How Does Poe Create Tension In The Fall Of The House Of Usher

Franklin D. Roosevelt once said, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself”. President Roosevelt's famous phrase is typically understood to suggest that the nation should not dread or that fear is useless. In “The Fall of the House of Usher” by Edgar Allan Poe, and “The Devil and Tom Walker” by Washington Irving, both used literary devices to scare the reader, create tension and suspense within the story. Edgar Allan Poe, the author of The Fall of the House of Usher, specifically use literary devices including imagery, characterization, and a sense of dread. Suspense, symbolism, and gothic elements may all be seen in "The Fall of the House of Usher" in various ways, creating a sinister air of mystery and expectation. Something unexpected

“ I know not how it was, but, with my first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom prevaded my spirit”. (Para. 1) As the narrator makes his way to the House of Usher, he acknowledges feeling confused as “a sense of insufferable gloom prevaded [his] spirit”. He feels this way because the House no longer looks the same as in his childhood; it is now rundown and the grounds seem to be decaying. “I looked upon the scene before me, upon the mere house, and the simple landscape features of the domain—- upon the bleak walls—- upon the vacant eyelike windows— upon a few rank sedges— and upon a few white trunks of decayed trees—with an utter depression of soul, which I can compare to no earthly sensation more properly than to the after-dream of the reveler upon opium— the bitter lapse into everyday life– the hideous dropping off the veil” (para 1). This is an example of personification. It is a component of the narrator's opening account

The entire passage is comprised of a single sentence, with phrase repetitions adding to the rhythm and drama. It is a part of the narrator's introductory description of the emotions he feels as he gets closer to the house. Instead of portraying his anxieties as an intoxicated fiction, he makes the opposite argument, claiming that the delusion used to be his reality. Now that he can see everything plainly. The passage is notable because it perfectly demonstrates Poe's intricate sentence construction. One sentence makes up the entire chapter, with phrase repetitions enhancing the pace and drama. “it was this deficiency, perhaps of collateral issue, and the consequent undeviating transmission, from sire to son, of the patrimony with the name, which had, at the length, so identified the two as to merge the original title of the estate in the quaint and equivocal appellation of the ‘House of Usher’ — an appellation which seemed to include, in the minds of the peasentry who used it, both the family and the family mansion.” (para 3) This is an example of symbolism. The “House” seems to be symbolic of the family and the building. “House of Usher– [a]n appellation which seemed to include, in the minds of the peasentry who used it, both the family