator also mentions a small crack from roof to ground. The house ofUsher is very gloomy and mysterious.

The fall of The House of Usher by Edgar Allen Poe is a deep, dark, and mysterious tale. The story begins with the narrator arriving at the house of a childhood friend of his. He accepts an offer to stay with Roderick Usher and his sister while they are both sickly and going through a dark and disturbing time. The story takes a turn when both off the resident die and the narrator runs from the house and soon watches it collapse before him.

The term gothic is used to describe a work of literature characterized by the elements of mystery, gloom, and fear. Combing the idea of gothic literature with Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘single effect’ yields a completely terrifying masterpiece. There are a multitude of themes and symbols that can be pulled from this work, but it is the narrator's description of his ambiguous setting that brings on the gothic undertones of mystery, gloom, and fear in Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher.”

Gothic Literature is a genre that includes dark settings from the past in their stories, these settings are often desolate with tormented characters and macabre plots. In Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” is an excellent example of Gothic Literature because the author utilizes many elements that are essential to the genre. For example, in Poe’s story, he describes a decrepit mansion with great detail. ”Its principal feature seemed to be that of an excessive antiquity. The discoloration of ages had been great.” (Poe 15). This line uses descriptions that are vital to the genre of Gothic Literature. Therefore, “The Fall of the House of Usher” is Gothic Literature because of its dark and aged setting.

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

Edgar Allan Poe is known as the master of horror and gothic writing. In a sense, he has taken the meaning of the word “horror” and turned it into an entirely different definition, even a different world. Poe's narrators do not make the reader scared, per se, but they make him or her inquire about things around them. Although people should never assume, they should always speculate and investigate. In “The Fall of the House of Usher,” Poe uses an imperfectly informed narrator because he wanted the reader to play with – and question – reality, to use their senses and imagination, and be able to tell the difference between dreams and reality.

Edgar Allen Poe has long been acknowledged as a master of gothic horror. Poe wrote many of the classics of the genre, and created many of its conventions. Accurate though this description is, however, it actually sells Poe’s talents short. His works were often more than just gothic, as the term is understood today. Poe was a master at using psychological techniques to manipulate the minds of his readers, drawing them into the creation process, almost making them co-authors of the tales that they are reading. This unique style can easily be seen by examining one of Poe’s stranger tales, one that is sometimes hard to interpret or even to understand: “The Fall of the House of Usher”. Poe does not restrict his readers to one particular reading of this tale, as with many if his other tales. By making

American Romanticism brought a new era to America and American literature. Within literature of the Romanticism era came the development of the gothic novel. Edger Allen Poe is one of the well-known gothic authors which arose from this era. Throughout Poe’s career he wrote many short stories following one theory which he created - that every aspect of a short story should lead to one single effect. For Poe many of his stories have the single effect of terror. In Poe’s story “The Fall of the House of Usher” he creates the single effect of terror through his description of the house, the entombment of Madeline, and Madeline’s appearance at the end of the story.