Example research essay topic: House Of Usher Fall Of The House - 1,034 words

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Gothic Setting The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe has a gothic horror story setting. Gothic means that the author emphasizes the mysterious, the horrible, the ghostly and the fear that can be aroused in the reader. Everyone knows that a gothic story or a ghost story will often have a setting that will be in an old, decaying mansion far out in a desolate countryside. The mansion will be filled with cobwebs, strange noises, bats, and an abundance of secret panels and corridors, in which people might be running and screaming in terror. The author uses every literary trick to give us an eerie sensation or to scare us if we hear an unexpected noise. The great descriptions of the mansion and the secret passageways are created for one reason and that is to give us a sense of the ghostly and the supernatural.

In The Fall of the House of Usher Poe utilizes many of the aspects of the gothic horror story. In addition to the gothic elements in the story, there is also a sense of remoteness and a sense of indefiniteness. This reason for that is because we are never told where The Fall of the House of Usher takes place in terms of setting because the house could be anywhere. The house could be in Ireland, Scotland, or even in Transylvania. This story takes place anywhere as long as the area is remote to the reader, removed from his or her everyday environment. In the story, the time is also set somewhere in the indefinite past because it cannot be in the present era, due to the setting of the castle.

One of the main aims of the story is to create the single affect of Bajaj 2 an eerie and ghostly atmosphere, and to do this the story emphasizes the physical aspects of the various structures in it. Such as the deep caverns or vaults where the Lady Madeline is buried: The vault in which we placed it (and which had been so long unopened that our torches, half smothered in its oppressive atmosphere, gave us little opportunity for investigation) was small, damp, and entirely without means of admission for light; lying at great depth, immediately beneath that portion of the building in which was my own sleeping apartment. The whole interior of a long archway through which we reached it, were carefully sheathed with copper. The door, of massive iron, had been, also, similarly protected. Its immense weight caused an unusually sharp grating sound as it moved upon its hinges (Poe, 1353). In the story there is a super-sensitive hero who is a person that cannot function well in the normal world.

Roderick Usher has a super-sensitivity to the point of maladjustment because of his undefined illness: He suffered much from a morbid acuteness of the senses; the most insipid food was alone endurable; he could wear only garments of certain texture; the odors of all flowers were oppressive; his eyes were tortured by even a faint light; and there were but peculiar sounds, and these from stringed instruments, which did not inspire him with horror (1348). Often in the gothic story, the characters seem to posses some sort of psychic communication; this usually occurs between a member of the living world and a living corpse. In The Fall of the House of Usher this kind of communication exists between Roderick Usher and his twin sister, Lady Madeline: Not hear it? -Yes, I hear it, and have heard it. Long-long-long-many minutes, many hours, many days, have I heard it-yet I dared not-oh, pity me; miserable wretch that I am! -Dared not-I Bajaj 3 dared not speak!

We have put her living in the tomb! Said I not that my senses were acute? -I now tell you that I heard her first feeble movements in the hollow coffin. I heard them many, many days ago-yet I dared not-I dared not speak Madman! I tell you that she now stands without the door! (1357). One of the main points of a gothic horror story is the possibility of returning to life after one is dead, and that is be inhabiting ones own corpse. Poe uses this effect to its very best because the story climaxes with such an incident.

So to this purpose Poe created the return of the entombed and living corpse of the Lady Madeline, in which we see a superhuman strength to live even after death. She overcomes the most impossible barriers of the mortal world in order to live and that is to return from her tomb: It appeared to me that, from some very remote portion of the mansion, there came, indistinctly, to my ears, what might have been, in its exact similarity of character, the echo of the very cracking and ripping Here again I paused abruptly, and now with a feeling of wild amazement-for there could be no doubt whatever that, in this instance, I did actually hear a low and apparently distant, but harsh, protracted, and most unusual screaming or grating sound No sooner had these syllables passed my lips, than-as if a shield of brass had indeed, at the moment, fallen heavily upon a floor of silver-I became aware of a distinct, hollow, metallic and clangorous yet apparently muffled reverberation It was the work of the rushing gust-but then without those doors there DID stand the lofty and enshrouded figure of the lady Madeline of Usher. There was blood upon her white robes, and the evidence of some bitter struggle upon every portion of her emaciated frame (155 - 1357). Bajaj 4 Poe stresses a strong emphasis on the life of the mind after death of the body. This is also true of the stories associated with the Dracula legends, where the focus is upon the continuation of the mind after the body has become a living corpse. Poe's emphasis in The Fall of the House of Usher stresses that one does not yield oneself to death except through a weakness of the will.

These are the reasons why The Fall of the House of Usher is considered to have a great gothic horror story setting.

Research essay sample on House Of Usher Fall Of The House