The Fall of the House of Usher
The Fall of the House of Usher
Critical Reading Questions (page 310)
3. (a) In the description of the exterior of the house, the words that suggest the presence of decay in the structure of the house are words such as “discoloration,” “minute fungi overspread the whole exterior,” “extraordinary dilapidation.” One sentence that really makes the presence of decay clear is, “No portion of the masonry had fallen; and there appeared to be a wild inconsistency between its still perfect adaptation of parts, and the crumbling condition of the individual stones.”
(b) There are many ways in which the description of the house foreshadows the ending of the story. One of these ways is how characters cannot move and act freely in the house because of its structure, so it assumes a grotesque character of its own, which is the Gothic intelligence that controls the fate of the people living there. The author creates confusion between living and inanimate objects by using the physical house of Usher to symbolize the genetic family line of the Ushers. Not only does the narrator get trapped inside the house of Usher, the reader learns that this confinement describes the biological fate of the Usher family. The peasantry confuses the mansion with the family because the physical structure has effectively dictated the genetic patterns of the family. 4. (a) The descriptive details of the interior of the house that suggest the narrator has entered a realm that is very different from the ordinary world are details such as the narrator felt that inside the house he “breathed an atmosphere of sorrow,” and that there was “irredeemable gloom that hung over and pervaded all.” These details foreshadow that the things that will happen inside the mansion are going to be much more sorrowful and gloomy than things that could ever happen in the ordinary world. (b) The details in Usher’s appearance that suggest he has been cut off from the outside world for many
Critical Reading Questions (page 310)
3. (a) In the description of the exterior of the house, the words that suggest the presence of decay in the structure of the house are words such as “discoloration,” “minute fungi overspread the whole exterior,” “extraordinary dilapidation.” One sentence that really makes the presence of decay clear is, “No portion of the masonry had fallen; and there appeared to be a wild inconsistency between its still perfect adaptation of parts, and the crumbling condition of the individual stones.”
(b) There are many ways in which the description of the house foreshadows the ending of the story. One of these ways is how characters cannot move and act freely in the house because of its structure, so it assumes a grotesque character of its own, which is the Gothic intelligence that controls the fate of the people living there. The author creates confusion between living and inanimate objects by using the physical house of Usher to symbolize the genetic family line of the Ushers. Not only does the narrator get trapped inside the house of Usher, the reader learns that this confinement describes the biological fate of the Usher family. The peasantry confuses the mansion with the family because the physical structure has effectively dictated the genetic patterns of the family. 4. (a) The descriptive details of the interior of the house that suggest the narrator has entered a realm that is very different from the ordinary world are details such as the narrator felt that inside the house he “breathed an atmosphere of sorrow,” and that there was “irredeemable gloom that hung over and pervaded all.” These details foreshadow that the things that will happen inside the mansion are going to be much more sorrowful and gloomy than things that could ever happen in the ordinary world. (b) The details in Usher’s appearance that suggest he has been cut off from the outside world for many