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The Fall Of The House Of Usher Analysis

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Written in 1839 by Edgar Allan Poe, The Fall of the House of Usher is a short story which presents an unnamed narrator who finds himself lured in the House of Usher, experiencing the friction between mystery and fantasy while interacting with the owner. Thus, by analyzing the text, a question arises : is The Fall of the House of Usher a work of mystery or fantasy? First of all, in the beginning of the story we are presented with the description of the house. On one hand, the narrator is scared by the house’s terror and on the other hand, he is drawn to it by the mystery in which it was surrounded : “It was a mystery all insoluble” (Poe, 3) . Ever since the beginning of the story we could see that the atmosphere projected by the house goes beyond the narrator’s comprehension: “During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day [...] I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country” (Poe, 3). Moreover, we can see that the narrator finds himself trapped in an alternative reality : “[...] an unredeemed dreariness of thought which no goading of the imagination could torture into aught of the sublime” (Poe, 3). Also, the human logic seems to have no further means of explaining the house’s fantastic atmosphere : “ nor could I grapple with the shadowy fancies that crowded upon me as I pondered” (Poe, 3). Afterwards, the story not only describes us the friendship between the narrator and Usher, but it also presents us the former’s view on the

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