Comparing The Fall Of Usher And The House Of The Seven Gables

Visions of psychological, emotional, spiritual paralysis and despair run rampant throughout dark romantic literature. Edgar Allan Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne, two dark Romantics and contemporaries of one another, endeavor to focus on humanity’s dark side, the supernatural and moral truths. Each writer places man at the center-point in their respective stories but Poe’s Gothic format stands out amongst the two writers while seemingly presents its nature within Hawthorne’s writing. Within “The Fall of the House of Usher” and The House of the Seven Gables, Poe and Hawthorne reveal humanity as an evil creature, perpetually plagued with sin, guilt, and morbidity. However, sadness becomes the highest manifestation of beauty and a different sort of romance is explored in both Poe and Hawthorne’s

The gothic décor and high rhetoric of both literary works does not disguise the emotional authenticity of the final spectacle; the house of Usher collapsing or the realization of one family’s “coming of age.” Poe’s focus on darkness may not have a connection to personal guilt or religion, as evidenced in Hawthorne’s stories, but it is an obvious trait of his writing. Poe examines man’s internal struggle with madness while Hawthorne explores man as having secret sin. Moreover, Hawthorne is highly intrigued with how the sins of one generation affect future generations such that history or heritage is a cyclical process in which ideas are revived and reformed as time progresses. Thus, Poe and Hawthorne’s stories willingly portray the evil sides of humanity in order to expose the often unacknowledged emotions of all human beings; that which is pessimistic and deeply