Essay on The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allen Poe

The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allen Poe Symbols and imagery of horror and death in a story touch the reader like a fingertip against a chord and can make the heart resonate with fear and woe as the suspended lute with tone. The verbal illustration that is used in the opening phrase in Edgar Allen Poes The Fall of the House of Usher is as strong as the imagery of dismay utilized throughout the rest of the story, like the dark and gloomy house. The vivid colors and visuals in the story not only force the reader to picture the surroundings in his or her mind, but also contain the hidden connotations of gravity and despair. The inclusion of sounds, like the distinct, hollow, metallic, and clangorous, yet apparently muffled†¦show more content†¦Poe in particular suggests the mood very adeptly. The physical landscape that is a dilapidated house surrounded by an unkempt grounds becomes a veritable hell when the windows are said to be vacant eye-likeportals, the walls bleak, the sedges rankand the trees rotting white(Poe 17). These images of the house alone are troubling, but combined foreshadow the unhealthy face of its sickly master, Roderick Usher. The color of the exterior of the house from the beginning of the story on is a dull grey, a color often depressing and ominous like a cold rainy day. The tarn surrounding the house, on the other hand, has a black and lurid, unruffled luster.(17) Black, in literary works, has generally been perceived as the color of death. In another of Poes stories The Mask of the Red Death, the black room is the room set aside for Death. When the narrator does enter the house, the floors are often black, like the tarn. The first picture of Roderick that the reader sees is similar to the house pallid and frail, as if decaying, upon a black floor. This similarity connects the physical building, House of Usher, with the master of the House of Usher. When another color, red, is brought into the story another depiction of the stone structure and the man that has three distinctly different analyses comes into play. The crimson light weakly streaming down from the high windows in Usher‚sShow MoreRelatedThe Fall Of The House Of Usher By Edgar Allen Poe Essay853 Words   |  4 Pages â€Å"The Fall of the House of Usher† by Edgar Allen Poe is described as a gothic tale. A gothic tale or gothic novel is â€Å"a genre of fiction characterized by mystery and supernatural horror, often set in a dark castle or other medieval setting†Ã‚ ¹. Like many of Poe’s short stories, â€Å"The Fall of the House of Usher† is a dark tale filled with madness, isolation, fear, and supernatural horrors. Edgar Allen Poe didn’t give a specific time period of â€Å"The Fall of the House of Usher† . 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