Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque

Edgar Allan Poe is very often associated with darkness and for good reason. This world-famous eighteenth-century writer creates a mysterious atmosphere in almost all of his poetry and tales. According to author and self-named “Poe Enthusiast,” J. Gerald Kennedy, the “self-proclaimed need to conquer or die- succeed or be disgraced, drove Poe to stretch the boundaries of literary representation” (Kennedy xi). These writings vary in the storyline, but many of them include repetitive themes and…

The stories by Edgar Allen Poe that I chose to read were “The Masque of Red Death”, “The Fall of the House of Usher”, and “The Murders at Rue Morgue”. I chose to read the stories because of the titles. They had me interested and curious to see what the stories were and thus, I chose to read them. The characters in each story cope with death in different ways that are similar in some aspects. Poe’s work show the relationship between the characters and death and morality as one that is made of…

The short story “The Tell Tale Heart” by Edgar Allen Poe and the poem “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain” both share a central idea of madness. Poe develops the narrator’s madness in the beginning of the story and explains it throughout the story. But, Dickinson develops the narrator’s madness very slowly. Both writers develop the idea of madness by the use of repetition. Poe develops the central idea of madness through his use of repetition. In the beginning of the story, the narrator is trying to…

Edgar Allen Poe is known as the grandfather of horror in American Literature for being the first to use many of his signature styles in his work. The short story The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allen Poe is one of his stories containing a compelling atmosphere. The atmosphere is created by his settings and tone in the stories. The tone is very mysterious and is proven in his use of setting and plot development. The mysterious tone can be found throughout the entire story in the…

Edgar Allan Poe “became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity” relating himself to the character Roderick Usher in one of his amazing short stories, “The Fall of the House of Usher.” Poe had a depressing and heartbreaking life, which reflects in his writings, as he is known for horror and mystery stories. Edgar Allan Poe horrifyingly and ghastly reflects Roderick Usher’s creepy and eerie appearance to the decayed, “crumbling”, and lightless house magnificently revealing Roderick’s fear…

"Whenever you can’t balance what you see with what you believe you have conflict." (Shannon L. Alder) When you are faced with the decision of believing in what you are told or what you see, you can not always decide which one is true. In “”The Fall of the House of Usher”, by Edgar Allen Poe, the narrator struggles with wanting to help his friend, Roderick, but the state of Roderick’s estate worries him. The narrator wants to help Roderick and he knows that he is the only one that could help him…

“The Fall of the House of Usher”, by Edgar Allan Poe incorporates a rhythmic and opulent writing style that swiftly draws the reader into its dark and horror-like atmosphere. The rhythmic style of the story may be seen in the first sentence of the story; as it says, “During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day...when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone...through a singularly dreary tract of country…”. The first alliteration begins with the letter “D”…

Edgar Allan Poe is regarded as one of the greatest writers in American history. One of his famous works would be The Fall of the House of Usher. In this short story, the narrator is asked to go visit an old friend named Roderick Usher. When the narrator shows up, he notices the condition of the house is not the best. Usher is not in the best condition either. He is ill, and his sister is dying. Usher is mentally ill, knowing that he and his sister are the only Ushers left. He has no other family…

In this passage, after Richard Usher speaks his fears aloud, they are realized. “As if in the superhuman energy of his utterance there had been found the potency of a spell” implies that rather than the next event being what happens after, it is the direct aftermath, a result of cause and effect. This is a call back to the recurring theme of the supernatural being related to speech, like when the narrator read to Usher and each piece of imagery in the story manifested in the real world. The age…

In “The Fall of the House of Usher,” many conflicting theories exist on what is going on in this rather ambiguous story. Are the Ushers vampires, is it all just natural causes, or perhaps are they haunted? However, it is truly, none of these, for the abounding evidence favoring the house and the Ushers to be linked by a curse. Evidence such as the house, reflecting the condition of its residence or that it is stated that figures in robes of sorrow came and Madeline’s “resurrection” all lead to a…