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Single Effect In The Fall Of The House Of Usher

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The Ways the Single Effect is created in “The Fall of the House of Usher” Edgar Allen Poe is a critic of short stories and poetry, and often puts his own theories into his writing. Edgar Allen Poe’s, “The Fall of the House of Usher,” falls into this category in the idea of the single effect. The short story starts with the Narrator going to visit his old friend, Roderick Usher because of a letter Roderick writes to him. The Narrator goes to the house and spends time with Usher, but all starts to go array when Roderick thinks his sister is dead and buries her. She comes out of her tomb and jumps at Usher and the House of Usher falls and Roderick dies. Poe argues that all short stories should have a single effect; a feeling the author should make the reader feel. The single effect of “The Fall of the House of Usher” is terror. Poe creates the single effect of terror through the settings, characters, and elements of the story. He does this through the setting of Usher’s room and Madeline’s tomb; through the characters of Roderick and Madeline Usher; and through the element of the Haunted Palace. The single effect of terror is created in the settings of Roderick Usher’s room …show more content…

Before the Narrator enters Roderick’s room, he walks through the house and describes it. The Narrator sees the darkness in the house when he notices, “ the ebon blackness of the floors” (Poe 297). He describes a gloomy black floor to give a description of uneasiness and terror for the reader to attribute to the whole house. The Narrator also describes a feeling of a ghost in the house among trophies that are moving, “trophies which rattled as I strode” (Poe 297). This feeling of terror is created for the reader to imagine when he or she felt objects moving, scaring him or her. The rattling that the Narrator notices is something that the reader relates to feeling further creating a single effect for the

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