Fall of usher's house - Essay Example

of the English of the Teacher 14 December The fall of the House of Usher The most noticeable thing in the story, The fall ofthe House of Usher is that the narrator never tries to contrive a clear understanding of things. Rather he subjectively interprets the situations, characters and settings in the story to make the readers fell more awed and confused. Instead of presenting concrete facts and insights, the narrator rather goes on to build on an overall mood of horror and apprehension. The primary objective of the narrator in this story is not to construct rational scenarios, but rather to play on the innate fears and anxieties of readers.

Readers are made to perceive the personality and the deteriorating mental condition of Usher through the narrator’s eyes. The fall of the House of Usher is a story in which the narrator exercises an immense control over readers. The narrator never even by chance drops in irrelevant or loose facts that may be used by readers to construct a parallel understanding of their own. Right from the very start, the narrator constructs an image of Usher, which appears to the unsuspecting readers as utterly strange and spooky.

In fact, the narrator goes on to build on these personality attributes of Usher, by conveying a personal understanding of him, through the spectacles of his childhood recollections. The whole idea is to highlight the utter ominous nature of the house of Usher and Usher’s mysterious relation to this rotting and isolated property. Instead of extending to readers a guided tour through the narrative, the narrator rather makes them a partner in his own personal stock of fears and apprehensions, as he says, “with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit (Poe 1).

” Each new facet of Usher’s personality revealed by the narrator further strengthens this feeling of dread. It is a fact that people seldom fear those things that they can clearly see and understand. So to make the story more intimidating, disturbing and horrid, the narrator makes it a point to stun the readers’ understanding by bombarding it with a range of sensations, fears and visions. The details provided by the narrator, like the gloomy and dark atmosphere in the house, the tattered and dusty furniture, and his dread that he has entered another world tend to build on a mood of awe, fear and expectation.

Moreover, in case of Madeline, the narrator allows readers only an apparition like brief glimpse of her, as he conveys, “I regarded her with an utter astonishment not unmingled with dread (Poe 1).” The narrator exploits human fear of the unknown by blocking a clear understanding of the characters in the story. No doubt, the narrator in The fall of the House of Usher strengthens the overall emotive appeal and impact of the story, by extending to readers a tampered and selective understanding of the various characters in the story.

Works CitedPoe, Edgar Allan. “The Fall of the House of Usher”. Project Gutenberg 2010. Web. 14 December 2014.