In “The Fall of the House of Usher,” Poe creates an allegory for mental illness using setting. This effect is created mainly through tone and word choice. Keeping the setting in one place allows Poe to create a powerful image for the reader, not only literally, but figuratively and metaphorically as well.
It is difficult to see mental illness in a person, but the imagery Poe employs of the house as an allegory for this state allows the reader to understand what is happening inside of Usher’s head. Throughout the story, there are many commonalities seen between both the environment and the mental illness that encompass Roderick Usher. For example, in the beginning of the story, the house is seen as old and worn. The narrator explains it as being …show more content…
Prominent of tones are gloom, isolation, and mystery. The word choice employed by Poe is very deliberate to create the tone in this piece. The house immediately pervades the speaker with “insufferable gloom”(1) and “unredeemed dreariness”(1), this indicates immediately the tone of the story as one of darkness and gloom. The apprehensive tone created in this initial description outside the house is validated inside the home as well. The inside of the house is described as filled with “sombre tapestries”(3) and describes the “ebon blackness”(3) of the floors. The dark tone that is felt in the house …show more content…
The lighting inside the house is a weak, red light that filters in through the windows, “at so vast a distance from the black oaken floor as to be altogether inaccessible.”(3-4). The inaccessibility to the light of the outside world can be interpreted as a parallel to Usher’s depression. There is just enough light to distinguish the rooms, and in the same way Usher is just sane enough to distinguish that he is mentally unwell. Although Usher knows he is not well, mental stability is too unobtainable for how deep Usher has sunk within his own mind. This is shown best by the light from the windows, which “struggle[s] in vain to reach the remoter angles of the chamber... ”(4) which exemplifies how hope and stability cannot truly reach Usher’s mind, despite best efforts. This passage about the light from the windows can be seen mirrored later in the text, when the narrator reflects upon “the futility of all attempt at cheering a mind from which darkness, as if an inherent positive quality, poured forth upon all objects of the moral and physical universe.”(6) The futility of trying to illuminate something that radiates darkness is echoed in both scenes. The word choice is also important in these two scenes, as the speaker describes the “recesses of [Roderick’s] spirit”(6) as well as “ the recesses of the vaulted and fretted ceiling.”(4) The repetition of the word recesses reinforces the parallel
It is difficult to see mental illness in a person, but the imagery Poe employs of the house as an allegory for this state allows the reader to understand what is happening inside of Usher’s head. Throughout the story, there are many commonalities seen between both the environment and the mental illness that encompass Roderick Usher. For example, in the beginning of the story, the house is seen as old and worn. The narrator explains it as being …show more content…
Prominent of tones are gloom, isolation, and mystery. The word choice employed by Poe is very deliberate to create the tone in this piece. The house immediately pervades the speaker with “insufferable gloom”(1) and “unredeemed dreariness”(1), this indicates immediately the tone of the story as one of darkness and gloom. The apprehensive tone created in this initial description outside the house is validated inside the home as well. The inside of the house is described as filled with “sombre tapestries”(3) and describes the “ebon blackness”(3) of the floors. The dark tone that is felt in the house …show more content…
The lighting inside the house is a weak, red light that filters in through the windows, “at so vast a distance from the black oaken floor as to be altogether inaccessible.”(3-4). The inaccessibility to the light of the outside world can be interpreted as a parallel to Usher’s depression. There is just enough light to distinguish the rooms, and in the same way Usher is just sane enough to distinguish that he is mentally unwell. Although Usher knows he is not well, mental stability is too unobtainable for how deep Usher has sunk within his own mind. This is shown best by the light from the windows, which “struggle[s] in vain to reach the remoter angles of the chamber... ”(4) which exemplifies how hope and stability cannot truly reach Usher’s mind, despite best efforts. This passage about the light from the windows can be seen mirrored later in the text, when the narrator reflects upon “the futility of all attempt at cheering a mind from which darkness, as if an inherent positive quality, poured forth upon all objects of the moral and physical universe.”(6) The futility of trying to illuminate something that radiates darkness is echoed in both scenes. The word choice is also important in these two scenes, as the speaker describes the “recesses of [Roderick’s] spirit”(6) as well as “ the recesses of the vaulted and fretted ceiling.”(4) The repetition of the word recesses reinforces the parallel