Examples Of Curiosity In The Fall Of The House Of Usher

“Curiosity is the lust of the mind”(Thomas Hobbes). The short story I chose to read and analyze is Edgar Allan Poe’s The Fall of the House of the Usher. Poe’s essay is strong in the curiosity tone as illustrated when analyzing the Narrator and Roderick.
Poe’s curiosity tone is evident in the narrator character through his observance of his surroundings. At the beginning of the story the narrator describes the day, “During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in autumn”(412). Right way the reader is drawn into the story with their imagining of what that day looks like. They can visualize what he sees and get a gist of where he is taking the story. He is very aware of his surroundings in this scene in heavy detail. If you were to read on, he then describes the house he now sees, “but, with the first glimpse of the building a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit”(412). Now at this point the reader can even start to feel what the narrator feels. They can now sense that this place is very eerie and can start to get some of the feelings you would normally find within gothic american literature. The reader now has curiosity to know what’s going to happen in the story so they read on to find the character Roderick.

In the story he never blatantly says what his disease specifically is, just a general description, “He suffered much from a morbid acuteness of the senses...”(417). His disease leaves the readers in suspension wanting to know what he has. Although his disease is such an important aspect behind the plot of the story, Poe never tells us. We are all subject to guess within our own opinion what is wrong with him.He does however elaborate on the point of how he wants to die because of this disease. Which one can only take as meaning his certain disease is one so terrible, he feels obligated to leave this world. He