The Fall Of The House Of Usher: Setting Essay

Mr. Usher represents the mind to her body and suffers from the mental counterpart of his physical illness, Mr. Usher inability to distinguish fantasy from reality resembles his sister’s physical weakness. The narrator knows little about the house of usher and is to visit the mansion in many years. “ I had been passing alone, on horseback...” (1) This basically saying how it has been many years that they haven’t seen the house and it looks very old and dull,

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

To properly convey these complex themes, Poe employed the use of the Gothic Tradition. That is to say, he used elements such as the supernatural, and traditional gothic settings to create a mood in his story to help the reader become immersed in the story. The Fall Of The House Of Usher is told in the first person, with a nameless narrator who is never properly described. This helps the reader to feel part of the story, as it is as if they are listening to themselves describing the story. Poe has also set the story in a very claustrophobic way, including

     One of the central themes underlying the short story, The Fall of the House of Usher, is that of the nature of the house. The way it is described and the way it is so mysterious. Another central theme about this story is the nature of the people that live in the house. They are portrayed very much in the same manner throughout the story. Thus, they have several similarities with each other. All of which are of a bad feeling, showing how bad things are for the people and the house. These similarities are very well laid out in the story and are, I believe, meant to be something to be considered when reading it.

In comparison to the family, when he first witnesses Roderick, Poe portrays Roderick to be seemingly normal, vivacious and genuine. But, it is only until the narrator takes a closer look, that Roderick is obviously crumbling internally. Madeline, Roderick’s sister, is also crumbling physically by her unknown sickness and being physically weak. After her supposed death later in the novel, Roderick had a look of wanness. For example, Poe wrote, “No portion of the masonry had fallen; and there appeared to be a wild inconsistency between its still perfect adaptation of parts, and the crumbling condition of the individual stones” (Poe 113). What I took from this quote is; the individual stones may likely be a representation of each member of the Usher family. When Poe decided to include this as a part of the story; the stones, that are crumbling could be a reference to the family dying. But, Poe mentions a key indication that the masonry has not yet fallen (113), this is due to the fact that the two remaining Usher’s; Roderick and Madeline, have not died.

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

The Fall Of The House of Usher is a terrifying tale of the demise of the Usher family, whose inevitable doom is mirrored in the diseased and evil aura of the house and grounds. Poe uses elements of the gothic tale to create an atmosphere of terror. The decaying house is a metaphor for Roderick Usher’s mind, as well as his family line. The dreary landscape also reflects his personality. Poe also uses play on words to engage the reader to make predictions, or provide information. Poe has also set the story up to be intentionally ambiguous so that the reader is continually suspended between the real and the fantastic.

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.

In the story, The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allen Poe, it’s about how the narrator got a letter from Roderick saying to come and visit because his mother is ill. When the narrator arrives to visit Roderick’s home, everyone then becomes ill, it’s not just the mother now, and then the world turns into a fantasy world, with everyone dying or becoming gravely ill until finally, the narrator escapes the house and the world, with the house crushing down behind him. The author uses word choices, setting and organization to prolong the story. He also uses descriptive details, that gives us a vivid image within and throughout the story, along with the narrator's thoughts whilst in the house and out the house. With that being said, the topic is suspenseful throughout the story, which makes the audience suspenseful, because in the romantic time period it was the first time people could speak their feelings..

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.

The narrator goes on to comment about how the scenery provided “an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart”(Poe 3). This is the beginning of a depressive episode in the narrator that most readers might overlook. The dreariness and decaying state of The House of Usher, a home he

themes to help suggest this fear. He uses the Doppelgänger theme, which is used when he describes the reflection of the house in the

Poe’s gloomy tone in “The Fall of the House of Usher” is accomplished by his use of setting. An example of how Poe uses setting to express his tone would be when he states, “Feeble gleams of encrimsoned light made their way through the trellised panes, and served to render sufficiently distinct the more prominent objects around; the eye, however struggled in vain to reach the remoter angles of the chamber, or the recesses of

During the romantic era, authors would tend to create an unknown setting which makes it ambiguous to the reader. Poe was not unaware of this idea because he strongly believed that making the setting vague to the reader was the best way to avoid misleading or distracting his readers from creating a reference to the modern day. “During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless

Gothic literature is a genre that incorporates anything that is morbid, grotesque, or eerie. Through the use of gothic features including the supernatural, psychological issues, and ambiguity, terrifying atmospheres are created and dark plots develop in the pieces: Miss Peregrines Home for Peculiar Children, The Fall of the House of Usher, and Don’t Ask Jack. Miss Peregrines Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs can be considered a piece of gothic literature because it contains many elements like nightmares and monsters or the supernatural. Jacob, the protagonist of the book, suffers from constant nightmares “so bad that [he] has to wear a mouth guard to keep from grinding [his] teeth,” this evokes the feature of darkness in his night terrors.