They're All Mad Here: A Literary Comparission of The Fall of the House of Usher and The Masque of the Red Death

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They’re All Mad Here: A Literary Comparison of “The Fall of the House of Usher” and “The Masque of the Red Death” Internationally known romantic author Edgar Allan Poe has always represented darkness, madness, and death in his stories. With these representations, Poe must provide this mood for the reader to become engulfed in the madness. In his tale “The Fall of the House of Usher,” Poe uses descriptive details about the dull color and ruggedness of the house and the Ushers themselves to set a gloomy mood. He also describes in detail Roderick Usher’s descent into madness and his fearfulness of death. In turn, he depicts brightly colored chambers in “The Masque of the Red Death,” but the arrangement of colors provides a chaotic aesthetic to the viewer. The madness and fear represented by Prospero in the “Red Death” can easily be compared to the madness and fear represented by Roderick Usher in “The House of Usher.” Poe begins many of his tales by describing in great detail the setting and colors of the story. In “The Fall of the House of Usher” the setting is dark and gloomy with “bleak walls… vacant eye-like windows… [and] decayed trees,” (Poe). The house displays little to no color and has a run-down appearance. Upon entering the house, the narrator describes an inherent darkness and bleakness throughout. In the study where the narrator’s childhood friend, Roderick Usher, waits for him, the room has an absence of light setting a bleak appearance, “an atmosphere of sorrow… and [an] irredeemable gloom hung over and pervaded all,” (Poe) The narrator also describes an inherent lack of color in the physical appearance and personalities of the Ushers. He describes Roderick Usher as having a thin face with thin lips, and note... ... middle of paper ... ...Web. 21 Mar. 2014. Dudley, David R. "Dead or Alive: The Booby-Trapped Narrator of Poe's 'Masque of the Red Death.'." Studies in Short Fiction 30.2 (Spring 1993): 169-173. Rpt. in Short Story Criticism. Ed. Rachelle Mucha and Thomas J. Schoenberg. Vol. 88. Detroit: Gale, 2006. Literature Resource Center. Web. 21 Mar. 2014. Lei, Jin. "Poe's landscape: dreams, nightmares, and enclosed gardens." Forum for World Literature Studies 5.1 (2013): 36+.Academic OneFile. Web. 26 Mar. 2014. Howes, Craig. “’The Fall of the House of Usher’ and Elegiac Romance.” The Southern Literary Journal 19.1 (1986):68+.Academic OneFile. Web. 24 Mar. 2014. Poe, Edgar Allan. "The Masque of the Red Death." The Literature Network Jalic Inc. 2000-2014. Web. 25 March. 2014. Poe, Edgar Allan. "The Fall of the House of Usher." The Literature Network Jalic Inc. 2000-2014. Web. 25 March. 2014.

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