Decent Into Madness In The Yellow Wallpaper By Edgar Allan Poe

Decent into Madness In most short stories, the writer intends for the reader to feel one type of emotion throughout the story. Poe believed short stories should be able to be read in one sitting. This often contributes to the story's effect by allowing the reader to experience the complete effect of the story all at once, rather than leaving the story and having to regain the feeling of being in the story after coming back. Poe obtains the single effect theory of decent into madness through the narrator and the Usher mansion. It was clear that the narrator had changed drastically from the beginning of the story to the end. When the narrator first arrived at the house he was completely normal, but as the days went on and he continued to live there, the house and the things that happened inside and out of it began to affect him tremendously. He began to decent into madness when Usher told him that Madeline had died. The narrator stated “ her decease,” he said, with a bitterness which I can never forget.”(Poe 299-300) He was astonished that Usher

There were many peculiar and unearthly things that were going on inside the house. There were many strange sounds and the narrator also described the windows to look as if they were eye shaped. The location of the house also provided more evidence of the decent into terror because the house was in the middle of the woods isolated from everyone else. The mansion collapsing is like the “final straw.” So many out of this world experiences have happened and the house collapsing is signifying how the reader should be feeling at the end of the story. Usher said as the house was collapsing “my brain reeled as I saw the mighty walls rushing asunder…”(Poe 310) The house in itself was something that made the reader feel as if they were going insane and when it finally collapse its as if a weight was lifted and strange things were going to