The Fall of the House of Usher :: essays research papers

In "The Fall of the House of Usher", Poe uses the life-like characteristics of the decaying mansion of Usher as a device for giving the house a supernatural atmosphere. This not only makes the story act upon the reader in a grabbing way, but it also creates an impression of fear, mystery and horror, typical for Poes literary works.For example, from the very beginning of the story, the reader can tell that on that point is something unusual and bizarre about the old house. As the fabricator approaches the phratry of his persistent-time friend, Roderick Usher, he refers to the house as the "melancholy House of Usher". This explanation in the beginning of the story prepares the reader for the mysterious events that will follow. Upon feel at the building, he even feels some scent out of intolerable night which pervades his heart. The windows appear to be "vacant and "eye-like as if watching at the cashier and wandering through his mind. With an insecure feeling he goes to observe the " outrank sedges," and the "black and lurid tarn," in which he sees the reflection of the house. He afterwards says, "when I again uplifted my eyes to the house itself, from its image in the pool, there grew a strange fancy...". Although, the narrator tries to view everything he sees in a rational manner, upon seeing the house and its surroundings, he has an elevated sense of dread. He goes on to say that, "about the whole mansion and farming there hung an atmosphere peculiar to themselves and their immediate vicinity". This statement indicates that by chance the house does indeed have some thrilling and spiritual nature. The narrator observes the details of the house once more and finds that the house has mold exploitation all over it and the masonry of the building is decaying. He says, that " there appeared to be a wild inconsistency between its still perfect adaptation of parts, and the dead porous, and evi dently decayed condition of the individual stones". This observation suggests that perhaps something supernatural is holding the house whole, otherwise it would have fallen to the ground long ago. With this description, the house is also represented as a witness of numerous fates and a long period of history. It is as a mute reviewer of the time, knowing more, than anybody who lives in there.Later on, when the narrator enters the house, he sees its inside as well as the odd behavior and personality of its inhabitants and is increasingly persuade that the house has some strange impact on the people bread and butter in it.