House Of Usher

Storytelling has been part of every single known culture. Every time a story is told, it is altered a little bit to shift importance. The point of view a story is written in is the reader's guide to what is important. A person’s view on a story can be drastically changed based on the narrative the author decides to use. The same story can be told in a different point of view and the same story can get a whole new meaning. In Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher”, Poe uses a first-person narrative instead of using a third-person narrative. This is done to give the reader a better sense of reality to the story. If the story was told in third person narrative the bedtime-story aspect would have been lost. Through the story being
This can lead to a lack of suspense. The “Fall of the House of Usher” is a very suspenseful tale. This is seen when the narrator and Roderick Usher are reading the “Mad Tryst” and the narrator becomes aware of a strange “distinct, hollow, metallic, and clangorous, yet apparently muffled reverberation” (Poe 700). While the narrator is not omniscient, he has no idea that this sound is the Roderick’s ‘dead’ sister who was buried alive. “The Fall of the House of Usher” is filled with many wonderful firs-had descriptions that would have been lost if the third person was used. Descriptions such as “the gray sledge, the ghastly tree limbs, and the eye-like windows” (Poe 689). First-hand narration allows the narrator to enhance his usage of descriptions by allowing us to see the world through his eyes. Edgar Allan Poe was a wonderful writer that could capture people’s attention and have them get engrossed into a story. “The Fall of the House of Usher” is not any different. Using first-person narration, Poe could tell the tale of his journey to the House of Usher and tell readers about his friend Roderick. Poe rarely used third-person narration, allowing his readers to become engrossed in stories almost