Fall Of The House Of Usher Short Story Analysis

When it comes to writing a novel or a short story, or even any literary work for that matter, it has always been really important to consider setting. Setting is defined as the place where the story takes place. It is where the plot and many main events developed and have occurred. Because of the mood stories set, the reader is able to discern the emotions or feelings of the characters. In Fall of the House of Usher and Where is Here? by Edgar Allan Poe and Joyce Carol Oates respectively use setting to set a general mood for the story, imply specific character details, and draw the reader to read between the lines and make inquisitive judgments about the short story. When first reading through Fall of the House of Usher and Where is Here?

Use setting to help readers discern specific details about the characters of the short stories. When mood is set, there is a general feel for the story, but when mood uses extremely descriptive language, characters come alive and act strange because of the mood in the story. Fall of the House of Usher uses excruciatingly long, drawn out phrases of detail sometimes so much that one can easily forget all about the plot of the story. Details such as those found on page three hundred and nine at the end of Fall of the House of Usher during the “resurrection” of Lady Madeline state, “There was blood upon her white robes, and the evidence of some bitter struggle upon every form of her emaciated frame. For a moment she remained trembling and reeling to and fro upon the threshold-then, with a low moaning cry, fell heavily inward upon the person of her brother, and in her violent and now final death agonies, bore him to the floor a corpse, and a victim to the terrors he had anticipated.” This description shows the readers through a mental image of the horrors that Roderick Usher and the narrator faced when they went down to the tomb. The image of Lady Madeline was and is terrifying to many readers because of the gripping, graphic details. On a lighter note, Where is Here? Does the same thing Poe does, but not in so much gruesome detail. The details of the Stranger in Where is Here? share with the readers a haunting and

challenge their readers to look between the lines and get to the underlying cause or moral of the story. Both of these stories have a questionable ending which makes them tough to read and realize what really happens. For example, Fall of the House of Usher ends in a rather abrupt manner when Roderick realizes that the noises he’s been hearing were coming from the tomb where Lady Madeline has been buried. He had this ongoing fear that she has been buried alive but when he arrives down there as seen on page three hundred and nine she was in fact dead but resurrected. Or was she? Wondering what Madeline really is puzzles the readers. Another example of this on page three hundred and nine and three hundred and ten of the story is when the house crumbles and falls apart. The narrator makes it out alive, but there are no clear details as to usher, the most common assumption was that he was buried alive under the house just like his twin sister Madeline. In an even more puzzling way, Where is Here? Draws the readers to question their beliefs of the supernatural world. Throughout the story, many readers were able to discern that the stranger may have been a ghost. Details like those see on page three hundred and twenty seven in the third paragraph state, “On the windowsill above the sink were several lushly blooming African Violet plants in ceramic pots and these the stranger mad a