Dark remote settings, maniacal events, mental and physical torment, and robust language containing treacherous meanings are ingredients that encompass the Gothic style. Edgar Allan Poe’s short story, “The Fall of the House of Usher”, demonstrates how he adopts components of the Gothic style as a way to deliver fear to the narrator and the reader. As the narrator, we are never given his name, views the House of Usher for the first time, he is absorbed with despair as a result of the spectacle before him. “I looked
Written by Edgar Allan Poe in 1839, The Fall of the House of Usher, is one of the most important gothic stories in the American Literature. The story shows the virtuosity of Poe in “the creation of a psychological state of terror, loneliness and wickedness of his characters” (Howarth), and also the excellence in the using of figurative speech to create parallelism between the characters and the rest of the elements in the story. The aim of this paper is to examine how the incest instead of keeping a bloodline intact, eventually destroys an entire family generating its complete disappearance. In The Fall of the House of Usher incest is explored in a very subtle way. Traditionally “incest has been done by Royal or aristocratic families in order
“ 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. Additionally , the house that the narrator mentions is illustrated as “ mansion of gloom “ which might be a sign that the aura of the house has something dreadful in it.
Hume also supports this claim by stating that the creature, which was meant to be beautiful, reflects in its outward form Victor’s inward deformity. He gives an example with the early history of the monster that craves love, which is an ironic reproduction of Frankenstein 's personality, for he can neither express love, nor respond properly to human emotions. The result of this intercourse between Gothic and Romantic elements is a novel that is far more complex and sophisticated than the work of many of her contemporaries by provoking philosophical, ethical and moral questions left to the reader to answer, as said by Nicole
The short story “The Fall of the House of Usher” uses all these devices to express the theme of gothic literature because of how dark and horrid it is. The different descriptions of the house and the nature around the house as well as the characters suggests this story is more of a gloomy sad
The symbols within the stories of these great writers revealed the impending darkness and gloom that characterized Dark Romanticism. The symbols from “The Fall of the House of Usher," written by Edgar Allan Poe, and “Young Goodman Brown,” written by Nathaniel Hawthorne, sought to use Dark Romanticism to illuminate the mixture of good and evil in human nature. Dark Romanticism is a form of writing that consists of human nature, sins, death, and an abundance of evil to create fearful images that toy with the emotions of its readers. Edgar Allan Poe, a professional at creating such stories, used symbols within his stories to further his Gothic Romantic theme. In the short story, “The Fall of the House of Usher,” Poe wrote, “I know not how it was – but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit.
One can also imagine, the horrors that the piercing gaze of the old man, reminded Poe of. This gaze may have led Poe, to look at the depths of who he is. What Poe must have experienced, in the hands of his foster father was intensely painful, and this may have led him to bury these emotions very deeply into the subconscious. The narrator reveals in the Short Story, the deep truth of how a man’s heart can manipulate the truth, and how it can try to justify his actions. It also shows that if pains, run very deep, and have not been allowed to heal, they can destroy the fabric of one’s sanity.
These murders are only thought of and happen because of supernatural occurrences. Poe’s poems, since they are romantic, are always dark and revolve around death and torture. Poe’s writings are gothic and the plots of gothic literature are always about murder, funerals, and torture. “Above all was the sense of hearing acute. (The narrator) heard all things in the heaven and in the earth.
These strategies were different types of irony, verbal, dramatic, and situational, also how Montresor leads Fortunato to the catacombs. Finally, the trowel hidden in Montresor’s coat foreshadows Fortunato’s death to come in the catacombs. All of these literary techniques show that Montresor has well thought this gothic story and murder he commits at the end of the short story. Overall, fiving the reader a sense of dark, sinister literature, that is eye opening to what really partakes in the
The desire to bring back love lost is inapprehensible. Love lost is a mere form of death itself with its idea of torment consistently knocking at one’s bedroom door, with no obstructive answer besides “nevermore”. What lays beyond the previous sentiments stated with it bleak and dreary entry, can be compared to its father who went by the name of Edgar Allan Poe. Poe was the father of Gothic horror until his untimely passing in 1849. However, before his passing, Poe wrote his best selling lyrical narrative poem called The Raven in 1844 that inhibits the idea of lunacy in the natural world, as well as, the unattainable desire to resurrect love upon the speakers lost Lenore.