The Fall of the House of Usher Analysis
“The Fall of the House of Usher” - Review
“The Fall of the House of Usher” is a short story written by Edger Allan Poe in 1839. Almost everything about the story is very gloomy, dark and depressing. For example, the house is described by the narrator as “the melancholy House of Usher” and the description of Roderick Usher himself makes you think of a corpse. This theme of dreariness and sorrow pervades the story and is done to a very chilling effect, which really draws in the reader. “The Fall of the House of Usher” has lots of necessary elements of a traditional Gothic tale: a dreary landscape, a haunted house, mysterious characters, etc., but for all of these elements, the vagueness of the story is a large part of the terror about it. One of the most interesting and endearing elements of this story is its mystery, the fact that Edgar Allan Poe, despite the brilliant description of the setting and physical features of the characters, doesn’t actually give us a lot of information about the characters themselves makes the reader ask a lot of questions: Why is the house in such a state of disrepair? ; If the narrator was a childhood friend of Roderick Usher, why doesn’t he know much about him – like the basic fact that he has a twin sister? Etc. Even the information that Poe does give us begs more questions than it answers, for example, the fact that the Usher family doesn’t have any collateral damage. This feeling of mystery really is a brilliant way of writing a story as it makes the reader want and indeed need to read on in order to answer the questions posed. Due to this, the reader will find it near impossible to put the story down which is definitely a credit to Poe’s talent and style of writing. The characters in “The Fall of the House of Usher” are very intriguing as well. All three main characters are interesting in their own right and they all have at least something that makes them seem out of the ordinary. Roderick Usher in
“The Fall of the House of Usher” is a short story written by Edger Allan Poe in 1839. Almost everything about the story is very gloomy, dark and depressing. For example, the house is described by the narrator as “the melancholy House of Usher” and the description of Roderick Usher himself makes you think of a corpse. This theme of dreariness and sorrow pervades the story and is done to a very chilling effect, which really draws in the reader. “The Fall of the House of Usher” has lots of necessary elements of a traditional Gothic tale: a dreary landscape, a haunted house, mysterious characters, etc., but for all of these elements, the vagueness of the story is a large part of the terror about it. One of the most interesting and endearing elements of this story is its mystery, the fact that Edgar Allan Poe, despite the brilliant description of the setting and physical features of the characters, doesn’t actually give us a lot of information about the characters themselves makes the reader ask a lot of questions: Why is the house in such a state of disrepair? ; If the narrator was a childhood friend of Roderick Usher, why doesn’t he know much about him – like the basic fact that he has a twin sister? Etc. Even the information that Poe does give us begs more questions than it answers, for example, the fact that the Usher family doesn’t have any collateral damage. This feeling of mystery really is a brilliant way of writing a story as it makes the reader want and indeed need to read on in order to answer the questions posed. Due to this, the reader will find it near impossible to put the story down which is definitely a credit to Poe’s talent and style of writing. The characters in “The Fall of the House of Usher” are very intriguing as well. All three main characters are interesting in their own right and they all have at least something that makes them seem out of the ordinary. Roderick Usher in