Imagine, arriving to a mysterious, ominous, mansion, to help an old childhood friend, and in the end, witness you friend, and their twin you never knew about die, then randomly the house crumbles as you escape it. This partially describes Edgar Allen Poe’s short story, “ The Fall of The House of Usher”. Poe is famously known for his unique writing skill, and mainly composing gothic fiction short stories. In “The Fall of The House of Usher”, the themes attribute to attracting readers by Poe’s unique word- structures, and his gothic writing style. The main themes that contribute to the short story are, insanity, fear, and mortality. The first main theme in the short story is, insanity. This is a major theme because, one of the main characters, Roderick believes that the house is making him and his sister sick. He believes this, because over time he’s deteriorated, and the whole time, he was in the house. The story states, “ It was he said, a constitutional and a family evil, and one for which he despaired to find a remedy a mere nervous affection, he would undoubtedly pass off.” At this point, the narrator soon realizes that his old friend is on a fine line, between insanity and sanity. Later on the narrator spends a few days at the mansion, and as he spends his time there, Roderick is …show more content…
This theme is also a major contributor to the story, because Roderick is riddled with fear. The narrator notices that he fears almost everything, and that this fear would eventually be the cause of his death. However, the main theme of fear, is from the narrator in the beginning. It seemed as if he was dreading to go inside of the mansion, just based on the looks on the outside. The narrator says, “ I know not how it was but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit”. This shows that, even the narrator was afraid of the building, and therefore making fear a main theme in this short