Edgar Allan Poe’s short story, “The Fall of the House of Usher,” describes an unnamed narrator’s visit to his friend’s (Roderick Usher) house. Roderick, sick with “a morbid acuteness of the senses” (5), has requested that the narrator come to the House of Usher for company. As the narrator enters the house, he notices that the house possesses an “irredeemable gloom” (3). The narrator also spots Roderick’s female twin, Madeline, who suffers from catalepsy. After a short period of time, Madeline dies and Roderick buries her in the tombs underneath the house.
Losing Madeline is losing fifty percent of the remaining Usher family lineage, but since Roderick is “suffering the physical and emotional consequences,” he does not, truly, care about his sister ( Gale ). His mistakes lead to the point of where he cannot bear his sister anymore. Not only is the evil in the house, but it is also shared between Madeline and Roderick, and at this point, the family is beginning to deteriorate. The Usher family lineage is
The plot begins as a childhood friend comes to visit. However, there is now something peculiar about the Ushers; Roderick has an acuteness of the senses and Madeline is in a cataleptic state. The visitor is welcomed in and he observes the Usher’s belongings. However, the moods of suspicion and thrill sink in as the narrator finds a drawing of a burial vault in Roderick’s bedroom. As later written, Madeline’s disease causes her to become deathly ill and she passes away while the narrator is visiting.
How can a normal human being remain sane with such mysterious events occurring all around them? In Edgar Allen Poe’s poem “The Raven,” and the short story “The Fall of the House of the Usher,” both the speaker and narrator have been messed around with their sanity throughout their tales. Although both suffer intense dreadful events, the narrator survives the horrendous events with the Usher family and escapes the frightening curse of the Usher family. As the narrator holds a grip on reality, the speaker isn’t so fortunate with his lost maiden, Lenore. The speaker suffers with a talking forbidding raven, and falls deeply into despair.
In the 1960 movie adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s Classic Gothic Tale, The Fall of the House of Usher the functions of setting truly enhanced the readers emotions and understanding. The setting in the movie version of The Fall of the House of Usher creates an eerie and creepy atmosphere adding to the themes and enhancing the plot of the story. There were many examples of how Edgar Allen Poe and the movie director, Roger Corman created such an atmosphere. One
Hester lives with Chillingworth who eventually dies before Dimmesdale, causing her to disappear and return peacefully alone. Throughout all three stories the authors display the importance of abolishing discrimination at different intensities, proving Hester Prynne’s struggle and heroism. In the beginning of the novel, “The Scarlet Letter”, Hester Prynne experiences discrimination just as Martha Carrier in “Wonders of the Invisible World –
How does Poe use diction, imagery details, and figurative language to set a vivid setting in The Fall of the House of Usher? The first impressions given by the narrator give the story a bleak outlook for the ending of the story by the way Poe describes his surroundings and the house of Usher. As the narrator rides up to his old friend Usher’s house, he uses dark detailing on the surrounding area with darker words that help provide a sense of insecurity within the narrator as he wonders why he is so afraid of the house of Usher. Words like “dull” and “oppressive” along with phrases like “soundless day in the autumn of year,...” (Poe, line 1) help prevail the darkness lingering outside the house of Usher as if all the evils of the world would be spent on one final blow on the Usher family. As the story progresses however, both Usher and the narrator end up going crazy as the gloomy weather and the reawakening of Usher’s twin sister both contribute to the evils destroying the Usher family.
In “House,” Lorraine’s mother deserts her family and, in “Alchemy,” Paula disappears. In “House” the mother abandons her daughters and creates in them a desperate longing to be reunited with her. The impact of her actions, particularly for Lorraine’s sister, Kathleen, is heart-wrenching. One morning Lorraine’s sister Kathleen awakens “choking and wheezing, her eyes wet with tears” (121). One of the most profoundly moving scenes in “House” is Thien’s depiction of two young girls waiting outside their former home on their mother’s birthday, hoping that she will return to them.
In this short story the narrator has been asked by letter to visit the home of a childhood friend, Roderick Usher, who has taken unwell, overcome by a strange illness however upon his arrival the narrator finds that there is a perfectly good explanation for his friend 's current state, " much of the peculiar gloom which thus afflicted him could be traced to a more natural and far more palpable origin—to the severe and long-continued illness—indeed to the evidently approaching dissolution—of a tenderly beloved sister" (Poe). The narrator sees just a fleeting glimpse of Madeline soon after his arrival, he is told later that evening that she has taken to her bed and death will soon be upon her. Interestingly Hustis compare Lady Madeline 's fleeting presence to the "barely perceptible fissure" that the narrator observed running from the roof down the front of The House of Usher at the beginning of the story saying "Like the fissure, Madeline Usher 's fleeting presence at this textual
Edward Hopper’s painting, House by the Railroad, portrays an abandoned, Victorian-styled mansion built adjacent to a railroad. Hopper depicts the lonely state of the house by emphasizing the shading of the house, colors, architectural design, and placement. In the poem, Edward Hirsch emphasizes the houses’s “emotions” through the usage of personification, diction and metaphors. Hirsch’s personification of the house provides us insight on how the house is feeling. For instance, he describes the physical appearance of the house by using words like “strange, gawky house”(142) and “faded cafeteria windows”(143).