The Fall of the House of Usher blog

Poe wrote mainly about death and his writing showed his feelingss on the subject. The characters in Poe's works often die or lose someone they care about. There are many displays of strong emotion throughout Poe's stories. He brought death into Romanticism and wrote about what people go through when death visits them. Romanticism shaped Poe by making him famous during this time period.
In "The Fall of the House of Ushers", emotion is shown by the character of Roderick Usher and the narrator. Roderick is very depressed because he knows he and his sister are both going to die soon. "I gazed upon him with a feeling of half pity, half awe" said the narrator about Roderick Usher. This quote shows some of the emotions that the narrator goes through in the story. Fear or terror is also a common emotion in this story. "It was no wonder that his conditoin terrified-that it infected me. I felt it creeping upon me, by slow yet certain degrees, the wild influences of his own fantastic yet impressive superstitions." This quote shows that Roderick's fear of his supposedly dead sister spread into our narrator's mind. Toward the end of the story fear is felt again by the narrator and Roderick as Madeline Usher, who is beleived to be dead, comes up from the basement. Roderick's fear is so great that it kills him. Our narrator manages to escape from the house unharmed. When the house collapses, though the narrator is safe, he is deeply saddened by the loss of his friend.
Poe wrote about a subject that wasn't very popular in that time. He showed the emotions that revolced around death and made this subject popular. Without Romanticism, Poe's works would have been more factual and less about fictional stories about death. Poe and Romanicism go hand in hand.



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