Literary Devices In The Fall Of The House Of Usher

Throughout American literature, many stories have been stylistically written with the intention of instilling fear in a reader’s mind. To be specific, Edgar Allen Poe, acknowledged for his rather ominous and morbid stories achieves this effect in, The Fall of the House of Usher. With that in mind, Poe wrote, The Fall of the House of Usher through the usage of certain events and details which culminate to the ultimate effect of terror.
While, The Fall of the House of Usher epitomizes a story’s ability to evoke trepidation in a reader’s mind, the illustrative details that are used to describe a setting are key elements that assist in achieving this effect. Introducing the story being told from the perspective of a narrator, the setting takes …show more content…
Effectively using such details, the narrator describes the house as following, “there was an insufferable gloom and an iciness, a sinking, sickening of the heart, and a un redeeming dreariness”. With the establishment of this ominous aura, the home begins to associate itself with a sense of eeriness, making the unknown fearful. In addition, to further intensify this tone, the steady deterioration of the house’s physical state is recognized by the narrator and through the usage of expressive details like, “bleak walls and decayed trees with an utter depression of soul”, Poe is able to successfully express the house’s antiquity attributing to its state of deterioration. In adding this sinister tone, the evocative details is increasingly intensifying the effect of terror with the house’s total collapse to occur at any given moment. Evidently, as the physical appearance of the story is contributing to the growing sense of terror, the narrator proceeds to the interior of the house, noticing certain aspects like, “dark …show more content…
Following the narrator’s first encounter with his friend Roderick Usher, he’s startled by the ghastliness and morbidity of his complexion. Noting his, “cadaverousness of complexion and the now ghastly pallor of the skin”, these features create an exhaustive appearance which leads the narrator to view Usher’s mental state. Constantly anxious and fearful of what’s next to come, Usher is a “bounden slave to terror” as the narrator perceives that “ he obtained over his spirit an effect in which the physique of the gray walls and turrets into which they all looked down, had at length, brought about upon the moral of his existence”. Poe’s emphasis by using the narrator as a conduit to fully understand Usher’s mentality once again reinforces the idea of fear being present throughout the story. With a morbid complexion and disheveled state of mind, the reader already has the ability to discern the terror that’s causing the deterioration in Usher’s mind essentially mirroring the steady perish of the house, as death is clearly in the air. Seemingly evident that he’s suffering from a mental disorder, Usher mentions to the narrator, his sister Madeleine contributing to his deterioration as she withers away in front of his very own eyes and dies. Though the narrator never personally