Edgar allen poes fall of the h
Edgar allen poes fall of the hThe Fall of the House of Usher
In Edgar Allen Poe's, "Fall of the House of Usher", Poe utilizes life-like characteristics of a decaying house to give it an unnatural or supernatural atmosphere, and in effect bring it’s inhabitants to their impending doom.
From the beginning of the story, the house is given a supernatural and unusual atmosphere, Usher's house, its windows, bricks, and dungeon are all used to portray a dismal and unusual atmosphere. When the narrator is approaching the house of his friend, Roderick Usher, Poe refers to the house as the “…melancholy House of Usher” (718). This could be interpreted as the house being in a state of depression, in reality houses don’t have a sense of feeling, Poe is giving the house life with these words. This is the first sign of a supernatural or unusual atmosphere.
When the narrator is examining the building from the outside he describes what he is seeing and how he feels as he looks upon the house, “the vacant eye-like windows…upon a few rank sedges—and upon a few white trunks of decayed trees—with an utter depression of soul which I can compare to no earthly sensation more properly than to the after-dream of the reveller upon opium” (718). This statement contributes to the collective atmosphere of despair and anguish, the narrator tries to view everything he sees in a rational manner, but upon looking at the house and its surroundings, he seems to have a heightened sense of unreality, as if he is hallucinating. Poe uses descriptive words such as decayed, strange, peculiar, gray, mystic, Gothic, pestilent, dull and sluggish to help set the unusual, gloomy atmosphere of the story.
The narrator goes on to talk about the increasing sense of superstition he receives when looking at the house. “There can be no doubt that the consciousness of the rapid increase of my superstition…Such, I have long known, is the paradoxical law of all sentiments having terror as a basis…that when I again uplifted my eyes to the house itself, from its image in the pool, there grew in my mind a strange fancy…I but mention it to show the vivid force of the sensations which oppressed me” (719). In my opinion, the narrator is stating that the house possibly does have supernatural characteristics.
Upon entering the house, the narrator examines the interior and notices the gloom that pervades the interior of the home. He enters through a “Gothic archway” (719) and walks through “many dark and intricate passages” (719). He also proclaims that the gloomy interior contributes to his feelings of superstition, “Much that I encountered on the way, contributed, I know not how, to heighten the vague sentiments of which I have already spoken” (719-720).
While examining the interior of the room he becomes increasingly convinced that the house has some supernatural effect on the...
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