Preview

Response To Where Is Here

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
533 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Response To Where Is Here
P2 Transformation of a childhood place can be traumatizing to some. In "Where is Here?" A middle aged man comes seeks to look inside his childhood home. When he asked to enter the father said amiably," Of course we don't mind. But I am afraid it has changed since 1949." The was rather unpleasing to the mother's ears for she had never met this man wandering about in her home. "He could be anyone, after all. Any kind of thief, or mentally disturbed person, or even murderer." This may have been the mother's mood in the beginning of the story towards the stranger but however, it did not stay that way. The aged man had started to become over observant of the children and longed to go forth into the basement. The way he was acting made the dad become rather furious and raged. A few minutes later he said," The visit is over." And the stranger had exited the home wiping away tears. P3 The brother and sister in "House Taken Over" have a luxurious life. The two live in their ancestors house that could easily fit eight people without touching. But at eight o'clock one night the sudden sound of a chair hitting the carpet from a far room would take their happiness away. "I had to shut the door to the passage. They've taken over the back …show more content…
This theme is portrayed throughout this "short" story by the connections between Roderick, Madeline, and the narrator. He gives off a dark aspect in the beginning of the story when the setting is being describe "During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens.[…]" Roderick usher has written to his childhood friend (narrator) asking him to come to his domicile. When the narrator arrives at the House of the Usher he is filled with a sense of insufferable gloom. When he first sees Roderick he is shocked that a man could transform this

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Summary: (1) The Narrator experiences the doom and gloom of a man he once knew in childhood. His surroundings and feelings are told of his visit to the House of Usher, upon receiving a letter beckoning him to come, for the man he once knew, did not have another friend in the world to reach out to. (2) When he arrives he has an unnerving feeling about the estate itself, noting the iciness and the dreadful, sorrowful impression of the house. (3) He is re-acquainted with his friend Roderick Usher and notices on sight of him that he is a shell of the person he once knew in their childhood. (4) For the next few days the narrator painted and read with Roderick, or he just listened to him play his guitar, trying to help him out of his slump. During this time we find out that Roderick does not live in the house alone his sister, Madeline, who we find has a mysterious sickness, walks by them a single time and is not see or heard from again until her death. (5) Roderick’s sister dies and he asks his friend to help him in the arrangements of her temporary…

    • 874 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Roderick later informs the narrator that his sister has died and insists that she be entombed for two weeks in a vault (family tomb) in the house before being permanently buried. The narrator helps Roderick put the body in the tomb, and he notes that Madeline has rosy cheeks, as some do after death. They inter her, but over the next week both Roderick and the narrator find themselves becoming increasingly agitated for no apparent reason. A storm begins. Roderick comes to the narrator's bedroom, which is situated directly above the vault, and throws open his window to the storm. He notices that the tarn surrounding the house seems to glow in the dark, as it glowed in Roderick Usher's paintings, although there is no lightning.…

    • 556 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Most Edgar Allen Poe stories contain a haunting and eerie tone and this short story proves no exception. “The Fall of the House of Usher” revolves around the narrator's childhood friend, Roderick Usher. Roderick suffers from an undisclosed mental illness and Roderick’s sister, Madeline, is near death, when introduced. When Madeline appears to be dead Roderick decides to bury her in an underground vault. The days following this incident Roderick’s normal countenance fades and he goes mad. Afterwards, Madeline escapes from the vault, kills Roderick and the house splits down the middle and sinks into the ground. In Edgar Allen Poe’s, “The Fall of the House of Usher”, various critics argue that the story contains supernatural influences demonstrated…

    • 553 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Benjamin Frank Monologue

    • 819 Words
    • 4 Pages

    This made Mr.White dreadfully lonely. Not only has he lost his son, but his wife doesn’t give him any attention anymore. He didn't’ want to upset his dear wife, but tonight he could no longer bear it. “Mother,” he said calmly, “How long do you tend on ignoring me?”…

    • 819 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Jonathan A. Cook states, “we find the narrator continuing in his attempt to derive more pleasure than pain from the scene of the house before him, for he speculates that "a mere different arrangement of the particulars of the scene, of the details of the picture, would be sufficient to modify, or perhaps to annihilate its capacity for sorrowful impression" (Poe). In other words, the narrator is now seemingly attempting to transform the view of the House of Usher into a...picturesque [scene]” (Cook). Right from the beginning, when he had only had a glance at the house, the narrator felt himself compelled to the “dark side” that Roderick seems to be a part of. He went from seeing the house as dreary and gloomy to seeing it as extravagant and compelling. Roderick has contacted the narrator who was his childhood friend to comfort him because his sisters health is deteriorating. However, this may not be Roderick’s true reason for calling upon the narrator. There can be a possible darker background on why Roderick is so set on having him come to the house which can be his mission to bury his sister alive with the help of the…

    • 657 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The narrator spends the first paragraphs reflecting on his past with Roderick. Near the end of the story, Roderick calls the narrator a "madman"; "Madman! I tell you that she now stands within the door!"(Poe 404). However, he's the only one who managed to escape the real madness as the house crumbled. This point of view allows the reader to understand the meaning of the story; that is, the inner working of the human imagination. But, at the same time, cautions us about the destructive dangers it could have for the mind. In Roderick's case, his imagination suppresses the reality and has for only results madness and mental death.…

    • 840 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The author introduces the protagonist Sam, who is dealing with divorce parents and he wants to live with his father to know him better. His solution to this problem is to leave her mother and his father to sue her for custody. Sam explains that he used to do everything when he was with his mother and he wrote three pages of instructions so she don’t have to call him. He also introduces us to his mother, Sandra who is Sam’s mother and she wants Sam back that's why she is constantly calling to Sam father house. Some of the minor characters that are mentioned towards the beginning of the story, include Phyllis, Debbie, the father, and Sy.…

    • 533 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Madeline is somewhat elusive to the narrator for the majority of the story, for she pays no mind to him, and he says, “As he spoke, the lady Madeline (for she was so called) passed through a remote portion of the apartment, and, without having noticed my presence, disappeared” (Poe 600). Madeline suffers from a condition where she goes into a comatose state for extended periods of time. Roderick, in a very disturbed state of mind, mistakes one of her cataleptic episodes with death, and asks the narrator to help him bury her. Later that night, much to the narrator’s horror, Roderick reveals that they buried Madeline alive, and the sounds they were hearing was Madeline trying to escape her imprisonment (whether or not this was purposeful is debatable). Ultimately, this false burial leads to Madeline’s actual death, but before she dies, she comes into the room Roderick and the narrator are in and, quite literally, frightens Roderick to death. The narrator flees directly after, and the House of Usher collapses in on itself, to be swallowed by the tarn.…

    • 584 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    One of the main points that Poe focuses on is the overall appearance of the house and Roderick Usher. He believes that they are both run-down and not very well taken care of. He describes the house as being, “melancholy (p.308)” and Usher as having a “cadaverousness of complexion (p.313).” This shows that he believes that they both have a sad look and feel.…

    • 310 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Romanticism moves away from the ideas of realism and has a habit of focusing on the individual more than anything else. The environment in most romantic pieces reflect the feelings of a character that the writing hopes to reflect upon. In the story “The Fall of the House of Usher” written by Edgar Allen Poe embodies the romantic theme through a very dark matter. The story starts of by describing an extremely gloomy setting where many of the trees are dead and isn’t a very pleasant area to live in. Poe goes on and introduces us to Roderick Usher who seems to suffer a mental illness which ends up leading to his sister’s death. Poe utilizes the themes of a very dark romanticism through focusing on the one Roderick Usher and the somber past that the Usher family possess and expresses this by using thorough details of the narrator’s surroundings. The surplus amount…

    • 416 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    With Roderick Usher, he is motivated by the overwhelming sense of entrapment his fear of dying holds over him. It is clear Usher suffers from severe mental anxiety, thus warping his perception of reality. His irrational behavior, as well as the narrator's unease, worsens as the story progresses. What is unclear is the original cause for Usher's intense fears. According to the narrator, Usher views his existence as dark and suffocating, which is…

    • 601 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Edgar Allan Poe

    • 682 Words
    • 3 Pages

    At the beginning of the story, the narrator comes upon “the melancholy House of Usher”(Edgar Allen Poe 264). Immediately Poe’s description of the house sets the atmosphere for the story and begins building on Poe’s single effect of terror. “With the first glimpse of the building a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit”at the mere presence of the house the narrator is over come with sadness(264). As the narrator goes into a deeper description of the house, the reader can begin to visualize the dark and scary house with rotting trees surrounding it and old molding bricks creating its structure. “Dark draperies hung upon the wall,” shows the house’s visual appearance and atmosphere do not get any clearer within. The interior of the house compliments the house’s dark and decaying outwardly appearance. The narrator describes the house as having “many darken intricate passages”with very large sad tapestries and ebon…

    • 682 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    In September 1839, a man by the name of Edgar Allan Poe released his most popular and criticized short story, entitled "The Fall of the House of Usher". In Poe's gothic tale, Roderick Usher has invited the unnamed narrator, a distant childhood friend, to help alleviate his deteriorating house. Roderick and his sister, Madeline, have become ill, and his self-fulfilling prophecy of premature burial comes alive when Roderick's previously buried sister breaks out of the tomb to send into the abyss the unbranched lineage of the house of Usher. Poe once said that "All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream." Although some say that Madeline is a counterpart of Roderick, she is a manifestation of a supernatural entity set out to destroy the unnatural lineage by exploiting Roderick's one sided and intellectual state. The exploitation can be proven throughout the story through the comparison of the natural, supernatural, and mental aspects of "The Fall of the House of Usher".…

    • 829 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Certainly, in The Fall of the House of Usher, the use of setting and mood efficiently aids in establishing the unity of effect. From the very beginning, the story’s central focus is its’ sinister mood established through its gloomy setting. The story even opens with a grim kick, "During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher” (Poe 16). Poe uses the setting to create the atmosphere within the readers mind by carefully choosing every word within his thought out sentences to establish the gloomy mood. For instance, the house of Usher is described as gothic, with its exterior of dull bricks, the crack in the house, and eye like…

    • 974 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” is a story about two twin siblings whose lives are dwindling down due to mental and physical illnesses. Roderick and Madeline Usher, who live alone together in their family mansion, suffer from two different illnesses. Roderick deals with “acuteness of the senses” that causes him to be extremely sensitive to light, sound, taste, and touch. Madeline has more of physical illnesses that lead to pain in her body. Roderick writes a letter to the narrator seeing if he would come to the mansion to be a helping hand. The narrator arrives at the house and is surprised at how creepy looking the house is but goes inside to see his childhood friend. Taking a glance at Roderick and his sister, the narrator can tell the two have been sick and are close to the end.…

    • 869 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays

Related Topics