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The Fall of the House of Usher: Imagery and Parallelism

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The Fall of the House of Usher: Imagery and Parallelism In his short story "The Fall of the House of Usher", Edgar Allen Poe presents his reader with an intricately suspenseful plot filled with a foreboding sense of destruction. Poe uses several literary devices, among the most prevalent, however are his morbid imagery and eerie parallelism. Hidden in the malady of the main character are several different themes, which are all slightly connected yet inherently different. Poe begins the story by placing the narrator in front of the decrepit, decaying mansion of Roderick Usher. Usher summoned his childhood friend, the narrator, to his home by sending a letter detailing only a minor illness. After the narrator arrives and sees …show more content…

These stories , in their own way are somehow parallel to the story in "The Fall of the House of Usher". The painting was a painting done by Henry Fuesli. "Fuesli was noted for his interest in the supernatural."(Poe, 127). "A small picture presented the interior of an immensely long and rectangular vault or tunnel, with low walls, smooth, white, and without interruption...and bathed the whole in a ghastly and inappropriate splendor." (Poe, 127). This description can be interpreted as a place of sorrow, where the atmosphere is morbid and cold. Most people have art in their homes for reasons of cheering up the place. All this painting did was add morbidity and coldness to the house. The poem entitled "The Haunted Palace" makes a connection between the house and its inhabitants. The poem seems to parallel to the plot of "The Fall of the House of Usher". "Once a fair and stately palace--snow white palace--reared its head"(Poe, 127). This describes the past of the Usher home. It was once a stately mansion, but as time went by the house deteriorated along with the conditions of the people occupying it. We get to the present in both the story and this excerpt "but evil things in rokes of sorrow, assailed the monarchs high estate"(Poe, 126). This is what is happening to the Usher house now. The house along with its inhabitants are full of sorrow. Poe uses differing themes of fear, death, and freedom throughout the

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