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The Fall Of The House Of Usher Romanticism Essay

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Romantics embellish everyday life Life on Earth revolves around nature. Everything that is done and everything that will be done will involve nature. Nature is also a big part of literature and one theme that uses nature to describe stories of everyday life is Romanticism. Romantics use nature as a way to create parallels between the characters and the outside world. Another idea that is used a lot in Romanticism is the supernatural. The devil and things beyond the human ability are used to create depth in the story and to make reading the literary work an experience for the reader. Many writers such as, Washington Irving, Edgar Allen Poe, and James Russell Lowell used this theme. Irving and Poe’s stories are exhilarating to read as they …show more content…

The story first starts with a deep description of the house and its grounds. The “inverted images of the gray sedge, and the ghastly tree-stems, and the vacant and eye-like windows” (find page number), show the depressed outside of the house. It is later seen that the outside of the house very much represents what the inside is like. The home is owned by a brother and sister, who is in the hospital. The brother, Roderick Usher, is very obviously not well as he calls for his childhood friend to come and try and cheer him up. While our narrator is trying to cheer Roderick up, Lady madeline, Rodericks sister, passes away and is buried under the house of Usher. This is when the other side of Romanticism come in. All through the night the characters hear scratches coming from the door to the basement all of a sudden the “huge antique panels to which the speaker pointed threw slowly back, upon the instant, their ponderous and ebony jaws. It was the work of the rushing gust—but then without those doors there did stand the lofty and enshrouded figure of the lady Madeline of Usher” (Page number). She comes out of the room and kills her brother as the house falls in on itself. This could just be a regular story of a sad family but the ideas of nature and the supernatural turn this story into something much

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Authors use characters and genres to develop theme. Sometimes different genres can be used to build the same theme. In the poem, “The Lesson of the Moth,” poet Don Marquis uses the protagonist, a moth, to teach the narrator, Archy, a cockroach, what it is like to have a dream worth dying for. Similarly, Daniel Keyes, author of “Flowers for Algernon,” a short story, uses the main character, Charlie Gordon, a mentally disabled man who longs to be smart, to develop the idea that it is better to risk to achieve happiness rather than to live wondering what life could have been like. Both the poet and the author use the main character in their literary work to contribute to the idea that risking something is worth even momentary happiness.

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Nature was introduced in romantic novels and poems. In the poem ‘’Thanatopisis’’ by William Cullen Bryant he described death to something that was peaceful and to be embraced. He believed that you become one with nature, one with earth once you die. But in the poem ‘’Devil and Tom Walker’’ by Washington Irving he described death to be evil, sinful. He believed death to horrifying and something to not be embraced.

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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.

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“The Devil and Tom Walker” showcased a storyline that followed a man named Tom Walker who suffered from poverty, the abuse of his wife, and the fatal mistake of making a deal with the devil to become an usurer. It was in this storyline that the latter of the literary

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The characters in FHU, represent Poe’s personal experiences with life, strictly the relationship with his parents. “The building gives the impression of decay, yet the masonry did not fall”(Neilson). This quote pertains to comparing Madeline and Roderick to the masonry. The narrator receives a letter inviting him to the mansion of the Usher. In the letter it says how Roderick confesses to his mental disability, or struggle.

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“The Fall Of The House Of Usher” by Edgar Allan Poe and “ House Taken Over “ by julio Cortazar, both Gothic Literatures explaining the lives of those who are too afraid to live, when they believe in buying themselves happiness. In both stories, the setting is based off two extremely large homes that are being taken care of by siblings, both male and female. They end up excluding themselves from each other's lives and begin to follow a routine based of the house. Both keeping you guessing at the end. Did they disappear?

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“ 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.

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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

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One belief that makes up Romanticism was that they valued nature over city life. The Romantics valued nature because of how pure the outside world appears to be, while the city life was corrupt. The Romantics valued nature well, because they believe that reflecting on

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Roderick and Madeline Usher have been riddled with many illnesses as a result of the many generations hailing from a “direct line of descent” (Poe 196). The twins are the last members of their family and are on the edge of extinction. It can be possible that the Usher’s had turned their backs on God and “betrayed the Holy Ghost in themselves” (The Fall of the House of Usher 167). As the last of the Usher House, Madeline and Roderick symbolize the end of “an Enlightenment tradition still standing but about to collapse” (The Fall of the House of Usher 167).

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Artists and philosophers of the romantic period assured the power and beauty of nature. Actually some scholars believe that the romanticists treated nature in a sort of religious way. The Industrial Revolution was one of the reasons of developing this strong connection between nature and romanticism, which led many people to leave their rural areas and live in cities instead. During the 18th and 19th centuries, large areas of the European wilderness had been tamed, so it had became safer to travel to these areas and observe the beautiful natural scenes. Many romanticists believe that the natural world is a source of healthy emotions and thoughts.

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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.

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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.

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Most of the Romanticists consider nature as a better place compared to the society. Romantics view society as a corrupted place. In contrast, they view nature as a pure and spiritual place. Since nature has not yet been polluted by the corruption in the society, it symbolizes purity. Romantics often try to find inner peace and happiness in life from going into nature.

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