¶ … vacant and eye-like windows" of the House of Usher spook the nameless narrator and his sickly childhood friend and title heir, Roderick Usher. Decaying trees and a "black and lurid tarn" dot the sullen landscape that greets the narrator on his approach to the Usher estate. This classic Gothic setting influences the narrator as soon as his horse trots towards the crumbling mansion. Probably familiar with depression, the narrator notices immediately what a profound effect the House of Usher has upon his frightened and weakened spirit. The eerie landscape of Edgar Allen Poe's short story "The Fall of the House of Usher" contributes to characterization. From the onset of the narrative, the house itself acts as a character; it is humanized and personified by the narrator even before he meets Roderick. Indeed, the narrator is transfixed by the physical nature of the house even before he sets foot inside it and before he meets his old friend. Setting, therefore, informs the narrator's perceptions more than any other element in his surroundings, including Roderick. The narrator's immediate impression of the Usher estate informs his later experiences as the story unfolds. The initial approach to the House of Usher is the quintessential viewing of a haunted house, which artificially and naturally induces feelings of fear and trepidation. The difference between the real and the unreal becomes irrelevant in the face of perceived occult influences. Just as the crumbling House of Usher disturbs the narrator, Roderick's...
Coupled with the gloomy and foreboding panorama that pervades the Usher estate rests the real fact that the Usher family approaches obliteration. The narrator knows that Roderick is the last Usher male and has no offspring who can continue the family line. The house, a symbol of the once-powerful family, reflects the impotency of the Ushers. Often in dreams, houses represent the human being, the self. This is exactly the case in "The Fall of the House of Usher." The title of the short story definitely denotes the dual meaning of "house." The House of Usher is both the body of Roderick and the embodiment of the Usher genealogy. The house falls apart and exhibits a frighteningly large and looming fissure, and the Usher family cracks from a lack of male heirs. The simultaneous dissolution of the physical abode and patriarchal line reinforce the symbolic nature of the "fall" of the Usher house. Echoing deep-rooted fears, a loss of progenitors entails the most ultimate death. The morbid ending of the tale reflects the towering collapse of the Usher mansion.
As Poe builds this emotional tension in the reader on through his construction of the sentences, he also does it on the level of the narrative itself. The sense of dramatic tension within the narrative is created by Poe's masterful use of foreshadowing and delay. A prime example of this occurs early in the story, when the narrator explains his presence at the Usher mansion. He reveals that the occupant
quintessential elements of grotesque and the burlesque in Edgar Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher. The author opens the story with the description of a dreary environment. "DURING the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens"(1846). This introduction is reason enough for an instinctive reader to pre-empt the nature of things
It is only through occult understanding that the forms and the archetypal images and symbols can be interpreted. Here we see that the term unconsciousness is very similar to the Platonic ideals and forms. Another aspect that will form part of the theoretical perspective of this study is the concept of transformation. In order to understand the occult and its relationship to the forms, a process of transformation has to
Tell-Tale Heart The Reflection of the Soul in Poe's "Tell-Tale Heart" Edgar Allan Poe's "Tell-Tale Heart" appeared a decade after Gogol's "Diary of a Madman" in Russia and twenty years before Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground, whose protagonist essentially become the archetypal anti-hero of modern literature. Between the American and the Russian is the whole continent of Europe, and it stands to reason that while on both sides of the continent literary characters
In the beginning, the narrator describes that the house has not yet fallen, but that the decay of the building is so extreme, it is unlikely to remain upright for long. The same is true of the people inside. They live in a kind of living death, waiting for the end to claim them. The idea of dual life and death culminates in Roderick's sister, whose image in perceived death
Arthur Miller or John Steinbeck or even Ernest Hemingway, and most likely he/she has heard the name, but cannot place it. Or, the response will be, "Isn't he a writer or something?" Ask someone in the field of literature the same question, and of course the response will be about the importance of this individual's works. That is one test of an author's impact. Now, ask that same typical
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