The House Of Usher Analysis

Gothic stories are able to give readers insidious images to a readers mind through its vast setting. A Gothic story setting is often grim with descriptions of grand medieval structures, such as castles and cathedrals, along with powerful illustrations of supernatural events. Two authors that were influenced by Gothic elements are Edgar Allan Poe, and Joyce Carol Oates. Poe has written an assortment of gloomy ominous stories, one of these stories is “The Fall of The House of Usher.” Here we follow a narrator who is invited over to a ghastly, crumbling mansion to comfort his old companion, who is slowly losing his sanity, with the separation between him and his twin sister. Oates, who is a modern writer, engendered the story “Where is Here?” Here we find a quiet and seemingly generic family visited by an edgy and eerie man for an elongated period of time. Throughout both of these stories, the descriptive setting is able to construct the entire mood of the story. Although, the modern "Where is Here?" differs is subtle ways to the short story "The Fall of The House of Usher."

Although only subtle, details such as "bleak walls," "vacant eyelike windows," and "white trunks of decayed trees" still manage to set the initial mood. Immediately afterwards, more vivid descriptions of this house are brought upon the eyes of the reader. The mood is intensified tremendously with descriptions of "an atmosphere which had no affinity with the air of heaven," "discoloration of ages, " and "extraordinary dilapidation." Throughout the rest of the story, the characteristics of the story only submerged deeper into the quagmire of sinister feelings until the