The Fall of
the House of Usher is acclaimed as one of Edgar Allan Poe’s greatest works. Poe
uses Symbolism and analogies in both characters and setting to tell this Gothic
tale of death and downfall. He often drew upon memory for the setting of his
stories. He combines atmosphere and analogy to form the setting which provokes
to the reader a sense of insufferable gloom.
Too much of
the horror has been attributed to its setting. But the setting does have a
double impotence, descriptive and symbolic. Poe introduces plain life in
its most rudimentary form, underscoring the miasmic elements in the tale. The
story connects plot and setting so that they seem one. From the first sentence
to the last, the mood of desolation and impending doom never leaves. Poe used the
principal of analogy very effectively in House of Usher. Finding an identical
pattern in each the house and the family, he makes the events in the book being
read correspond to those going on in the house. The entire opening scene is
steeped in blackness and melancholy.(Neilson, 197, Buranelli, 62) Another of
Poe’s writing techniques is anima. Anima is giving a character quality of
having an animal spirit. Madeline Usher is the anima figure in the story Poe’s
use of symbolism in his gothic stories is a guiding thread to his literary art.
That he is not persistently a symbolist is one of his strengths, for it means
that he only turns to symbolism when it has a distinct role to play.
Too much of
the horror has been attributed to its setting. But the setting does have a
double impotence, descriptive and symbolic. Poe introduces plain life in
its most rudimentary form, underscoring the miasmic elements in the tale. The
story connects plot and setting so that they seem one. From the first sentence
to the last, the mood of desolation and impending doom never leaves. Poe used
the principal of analogy very effectively in House of Usher. Finding an
identical pattern in each the house and the family, he makes the events in the
book being read correspond to those going on in the house. The entire opening
scene is steeped in blackness and melancholy.(Neilson, 197, Buranelli, 62)
Another of Poe’s writing techniques is anima. Anima is giving a character
quality of having an animal spirit. Madeline Usher is the anima figure in the
story Poe’s use of symbolism in his gothic stories is a guiding thread to his
literary art. That he is not persistently a symbolist is one of his strengths,
for it means that he only turns to symbolism when it has a distinct role to
play
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