The Fall Of The House Of Usher, By Edgar Allen Poe

An analytical essay discussing the importance of setting in The Fall of the House of Usher, by Edgar Allan Poe and Where is Here, by Joyce Carol Oates.

Superstitions are a mysterious part of any culture, and those mysteries greatly influence mysterious writers. Edgar Allen Poe, one of the most famous mysterious authors, use the many mysterious encounters he faced as an asset for his short stories. A major influence was his time in Charleston, South Carolina, where he learned of the many superstitions and rituals of both the blacks and the whites of the area. His interests in horrific rituals like premature burials and zombication (which mainly involves voodoo, familiar to the Lowcountry Gullah culture) helped him to write horrific short stories, like “The Fall of the House of Usher.” Poe’s gory and eerie setting of the house itself and the off-putting characteristics of the Usher siblings expressed Poe’s knowledge of paranoia and interest of the “living dead,” which comes in the weird rituals of the Gullah culture.

Fear is among one of the most universal human emotions that everyone is interconnected at one point or another during their lifetime. In the gothic stories, “The Fall of the House of Usher” and “House Taken Over” written by Edgar Allan Poe and Julio Cortazar respectively. Edgar Allen Poe writes about how the character Mr. Usher, who because of his mental illness and delusions, cannot come to terms with his reality. Cortazar writes about the relationship between a brother and sister who have normal everyday lives and have strange and odd nightmare that haunts them. The

With our imagination we can have many thoughts in our mind, we can think of how we want to be in the future. Everybody in this world has their own way of thinking. “In the Gothic stories, “The Fall of The House of Usher written by Edgar Allan Poe and “House Taken Over” by Julio Cortazar the authors write about how both stories have some type of interest that makes the reader want to be very eager about the story. The imagination can overcome reason through issues such as: fear, paranoid, delusion, etc. The House of The Fall of Usher talks about how Mr. Usher is trying to get over his “dead” sister and the narrator is trying to help him. They begin to hear things inside the house, and realize that the sister was alive at the end. House Taken Over about a bother and sister that share a house that’s been passed over from previous family members and normally they have a typical daily routine but at night they come across “spooky” occasions.

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,

Edgar Allan Poe used fear to attract his readers into his gothic world. Poe realized that fear intrigues as well as frightens, and sew it as a perfect motif for many of his stories, particularly The Fall of the House of Usher. Poe emphasized the mysterious, desolate, and gloomy surroundings throughout the story to set up the fear that got the reader involved. Then he extended the fear to the characters in order to reveal the importance of facing and overcoming fear. Poe suggested in the story that the denial of fears can lead to madness and insanity. This has clearly shown through the weakening of Roderick Usher's mind and the resulting impact on the narrator of the story.

The human imagination is a powerful tool that sometimes is very hard to control, if it can be controlled at all. In The Fall of the House of Usher, Edgar Allan Poe uses imagination as a key tool to make the story come to life.

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

In the story, “The Fall of The House of Usher”, there are many mysterious happenings that go on throughout the story between the characters Roderick Usher and the narrator. Throughout the story, Edgar Allan Poe uses themes such as madness and insanity to connect the house back to Roderick Usher. In the “Fall of The House of Usher”, the narrator goes through many different experiences when arriving to the house. The narrator’s experiences start out as almost unnoticeable in the beginning, turn into bigger ones right before his eyes, and end up becoming problems that cause deterioration of the mind and the house before the narrator even decides to do anything helpful for Roderick and his mental illness. In “The Fall of The

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

Deteriorating towns are generally filled with a mere handful of inhabitants still clinging to whatever life they used to have. Houses fall apart. Quality of life decreases. People become unstable due to their inability to provide for themselves and their families. This has been seen all over: the towns become relics and the people become charity cases. When the going gets tough the tough get going; however, those inhabitants who choose to stay rewrite their endings. Edgar Allan Poe’s use of imagery portraying decay in “The Fall of the House of Usher” serves to set up the final fate of the two main characters.

There is a man and a woman. The two are eating lunch. One begins to take a bite and the other immediately jumps from the table. Joan screams as an ax flies across the room. Without knowing that Joan is a teenage girl full of raging hormones on her first date with Drake at the premiere of the new horror movie, then the image in everyone 's mind after reading the first few lines might have been quite bothersome. As emphasized with the few sentences prior, setting is one of the most important components of a story. In both Edgar Allan Poe’s Fall of the House of Usher and Joyce Carol Oates’ Where is Here? it is quite clear what the importance of setting does to a story and how it impacts all of literature.

The imagination loses drive as it ceases to cling to what is real. In Edgar Allan Poe's story "The Fall of the House of Usher" we look into the story of the narrator who was recently invited by his longtime childhood friend who his slowly losing his mind, over his constant paranoia. When we look into the other novel "House Taken Over" by Julio Cortazar we see two siblings who live in their childhood home. Beyond this house brings a fear to the siblings, but showing rarely any emotion to the outside world, bringing them close to insanity by letting paranoia overcrowd them. One of the most common situations in which imagination can overcome reason is under extreme pressures of fear or paranoia.

Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher In Poe's, 'The Fall of the House of Usher,' Roderick Usher is the main protagonist, he is a male, an outcast (as he doesn't seem to have many friends), part villain (as he buried his sister alive) and also part victim (as he suffers from an illness which makes him allergic to most everyday things) and is descended from an incestuous family. The story is like all other gothic stories, it has an emphasis on horror, old-fashioned settings, stereotyped characters (Roderick), and the use of suspense and supernatural elements. It has many themes common to the gothic genre, life and death, power and control as Roderick wants control over Madeline when he buries

Dark Romanticism was very popular in 19th century America. It is literary genre that emerged from Romanticism and Transcendentalism. Tenets of Transcendentalism included finding God in nature, and seeing beyond the physical world. Dark romanticism examines the conflict between good and evil and the psychological effect of sin and guilt in the human mind. One very famous Dark Romantic writer is Edgar Allen Poe. Poe is very well known for his many poems and short stories. He is also well known for the recurring theme of death in his stories and poems. In the short story “The Fall of the House of Usher” by Edgar Allan Poe, setting is used to create the mood of the story, foreshadow future events,