The Effect Of Fear In The Fall Of The House Of Usher

Dark and dreary, a man rides up on his horse. He comes across a dingy piece of country and sees the dismal mansion of the “House of Usher.” In Edgar Allan Poe’s terrifying short story “The Fall of the House of Usher” a man finds himself in a ghastly situation. Receiving a letter from an old “friend,” Roderick Usher, the narrator visits him to help with his strange predicament. This story arouses many different effects and tones from various literary elements. However, ultimately the use of of mood and atmosphere, romanticism, and the theme that fear is powerful created the single effect of eeriness.
Firstly, the author uses mood and atmosphere to portray the single effect of eeriness. As the narrator approaches the ghostly looking “House of Usher” he describes his surroundings as “no earthly sensation more

When the narrator first meets his old “friend” he notices his terrible condition and the concern of his future that makes him “feel that the period will sooner or later arrive when [he] must abandon life and reason together, in some struggle with the grim phantasm, FEAR” (Poe 5). The fact that his terror, could lead to him soon abandoning his life all together shows his recognition of the power of fear; this gives this abnormal story an uncanny effect. Towards the end of the story, the narrator and Roderick Usher bury Lady Madeline, Roderick Usher’s sister, in a vault. During a stormy night, Lady Madeline seemingly breaks away from her vault as a ghost and violently “bore [Roderick Usher] to the floor a corpse, and a victim to the terrors he had anticipated” (Poe 15). The terror that both Usher and the narrator had foreseen, evidently occurred when Lady Madeline ostensibly killed her brother. These anticipated events shows the power that fear had over both characters that ultimately led to Lady Madeline’s and Roderick Usher’s death created the single effect of