Perelandra Analysis Essay

“The Haunted Palace” is one of Edgar Allen Poe’s mysterious and phantasmagoric poems. Written in the same year as “The Devil in the Belfry,” and included in his short story “The Fall of the House of Usher,” “The Haunted Palace” is another tale of innocence and happiness now corroded with sorrow and madness. It is fairly easy to say that “The Haunted Palace” is a metaphor for Poe’s own ghostly troubled mind, more than it is about a decaying palace. For in 1839, it was found in a book that the main character in “The Fall of the House of Usher” comes across. In the context of its appearance in “Usher,” it is startlingly clear that this is no fable of earthly decay, but one of mental and spiritual ruin.

The seclusion endured by the narrator causes a dramatic change in her mental state. Her surroundings are now coming alive within the walls around her. “I didn’t realize for a long time what the thing was that showed behind, that dim sub-pattern, but now I am quite sure it is a woman” (736). Initially, the figure witnessed around the walls was merely just the shadow projected from the narrator creeping around the paper. Now this shadow is taking on not just any life form but ironically the form of a woman. Just like the narrator is trapped within the barred windows of the mansion, the woman is trapped within the patterns of the paper. This parallel view is transforming the narrator’s identity within the walls of the paper. However, this obsession begins to heighten. She begins to see the woman through every window in the bedroom. She appears to be creeping not only around the walls but now outside in the garden and along the

At first, the protagonist talks about the house that she and her husband were to stay at for a short while. She does not hesitate to describe what her first impressions were on the house because she states that it was rather strange building that had a haunted effect from looking at it. Not only this, but she also introduces her husband and physician, John. John is described as a person with “no patience with faith, an intense horror of superstition, and he scoffs openly at any talk of things not to be felt and seen and put down in figures” (Gilman 364). Not only is the narrator consciously observant of her circumstances, but she is able to think for herself and formulate logical claims. For example, Gilman writes about how the narrator is frequently seen as a schizophrenic, possessed, and absolutely insane individual whose mind only continues to deteriorate rather than an individual who understands the situation and can conscientiously create questions and thoughts about what she is experiencing. Greg Johnson writes, “Her experience should finally be viewed not as a catastrophe but as a terrifying, necessary stage in her

Edgar Allan Poe shows his insanity in the Black Cat through irony. The narrator says in the begining of the story; "My immediate purpose is to place before the world, plainly, succinctly, and without comment, a series of mere household events"(1). Later readers discover the fact that the events are in no way mere household events, buts much more gruesome and highlights the narrator's perverseness. Later, the narrator buries his wife in a very loosely constructed wall, yet when the police come by he tells them; "By the bye, gentlemen, this - this is a very well constructed house"(5). As he tells them this he knocks against the wall and the cat cries. This stirs the policemen and we soon realize it was not a well constructed wall as the bricks

The Room itself represents the author’s unconscious protective cell that has encased her mind, represented by the woman, for a very long time. This cell is slowly deteriorating and losing control of her thoughts. I believe that this room is set up as a self-defense mechanism when the author herself is put into the asylum. She sets this false wall up to protect her from actually becoming insane and the longer she is in there the more the wall paper begins to deteriorate. This finally leads to her defense weakening until she is left with just madness and insanity. All of the characters throughout the story represent real life people with altered roles in her mind.

In “The Fall of the House of Usher” the story starts with the narrator saying that he is overcome with a feeling of gloom upon first seeing the house. He compares the windows to vacant eyes. The narrator goes on to tell how the house appears to him but then tries to explain it away as his overactive imagination.

Stevenson uses figurative language in the novella to create an atmosphere in the setting. At the same time there are many forms of figurative language but Stevenson has used personification and similes. He chooses to describe the house as ‘a blind forehead of discoloured wall on the upper; and bore in every feature, the marks of prolonged and sordid negligence’; he uses personification as a literary device since it gives more meaning to the sentence. Next, he says that the door was ‘blistered and distained’, the door maybe distained because that means

Charlotte Gilman, through the first person narrator, speaks to the reader of the stages of psychic disintegration by sharing the narrator's heightened perceptions: "That spoils my ghostliness, I am afraid, but I don't care--there is something strange about the house--I can feel it" (304). The conflicting

It is a big, airy room, the whole floor nearly, with windows that look all the ways, and air and sunshine galore. It was a nursery first and then playroom and gymnasium I should judge; for the windows are barred for little children, and there are ring and things in the walls. […] that gate at the head of the stairs. ”n the power between him and his wife, possibly a symbolism to what mans’ reaction would be to see women in places of power, especially when the narrator “creeps” over his body. This ‘creeping’ is symbolic of the wives power over her husband when she was able to free herself from the restraints of the home in which she was kept.

Solitude has made the speaker so uneasy that he is even "uncertain" about the "rustling of each purple curtain" (line 13).  Anyone who has spent time alone in a house at night knows this feeling.  His heart pounds as the curtains move, and now that some unknown force is knocking on the door he is even more terrified.  He tries to calm himself down by repeating that it is only "some late visiter" at his door and "nothing more" (lines 17-18).  The speaker has to gather all his courage just to investigate and greet his guest.  When he greets nothing but a dark space beyond the door, his mind races to conjure frightening "dreams no mortal dared to dream before" (line 26).  In his fright, he might have imagined it to have been a ghost, or someone with ill intent lurking in the shadows and waiting to catch him in surprise.  According to Edgar Poe in "The Philosophy of Composition," the character even possessed "the half-fancy that it was the spirit of his dead mistress that knocked" (1677).  This is seen as the speaker calls out the name of his beloved Lenore (lines 28-29).  That is the only positive possibility considered, and others, such as a caring and concerned friend, are not considered at all.  His isolation and depression have left him with nothing but negative feelings in every aspect.  These feelings include paranoia - the feeling that something or someone is out to bring one harm, as seen in the thoughts swirling in the

reader feel a sense of dread and despair because unlike the house the reader knows the owners

Contrasting this would be the quintessential transcendentalist story that would tend to contain bright colors and other understated representations of divinity. (Quinn) Poe wastes no time, ridiculing this aspect in the first sentence of the story. The story begins in the fall, “during the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day…when the clouds hung oppressively low” in the sky (Poe 2497). As the narrator approaches the house he says “a sense of insufferable gloom pervading my spirit”(Poe 2498). The decayed state of the house is inconsistent with transcendentalism, where the story settings tend towards the resplendent. This gloomy setting remains throughout the entire story, becoming increasingly so as the story advances. Poe opposes transcendentalism's positive aspects of descriptive scenery midway through the text. Poe begins the essential disdain of transcendentalism by outwardly mocking the “here and now” beliefs of the transcendentalists. In the beginning of the text the narrator is returning to a childhood dwelling to relive the past with his old friend. The narrator speaks of his sleepless nights and the uneasiness that accompanies them. He believes the room in which is he lying contributes to this insomnia saying: “…the bewildering influence of the gloomy furniture of the room-of the dark and tattered draperies…” (Poe 2507) Later, a raging storm attacks the Usher estate. The narrator states that “…all

The house symbolically acts as a place of isolation, illustrating the way that if humans no longer have communication with other people it results into madness. The symbol of the house is significant, the house is an isolated place especially near the windows. As the unnamed narrator arrives at the house a servant takes his horse, and he enters the Gothic archway of the hall. As the narrator is lead to Roderick's studio by the servant, he notices the familiar yet gloomy atmosphere. He is put in a room where he describes as large and lofty and "the windows were long, narrow, and pointed, and at so vast a distance from

The author’s home does not give off much of a scary or creepy feeling, but the black cat in this home does. The first example of mood in this story was the moment when the cat had bitten the author “I seized him; when, in his fright at my violence, he inflicted a slight wound upon my hand with his teeth”. (Poe 2) This is example shows alarm in the cat, when they author had “seized” the cat, he showed fear against the author and reacted with biting him.

Symbols and art mean different things in differnt stories, this one it represents a deep meaning. The colors of the house represent depression in a couple of different ways. It's dark and has a melancholy feeling. The distinctive word choice corresponds with the color choices. In paragraph 2 you can quote, "mansion of gloom" backing up the gothic theory. Paragraph 6 shows examples of foreshadowing. The house always seems like it is deteriorating, like his mind was. The actual house is old and seems to be falling apart. From paragraph 2 you can pull examples like, " ..simple landscape features of the domain-upon the bleak walls-upon the vacant eyelike windows- upon a few rank sedges-and upon a few white trunks of decayed trees- with an utter depression of soul.." to support the depressing theme. The theme is broken and lonely,