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Poe's Literature Induces Gothic Feelings and Moods

Poe's Literature Induces Gothic Feelings and Moods

When reading a work by Edgar Allan Poe, one is drawn into a strange and disturbing world. Poe was a very talented writer with a vigorous imagination, along with an immense writing talent. The reader can actually visualize step by step everything that is happening, which is a result of Poe’s unique style of writing. Poe mostly wrote poems and tales of dark and terror-inspiring subjects. Edgar Allan Poe’s unique use of setting, atmosphere, and symbolism reflect his gothic sensibilities.

In “The Fall of the House Of Usher,” Poe uses the setting to create an eerie, diseased, and bleak tale. As frightening as Poe describes it, the reader is curious to see what happens next. As you vision the narrator riding on horseback through the dreary wasteland, you can only imagine how he feels as he approaches the house. “ His first glimpse of the Usher mansion provokes a sense of insufferable gloom. As he describes it, the house resembles a giant face of skull with eyelike windows and hair like minute fungi that almost seem to hold the decayed building together, as well as a barely perceptible fissure that threatens to rip it apart” (Magill 293). The description of the house alone creates a gothic setting.

Inside the house “ An air of stern, deep, and irredeemable gloom hung over and pervaded all.” (Poe 211). The windows were long narrow and pointed, there were dark draperies hanging on the walls, black oaken floors, and the furniture was torn, comfortless, antiques. “The house of Usher is a symbol for that world which crawls and creeps in the depths of being” (Bender 86).

Poe uses the setting in “The Fall of the House of Usher” to create an atmosphere of gloom in the reader’s mind. He chooses every word carefully to create a dismal mood. The narrator says that the Usher mansion had “an atmosphere which had no affinity with the air of heaven, but which had reeked up from the decayed trees, and the gray wall, and the silent tarn” (Poe 210). It was nowhere near being beautiful, wholesome, or pleasant but rather dark, gloomy and gothic. Poe’s choice of words creates a very effective atmosphere in the story.

Characters also add to the effect of the atmosphere. As the reader...

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