The best examples of Gothic literature and how setting contributes to Gothic literature are “The Fall of the House of Usher” by Edgar Allen Poe, and “Where Is Here” by Joyce Carol Oates. The purpose of setting in Gothic literature is to set up an environment that is full of grandeur, darkness, and decay. When this environment is complete it gives the author the power to deliver their intended message. Setting is one of the key elements of both modern and classic Gothic fiction, since it enhances the atmosphere, and the message it is supposed to deliver. As seen in “The Fall of the House of Usher” the setting is described as dark, dreary, with little elements of the supernatural at work. Poe tells the reader how the night is filled with gloom and dread that hangs over the main character “During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country, and at length found myself, as the shades of evening dew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher”. The main character then looks over and describes the house itself in detail, Poe uses many words such as “bleak”, or “desolate” to tell the reader how the house is in such …show more content…
The story shows a bleak image of a normal suburban house at dusk, nothing seems out of the ordinary until a stranger comes by to visit. Instantly the stranger is shown to be off putting and worries both the parents with his presence “It was as if a force of nature, had swept its way into their house!” The stranger continues to have a supernatural element about him until he is forced to leave even then he leaves something dark in every room he visited and it festers inside the house like a cancer “… the patterned wallpaper seemed drained of color; a shadow lay upon it shaped like a bulbous cloud or
The imagery Poe crafts into the story sets a mysterious,and almost melancholy mood complemented by the tone. In The Fall of the House of Usher, the story is started by the quote “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.” immediately creating a creepy, melancholy tone to make the reader get a feel of the solemn sadness of the story as soon as the story starts. Annabel Lee, a sad story where the narrator loses the love of his life, is turned creepy when the narrator sleeps with a dead Annabel Lee in her tomb. The quote “And so, all the night-tide, “I lie down by the side Of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride,” makes the reader shift from feeling sad for a man that just lost his young wife, to creeped by a man who takes death cannot end our love
In “The Fall of The House of Usher” Poe writes in a very ominous manner, he uses mood to create tension during the whole story. In the story the narrator
Poe not only uses the house to display mood, but he also uses personification to describe the dimension of the house to help the reader elaborate on the house and the fear it brings to the narrator's eyes. When the narrator arrives at the house of his childhood friend, he becomes frightened. He explains the house has “vacant eyelike windows” and '' an utter depression of the soul”(paragraph 1), making the house out to be one of a human face consisting of a sorrowful soul that houses are not capable of having. The logic of the narrator's perspective helps the “mere house, and the simple landscape features”(paragraph 1) show the reader the uneasiness one feels only by appearance. Additionally, the narrator feels uneasy while “[he] listened, as if in a dream, to the wild improvisations of [Roderick's] speaking guitar”(paragraph 15).
One of the largest symbols in the book is the house that the Usher’s live in. Poe writes, “...and the deep and dank tarn at my feet closed sullenly and silently over the fragments of the ‘house of Usher’” (Poe 494). Like the family itself, the house died with rest of the Usher family. Without the rest of Ushers to live there, it died in the fear of not having life live inside of it.
Joyce Oates uses vivid speech to establish clues and evidence of the stranger's past. To take as an example, when the stranger describes the kitchen, he promptly includes how it was personally “a—controlled sort of place" (327). This quote hints how the house was always "controlled," therefore, a possibility of abuse or severe obsession. As he further expresses his remembrance of each feature in the home, he adds how the dining room was “dark most of the time...dark by day, dark by night.” Giving a feeling of mystery, Oates urges her audience to sense his strange, dreadful
Dahl, Connell, Jackson craft chilling tales that readers do not want to put down because of their setting, image, and foreshadowing. Setting is where the story takes place,now that the people know a little bit about setting, the people can tell its importance in the story, in setting the mood. You could have a dark rainy night, with a mysterious house. This setting creates a horror type of setting. You could use setting to show emotion, for suspense.
All throughout the poem Poe uses dark poetry to present this gloomy dark poem. Right from the beginning we see the hopelessness as the narrator tries to stop thinking about his lost love Lenore. Poe uses his word choice throughout the poem to add to is depressed hopeless theme. His use of “bleak December” (Line 7), adds imagery to the poem and provides the picture of a dark winter. Later in the poem Poe writes of a raven that is with the narrator.
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.
The crack in the house and the dead trees imply that the house and its surroundings are not sturdy or promising. These elements indicate that a positive outcome is not expected. The thunder,strange light, and mist create a spooky feeling for the reader. In "The Fall of the house of Usher," Edgar Allan Poe creates suspense and fear in the reader. He also tries to convince the reader not to let fear overcome him.
“ 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.
In Edgar Allen Poe’s short story “The Fall of the House of Usher,”
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.
The gothic literature of the nineteenth century has undergone various transformations . A major shift in Victorian gothic is in term of the setting. The gothic is shifted from pastoral, wild countryside to urban setting . The urban gothic relocates the traditional gothic castles to the city which became popular in the 1830 and was applied on gothic fictions throughout the rest of the century. As the southern European was the setting of the first wave of the gothic , London becomes typical setting of the dark fictions in nineteenth century because of its cultural, financial state in the world.
A setting is just as good as it’s plot, characters, and it’s themes. Well the setting of a story is what brings a book or novel to life. The setting, gives it’s very own depth and detail into the world that is created with words. It is one of the most important subjects within a book. The setting helps create and develop the plot, but also it develops and creates the characters within the book.
(Poe 412).” One element of gothic literature is a gloomy or decaying setting. This scene describes the gloomy setting the literature place in. The dark setting foreshadows the dark theme of the story. The houses feature also represent Poe as himself as well.