The Fall Of The House Of Usher Romanticism Essay

Romanticism, a movement emphasizing emotion and imagination, dominated art, music, and literature in the early 1800s. Edgar Allan Poe’s works are influenced by Romanticism as well as his own troubled personal life. Throughout Poe’s short story, The Fall of the House of Usher, all elements of his writing, from the minute details of word choice to overarching plot line, contribute to a dream-like yet chilling effect on the reader. Poe immediately sets a gloomy mood through the exposition. In the first words of the story, the narrator describes his arrival at the House of Usher “During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day” (160), and in this sentence, Poe’s alliteration of the “d” sound has the effect of luring the reader into a trace. The word “soundless” suggests an image of stillness and loneliness. Further details of the setting add to the

There are two instances where Poe foreshadows the final collapse of the house into the tarn: when the narrator sees “inverted images” (160) of the house in the tarn, and when he notices the “barely perceptible fissure” (163) in exterior of the house. The reader is able to predict the ending from the foreshadowing and from the title of the story, which makes the reader more curious as to how the House of Usher falls. A particularly suspenseful moment comes when the narrator hears a noise “in its exact similarity of character, the echo (but a stifled and dull one certainly) of the very cracking and ripping sound” (171) that comes from the story he is reading to Roderick Usher. The narrator hearing the same sounds described in his book within the castle is another example of a coincidence that is unlikely to occur outside of a dream setting. In addition, the repeated sounds signal to the reader that something dramatic is about to happen. The suspense Poe creates keeps the reader engaged while also making the element of horror in the story more