What Is The Syntax In The Fall Of The House Of Usher

Fear, horror, death, and gloom are prominent traits of Gothicism, a dark type of Romanticism, a style prominent throughout the 18th and 19th century. Edgar Allan Poe, a well-known gothic writer has written many works, two of his works, “The Fall of the House of Usher” and “The Pit and the Pendulum”, are perfect examples of gothic literature. In “The Fall of the House of Usher”, Poe introduces the Usher family, an ill and suffering family, both physically and mentally. With only two heirs left, Poe brings the reader through the tale behind the mental paranoidness of Roderick, and the strange physical illness of Madeline. In “The Pit and the Pendulum,” Poe introduces the judging of the narrator before sinister judges. The narrator suffers through …show more content…
Syntax is the author’s arrangement of words and phrases that make up each sentence. In Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher,” he uses diction and syntax to provide an effect on his readers, “Upon the remodelled and inverted images of the grey sedge, and the ghastly tree-stems, and the vacant and eye-like windows” (Poe 30-32). In this example, Poe’s diction and syntax, word choice and the arrangement of words, affect the reader. Poe uses words like “ghastly” and “vacant” to set an empty, sad, gloomy, and creepy mood upon the readers, making them feel a sad. Poe masterfully blends together his diction and syntax, entrancing the reader with the dark, and eerie scene. In Poe’s “The Pit and the Pendulum”, he uses diction and syntax to yet again, affect the reader, “Down—steadily down it crept. I took a frenzied pleasure in contrasting its downward with its lateral velocity… Down—certainly, relentlessly down! It vibrated within three inches of my bosom!.. Down—still unceasingly—still inevitably down! I gasped and struggled at each vibration... ” (Poe 15). Poe uses repetition and anaphora to start three paragraphs in a row with “Down—” effectively and completely exaggerating the narrator’s subconscious feeling of dropping down into an endless pit. As Poe repeats “down”, the reader feels agitation and questions the significance of the word “down”. At one point, the narrator nears the point …show more content…
Many romantic and gothic works have allegories and other symbolic measures in it. In “The Fall of the House of Usher”, the narrator studies the outside of the Usher mansion, noticing a large crack from the top of the house reaching the bottom, “Perhaps the eye of a scrutinizing observer might have discovered a barely perceptible fissure, which extending from the roof of the building in front, it makes its way down the wall in a zigzag direction, until it became lost in the sullen waters of the tarn” (Poe 95-98). When the narrator briefly mentions the crack or the fissure he sees on the wall, he thinks about how old the house is. In one view, the crack represents the house breaking down, yet it somewhat connects to the Usher family line. Roderick and Madeline are the two last surviving members, and when they die, the house collapses with them, almost as if their lives were tied together. Family is a key theme throughout the story. From earlier on, the narrator mentions how the Usher family tree was almost in a completely straight line, unlike most branching families. A straight line of a family tree means incest, the inner marriage within the family probably caused the illnesses of Roderick and Madeline. Another intake on the twins is that they were one together, Roderick was the mind, and Madeline was the body. Roderick is eager to get rid of his sister, perhaps believing with