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Themes in edgar allan poe's work
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The Fall Of The House Of Usher Comparison Between Book vs. Movie How would you act if you had a family like the Usher’s? The short story by Edgar Allen Poe was published in 1839. Throughout the story lots of madness, incest, grotesque, and sickness was involved. The most grotesque thing in the story was one of the main characters, Roderick Usher. Roderick Usher was a sick man that wanted to be the only Usher left in his family.
In Edgar Allen Poe’s short story “The Fall of the House of Usher,”
The crack in the house and the dead trees imply that the house and its surroundings are not sturdy or promising. These elements indicate that a positive outcome is not expected. The thunder,strange light, and mist create a spooky feeling for the reader. In "The Fall of the house of Usher," Edgar Allan Poe creates suspense and fear in the reader. He also tries to convince the reader not to let fear overcome him.
Words like “dull” and “oppressive” along with phrases like “soundless day in the autumn of year,...” (Poe, line 1) help prevail the darkness lingering outside the house of Usher as if all the evils of the world would be spent on one final blow on the Usher family. As the story progresses however, both Usher and the narrator end up going crazy as the gloomy weather and the reawakening of Usher’s twin sister both contribute to the evils destroying the Usher family.
In his short story, “The Fall of the House of Usher,” Edgar Allen Poe uses foreshadowing to show how Roderick is sad to let go of Madeline. A quote showing this is: The disease which had thus entombed the lady in the maturity of her youth, had left, as usual in all maladies of a strictly cataleptical character, the mockery of a faint blush upon the bosom and the face, and that suspiciously lingering smile upon the lip which is so terrible in death. We replaced and screwed down the lid, and, having secured the door of iron, made our way, with toil, into the scarcely less gloomy apartments of the upper portion of the house (Poe 403).
Deep within every person there is a sense of fear that terrifies them for life. In Edgar Allen Poe’s story “The Fall of the house of Usher”, the narrator enters the home of a lifelong friend, Usher, who has fallen to the fear he has held within him. Usher’s twin sister, Madeline, has Usher on edge thinking that she is dead. When they bury her, she comes back to life and takes him away to die with him. They are the last two of the family of Ushers.
Modern artists today generally use images of physical and mental illness in literature. In The Tell-Tale Heart and The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe, both short stories show the usage of illness, madness, and fear. The narrators in both stories try to convince the readers that the characters are physically and mentally ill. Edgar Allen Poe creates these vivid characters which successfully assist the building of plot and ideas. Poe demonstrates how a person’s inner turmoil and terror can lead to insanity through illustrative language.
“There was a coldness, a sickening of the heart, in which I could discover nothing to lighten the weight I felt” This line perfectly sums up the overall tone of The Fall of the House of Usher. The story at its most basic level is about a man who visits his old friend in a house which is seemingly under some sort of supernatural hex. The way Poe goes into such detail describing the characters and their personal reactions to the events that take place during the story help the reader to stay close to the actions of the story. Additionally Poe describes the house so well that the reader can easily picture the dilapidated mess as if standing in front of it.
“ The Fall of the House of Usher “ by Edgar Allan Poe is a short story about a man named Roderick Usher who initiates some events such as evoking his friend The Narrator as a protagonist to the dreadful mansion. The images such as the house and gothic ambience are used to reinforce the idea of giving the mystery to the reader. Edgar Allan Poe uses gothic elements to show how they affect the atmosphere and the characters. In the beginning , the gothic atmosphere of the house is indicated with terrifying images such as “ dull, dark and soundless ” that the feeling of horror vaccinated into reader by the thoughts of the narrator.
that the stem of the Usher race . . . had put forth, at no period, any enduring branch; in other words, that the entire family lay in the direct line of descent, and had always, with very trifling and very temporary variation, so lain. (Poe 2) Despite the incestual means of their conception occurring in the past, resulting genetic defects oppress the Usher siblings Madeline and Roderick—both physically and mentally—well into the future. Although the narrator provides no physical description of Madeline Usher prior to her entombment, of her brother Roderick he reports deformed features in line with those of products of
Throughout “The Fall of the House of Usher,” metaphor and symbolism are heavily relied upon to express the extent of the madness that resides within the Usher House. In the short story, Poe creates a symbolic parallel between the art and stories that are seen and told. It can be implied, from a painting, in the Usher house, that Lady Madeline Usher is still alive. The reader can also imply that there is a hidden tunnel or room under the entirety of the house. “The Mad Trist” indirectly tells the reader of Lady Madeline’s escape from the tomb she had been placed in.
Poe uses imagery to explain the atmosphere of fear and the continuous breaking of Usher. Poe portrays the surroundings of the narrator as dark, giving an image of the setting “During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year” (Poe 310). The image of a dark day is installed in the reader by this line. This line also gives the reader the image of being alone on a dark day in the autumn. Poe also uses imagery to make his readers a sense of fear “I know not how it was--but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit” (Poe 310).
In “The Fall of the House of Usher” the tone gives off an eerie and bizarre feeling. This is similar to many of Poe’s other short stories but this piece the most. The tone is gloomy compared to “The Black Cat” that Poe has also written. The author starts off the story with immense details of the setting. The readers get a dark vibe from these details.
What is tone? Tone is the an attitude of a writer about the subject of the piece. For example, the narrator starts by saying “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, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher.” As the narrator is approaching the house, the tone is horrific. At the end of the story, as the narrator sees all the catastrophic events happening to the house, he changes to a careful and calm manner tone.
In the “Fall of the House of Usher,” Roderick Usher prematurely buries his sister, Madeline Usher, because he thinks she has died from an unknown illness. Poe describes the burial as, “We replaced and screwed down the lid, and having secured the door of iron, made out the way with the toll…” (Poe 425). When Roderick bolted the iron lid upon his sister’s coffin, all trust that had previously been built between the two had been broken. In Poe’s life, after the burial of his wife and mother, he felt like he could never trust anyone as well.