The Fall Of The House Of Usher And House Taken Over Short Story

The short stories “The Fall of the House of Usher” by Edgar Allan Poe and “House Taken Over” by Julio Cortazar are two well known works of literature that encompass unique literary styles. Poe utilizes Gothic literature in his story, a style of writing that incorporates elements of darkness, gloom, drama, and intense descriptions. On the other hand, Cortazar uses Magical Realism and its realistic characters, setting, and fantastic and unusual events to tell his tale. Despite the two being completely different genres, they share many similar traits, specifically relating to fear.

Fear is among one of the most universal human emotions that everyone is interconnected at one point or another during their lifetime. In the gothic stories, “The Fall of the House of Usher” and “House Taken Over” written by Edgar Allan Poe and Julio Cortazar respectively. Edgar Allen Poe writes about how the character Mr. Usher, who because of his mental illness and delusions, cannot come to terms with his reality. Cortazar writes about the relationship between a brother and sister who have normal everyday lives and have strange and odd nightmare that haunts them. The

Throughout the short story, “The Fall of the House of Usher”, there are many examples to explain why your imagination can lead you out of the real world. Such as, “...with an utter depression of soul, which I can compare to no earthly sensation more properly than to the after – dream of the reveler upon opium – the bitter lapse into every day life…”(Poe 14). When the narrator enters the house, he notices that everything is out of the ordinary and unrealistic, because it is dying. Therefore, Usher’s imagination is what makes the narrator believe his sister may still be apart of the home and has come to haunt it. “The writer spoke of acute bodily illness- of a mental disorder which oppressed him- and of an earnest desire to see me, as his best and indeed his only personal friend...”(Poe 14). If he is explaining someone has a mental, than there is a high chance that it is the mind playing tricks on him. Which allows one to believe there is something to fear. Not only

In “The Fall of the House of Usher,” the characters' imagination overcomes reasoning when they have anxiety. When the narrator first receives the

Edgar Allan Poe used fear to attract his readers into his gothic world. Poe realized that fear intrigues as well as frightens, and sew it as a perfect motif for many of his stories, particularly The Fall of the House of Usher. Poe emphasized the mysterious, desolate, and gloomy surroundings throughout the story to set up the fear that got the reader involved. Then he extended the fear to the characters in order to reveal the importance of facing and overcoming fear. Poe suggested in the story that the denial of fears can lead to madness and insanity. This has clearly shown through the weakening of Roderick Usher's mind and the resulting impact on the narrator of the story.

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 human imagination is a powerful tool that sometimes is very hard to control, if it can be controlled at all. In The Fall of the House of Usher, Edgar Allan Poe uses imagination as a key tool to make the story come to life.

Imagination can overcome reason in many ways within gothic literature but also in personal experiences too. Imagination can overcome reason as shown in the poem “The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe, within this poem the narrator hears an unknown knocking at his chamber door, the next text “The Fall of the House of Usher” by Edgar Allan Poe, the narrator goes and takes care of a mentally ill childhood friend and my personal experience of fear when I heard the knocking in my room.

A Sense of Tension in The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe

In the story, “The Fall of The House of Usher”, there are many mysterious happenings that go on throughout the story between the characters Roderick Usher and the narrator. Throughout the story, Edgar Allan Poe uses themes such as madness and insanity to connect the house back to Roderick Usher. In the “Fall of The House of Usher”, the narrator goes through many different experiences when arriving to the house. The narrator’s experiences start out as almost unnoticeable in the beginning, turn into bigger ones right before his eyes, and end up becoming problems that cause deterioration of the mind and the house before the narrator even decides to do anything helpful for Roderick and his mental illness. In “The Fall of The

Edgar Allen Poe’s short story, “The Fall of the House of Usher”, sets a tone that is dark, gloomy, and threatening. His inclusion of highly descriptive words and various forms of figurative language enhance the story’s evil nature, giving the house and its inhabitants eerie and “supernatural” qualities. Poe’s effective use of personification, symbolism, foreshadowing, and doubling create a morbid tale leading to, and ultimately causing, the fall of (the house of) Usher.

The narrator of the story “The Fall of the House of Usher” is a interesting character. Throughout the story the narrator interacts with Roderick and Madeline and witnesses their mental illnesses and Rodericks physical illness and how the incest between their ancestors have caused major problems in the family. What the narrator witnesses in the story is traumatic and in certain ways very life changing or altering. As a result of the events that occur in the Usher family home the narrator becomes unreliable as a narrator. The narrator is unreliable as a narrator because of the traumatic events that occur in the Usher family house and how they could have compromised the narrator's credibility as a narrator by changing or traumatizing him, and the events that occurred right before the Usher family house collapsed.

In “The Fall of the House of Usher” the story starts with the narrator saying that he is overcome with a feeling of gloom upon first seeing the house. He compares the windows to vacant eyes. The narrator goes on to tell how the house appears to him but then tries to explain it away as his overactive imagination.

In “Fall of House of Usher” the narrator explains the health of Usher”I learned, moreover, at intervals, and through broken and equivocal hints, another singular feature of his mental condition…he had never ventured forth..” (). Usher is very anti social because of the fear that is In his mind he is also mentally ill.In “House taken over” the second short story which will also support my opinion in the story the author said that”We Didn 't wait to look at one another.I took Irene 's arm and forced her to run with me to the wrought‐iron door,not waiting to look back.It explains how the narrator did not think logically and just did what he thought was right at that point.He might have imagined something that was actually not real. Instead of getting the invaders out of their house both the narrator and Irene let them take our their house.This is a very good example of how fear controlled their minds,how they started to imagine things.

In Angela Carter’s “The Lady of the House of Love” and Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher,” reason is shown to be inadequate in explaining the apparitions that appear. The insufficiency of reason shrouds events in mystery, and instills fear and apprehension in both the characters and the audience. There are figures present in each story who represent logic and reason and firmly believe that supernatural elements do not exist, and their attempts to rationalize the anomalies that face them are futile. In Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher,” reason is insufficient to explain abnormal occurrences, as with Carter’s “The Lady of the House of Love,” but while Usher and the narrator’s emotions in Poe’s story are relatively