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Similarities Between The Tell-Tale Heart And The Fall Of The House Of Usher

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Edgar Allan Poe is well known for this Gothic style of writing and the darker aspects of human nature. Edgar Allan Poe uses the same themes repeatedly in “The Fall of the House of Usher,” “The Tell-Tale Heart”, and “The Masque of the Red Death”. While the themes are developed differently in each short story, they all come together to form the three main ideas: death, madness, and isolation. One of the most common themes in all three short stories is madness. In “The Fall of the House of Usher,” when the narrator is reading to Roderick Usher, he was hearing voices that were in the story, he goes over to Roderick Usher and Roderick says he has been hearing his sister Madeline ever since they buried her. “I now tell you that I heard her first …show more content…

In “The Tell-Tale Heart,” the narrator observes an old man with an evil eye and becomes obsessed with it causing him to murder him. When the police came into his house to question him, he begins to lose his mind and thinks that they know what he has done and begins mocking him for it. “’Villains!’ I shrieked, ‘dissemble no more! I admit the deed!—tear up the planks!—here, here!—it is the beating of his hideous heart!’” (Poe 8). His insanity took over and he admitted to killing the old man. Finally, in “The Masque of the Red Death” madness is conveyed by Prince Prospero when he decided to throw a masquerade, while the Red Death was spreading and killing the townspeople. He isolated himself from reality …show more content…

In “The Fall of the House of Usher,” Roderick Usher was isolated in rotting mansion. He was isolated physically because after the death of his sister he was the only one alive in his family. He was suffering from “morbid acuteness of the senses” because of the loss of his sister. The narrator is also affected by the isolation because when he walked in the house, he grew sick. When the narrator first saw the house, he described it as “insufferably gloom” and “an utter depression of soul which I can compare to no earthly sensation . . .” (Poe 3). In “The Tell-Tale Heart,” the narrator creates isolation through his insanity that he feels about the old man’s eye. This caused him to become overly proud of himself for murdering the man. “I took my visitors all over the house. I bade them search—search well.” (Poe 7). He was proud of himself because he knew they would never find the body parts that his hid under the flooring. His pride takes over and it causes him to alienate himself from others. In “The Masque of the Red Death,” Prince Prospero tries to isolate himself from the reality of the plague by locking himself in his castle along with his guests for a masquerade. “. . . he summoned to his presence a thousand hale and light-hearted friends from among the knights and dames of his court, and with these retired to the deep seclusion of one of his castellated abbeys.” (Poe 3). His reality slowly

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The author writes, “The disease had sharpened my senses - not destroyed - not dulled them.” (Poe, 1843) This text describes that the killer has a mental disorder. Poe also writes, “‘Villains!’ I shrieked, “dissemble no more” I admit the deed! - tear up the planks - here, here!

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Washington Irving used mood and foreshadowing in his story. Whereas Edgar Allan Poe uses mood and symbolism to explain his story. The stories “ The Devil and Tom Walker” and “ The Fall of the House of Usher” have very similar themes about fear ; they also have gothic moods.

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In many different short stories and poems, Poe is known for the strange and unreasonable reasons for murder, isolation, betrayal, insanity, and guilt. Edgar Allan Poe’s life more than likely influenced his distinctive gothic writing style. Poe’s most well known written short story is named “The Tell-Tale Heart” in light of the fact of the significant meaning it has behind it. Within the story, misery, a sense of darkness, and a sense of pleasure from the relief is shown in the beginning when Poe writes, It is impossible to say how first the idea

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Using repetition, Poe insinuates the death of Prince and his friends. Gerald Kennedy wrote, “Death weighs upon the group because it is thrice present: first in the pallid countenances of the men themselves as reflected on the ebony table; then in the corpse of 'young Zoilus,' whose unclosed eyes reveal a 'bitterness'; finally in the 'dark and undefined shadow' that issues from the sable draperies and fixes itself upon the door” (Kennedy). The repeating appearance of death foreshadows the fate of the characters which creates an anxious tension in order to foreshadow something terrible will happen. In Prince Prospero’s abbey, there were seven rooms made for partying, each a different color. Poe wrote, “The seventh apartment was closely shrouded in black velvet tapestries that hung all over the ceiling and down the walls, falling in heavy folds upon a carpet of the same material and hue.

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Poe sets a dark tone in the beginning of “The Man of the Crowd” when he talks about people and their secrets. “There are some secrets which do not permit themselves to be told. Men die nightly in their beds, wringing the hands of ghostly confessors and looking the piteously in the eyes—die with despair of heart and convulsion of the throat, on account of the hideousness of mysteries which will not suffer themselves to be revealed.” This is similar to the uneasy, dark mood in “The Masque of the Red Death.” Poe describes a normal night in Prince Prospero’s castle, he shows this dark feeling though the way the guests act.

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The narrator in Edgar Allan Poe’s story, “The Tell-Tale Heart” explains that he is dreadfully nervous, not mad. The narrator has a lot of love for the old man, however, the narrator explains how he could not stand the sight of the old man’s pale blue eye with film over it which looks like a vulture’s eye. The narrator feels that he can rationalize his insanity, and believes that he cannot be mad or crazy because he is being too cautious in plotting the murder of the old man. The narrator spends seven nights slipping into the old man’s room at midnight where he shines a light onto the face of the old man, due to his eye being closed and not being able to see the hazy eye, the narrator wants to the rid the man of the eye rather than kill him.

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When reading stories written by Edgar Allan Poe, it is easy to see that Poe is a dark and mysterious author. When comparing “The Cask of Amontillado”, “The Masque of the Red Death”, and “The Premature Burial” Poe consistently incorporates death, suspense, and mysteries throughout his works. These factors throughout Poe’s short stories are seen as one is about a death that occurs during a carnival in the Montresor's home that include numerous events that contain mysteries and suspense that lead to the final possible death of Fortunato. Another is about the deaths that occur when the Red Death makes a presence at a party located inside the castellated abbey. The number of events that occur before the Red Death approaches are also suspenseful

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There are times in life where people do commit a small mistake, or a huge crime, but what really matters is if one will listen to their conscience. In “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe, the main character lives with an old man who has an eye that “resembled that of a vulture--a pale blue eye, with a film over it.” The story revolves around the main character’s obsession over the eye, and how he got rid of it-- by murdering the old man. Towards the end of the story, the young man confesses to the police about his insane stunt after they searched his house. In “The Tell-Tale Heart,” Edgar Allan Poe focused on having the reader know more than the secondary character, using description, and using a first-person narrator, to build suspense.

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Poe is able to describe how anger feels, describe how it feels to love someone than lose them in a matter of seconds, describe how it feels to hate and despise someone with a burning passion, until the reader feels as though they will crack under pressure. Poe’s fantastic grasp on diction and the creation of images in the reader’s mind, can be seen in the The Fall of the House of Usher, when the narrator says “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…” (paragraph 1) . Poe was able to show how the sky looked even though the reader wasn’t able to see it through their own eyes. His words has a certain way to them, to make the reader believe they are standing right next to him as he is writing the story. The imagery in the piece can also materialize the thoughts of the reader to see how the characters are beginning down a slippery-slope toward nothingness.

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While Edgar Allan Poe as the narrator of the The Tell-Tale Heart has the reader believe that he was indeed sane, his thoughts and actions throughout the story would prove otherwise. As the short story unfolds, we see the narrator as a man divided between his love for the old man and his obsession with the old man’s eye. The eye repeatedly becomes the narrator’s pretext for his actions, and while his delusional state caused him much aggravation, he also revealed signs of a conscience. In the first paragraph of the short story, The Tell-Tale Heart, Edgar Allan Poe establishes an important tone that carries throughout his whole story, which is ironic.

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