the fall of the house of usher compare and contrast essay

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Comparing "The Fall of The House of Usher" and "House Taken Over"

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Published: Aug 31, 2023

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Atmosphere and mood, themes of isolation and decay, narrative techniques: first-person vs. third-person, symbolism and allegory, exploration of the unseen and supernatural, cultural and historical contexts, conclusion: reflecting on dual dimensions of fear and mystery.

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Comparative Essay Example: The Fall of the House of Usher and House Taken Over

When reading a piece of literature there could be any type of mood. In two stories “The Fall of the House of Usher” and “House Taken Over” there were two very different moods. The connotations of each of these stories make each reader express a different feeling. In the story by Edgar Allen Poe “The Fall of the House of Usher”, we are introduced to Gothic literature. The story by Julio Cortazar, “House Taken Over”, we find Magical Realism. Even though the moods of these two stories are diverse they do have some similarities along with their differences. 

Gothic literature is a literary genre that began in England in the late 1700’s. This style refers to medieval times which were represented by being dark and gloomy. The story “The Fall of the House of Usher” was a piece of Gothic literature. In this story a brother, Rodrick Usher, and sister are both near death living in an eerie old house. Poe states in, “The Fall of the House of Usher” that “I know not how it was--but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit” (Poe 1). That evidence shows that the whole setting of this story is creepy and gloomy. Another example of this story being Gothic Literature is in paragraph 45 through 46 it exclaims “A sickly smile quivered about his lips; and I saw that he spoke low, hurried, and gibbering murmur, as if unconscious of my presence,” it then goes on to say, “We have put her living in the tomb.” These quotes are explaining how the brother in this story, Rodrick Usher, buried his sister alive. The effect this story has on the reader is appalling and intriguing at the same time. This story draws readers into the plot with use of words of a scary connotation to keep them wanting more. 

Magical realism is a literary genre closely related with some Latin American twentieth century authors. It came to terms as fantasy and reality that adds some unrealistic elements to real life. In “House Taken Over” there are many elements that make it a good example of Magical Realism. This story is what happens to a brother and sister spending their lives in a house together. In this short story it quotes, “We rose at seven in the morning and got the cleaning done, and about eleven I left Irene to finish off whatever rooms and went to the kitchen” (Cortazar 2).  This clearly shows the reality in the story because this happens all the time in everyday life. The next element expressed in the story is supernatural and unreal. In paragraph six of Cortazar's “House Taken Over” it states, “The sound came through muted and indistinct, a chair being knocked over onto the carpet or the muffled buzzing of a conversation.” This fantasy in this story is what makes it a good example of magical realism. The effect this story gives the reader is a mix between fiction and nonfiction, which makes the piece of literature enjoyable to read. 

Despite the different connotations of these stories, both stories have the same original storyline. Both “The Fall of the House of Usher” and “House Taken Over” there is a set of siblings, both sister and brother. The two pairs both live in old spacious houses that their family passed down to them. In “The Fall of the House of Usher” it quotes, “House of Usher--an appellation which seemed to include, in the minds of the peasantry who used it, both the family and the family mansion” (Poe 3). Also in “House Taken Over” it says, “...simple marriage of sister and brother was the indispensable end to a line established in this house by our grandparents” (Corazar 2). These two pieces of evidence show how these two pieces are similar. 

In conclusion, in “The Fall of the House of Usher” and “House Taken Over” there are two very different moods. Each story has its own connotation that it gives its reader. Poe’s story, “The Fall of the House of Usher”, introduces us to Gothic literature. In the story by Cortazar, “House Taken Over”, we find Magical Realism. Both stories are perfect examples of their literature type. Although the moods of these two stories are different, their stories are comparable.

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Compare & Contrast The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe

1830s: Common belief dictates that odors from water—such as the tarn outside the Usher house— could cause mental illness of the type suffered by Roderick Usher. Few, if any, effective treatments were available for mental illness

Today: Better understanding of the physiological causes of mental illness and a variety of medical therapies result in a vast improvement in the way the mentally ill are treated.

1830s: The deceased are commonly laid in-state at home for several days. Funeral homes are rare; families prepare and bury their loved ones themselves.

Today: Most people die in hospitals and wakes are most often held in churches or funeral homes.

1830s: Travel is difficult, slow, and sometimes dangerous. Railroads are in their infancy and most long distance travel is in horse-drawn wagons. It was not unusual for guests to stay several weeks or for an entire season...

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A Summary and Analysis of Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’

‘The Fall of the House of Usher’ is an 1839 short story by Edgar Allan Poe (1809-49), a pioneer of the short story and a writer who arguably unleashed the full psychological potential of the Gothic horror genre. The story concerns the narrator’s visit to a strange mansion owned by his childhood friend, who is behaving increasingly oddly as he and his twin sister dwell within the ‘melancholy’ atmosphere of the house.

‘The Fall of the House of Usher’ has inspired a range of interpretations: it has been analysed as proto-Freudian and proto-Kafkaesque, among many other things. The best way to approach the story is perhaps to consider its plot alongside the accumulation of detail Poe provides. Before we come to an analysis, however, here’s a brief summary of the plot of the story.

‘The Fall of the House of Usher’: plot summary

The story is narrated by a childhood friend of Roderick Usher, the owner of the Usher mansion. This friend is riding to the house, having been summoned by Roderick Usher, having complained in his letter that he is suffering from some illness and expressing a hope that seeing his old friend will lift his spirits.

When he arrives, the narrator finds a gloomy and vaguely menacing atmosphere, and his friend, Usher, is much changed since he last saw him: overly sensitive to every sound and sight, and prone to dramatic mood swings. Meanwhile, Roderick’s twin sister Madeline is afflicted with a disease which, Roderick tells the narrator, means she will soon die. These twins are the last in the family line, the last descendants of the ‘house of Usher’.

Roderick Usher is a gifted poet and artist, whose talents the narrator praises before sharing a poem Usher wrote, titled ‘ The Haunted Palace ’. The ballad concerns a royal palace which was once filled with joy and song, until ‘evil things’ attacked the king’s palace and made it a desolate shadow of what it once was.

Several days later, Roderick tells the narrator that Madeline has died, and they lay her to rest in a vault. In the days that follow, the narrator starts to feel more uneasy in the house, and attributes his nervousness to the gloomy furniture in the room where he sleeps. The narrator begins to suspect that Roderick is harbouring some dark secret.

Roderick grows more erratic in his behaviour, and the narrator reads to his friend to try to soothe him. The plot of the romance (a fictional title invented by Poe himself, called ‘Mad Trist’) concerns a hero named Ethelred who enters the house of a hermit and slays a dragon.

In a shocking development, Madeline breaks out of her coffin and enters the room, and Roderick confesses that he buried her alive. Madeline attacks her brother and kills both him and herself in the struggle, and the narrator flees the house. It is a stormy night, and as he leaves he sees the house fall down, collapsing into the lake which reflects the house’s image.

‘The Fall of the House of Usher’: analysis

‘The Fall of the House of Usher’ is probably Edgar Allan Poe’s most famous story, and in many ways it is a quintessential Gothic horror story. We have a mysterious secret afflicting the house and eating away at its owner, the Gothic ‘castle’ (here, refigured as a mansion), premature burial (about which Poe wrote a whole other story ), the mad owner of the house, and numerous other trappings of the Gothic novel. Poe condenses these into a short story and plays around with them, locating new psychological depths within these features.

How does he play around with them? First, Poe renders them ambiguous rather than clear-cut. Indeed, there are no overtly supernatural elements in ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’: just a general sense of something not being quite right. Many things in the story are, to use a term later popularised by Sigmund Freud, ‘ uncanny ’: simultaneously familiar yet unfamiliar; another key element of the uncanny is the secret which ‘out to have remained secret and hidden but has come to light’.

The secret that is buried and then comes to light (represented by Madeline) is never revealed. The symbol which represents the secret – Madeline herself – is hidden away by Roderick, but that symbol returns, coming to light at the end of the story and (in good Gothic fashion) destroying the family for good.

But Madeline is, if you like, a signifier without a signified: that is, she is a symbol with no code. She represents a secret, but what that secret is (an unseemly relationship between her and her brother, or some dark secret from the family’s past?) does remain hidden. The secret, as it were, remains a secret even when it is ‘revealed’.

Doubling is another aspect of the ‘uncanny’, because seeing our double is both a familiar and a strange experience. This person both is and is not me; this reflection of the house in the lake or ‘tarn’ looks exactly like the house and yet clearly is but an image of the house. And doubling is very important in ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’, as it is in other Poe stories: witness his tale ‘ William Wilson ’, which plays around with this idea of the doppelganger or mysterious double.

And virtually everything seems doubled in ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’: the title itself has a double meaning (where the ‘house’, or family of Usher falls, but the literal bricks-and-mortar structure also collapses), the house is reflected or doubled in the lake, Roderick and Madeline are twins or ‘doubles’ of a sort, and the plot of the ‘Mad Trist’ mirrors or doubles Roderick’s own situation.

‘The Fall of the House of Usher’ can also be analysed as a deeply telling autobiographical portrait, in which Roderick Usher represents, or reflects, Poe himself. After all, Roderick Usher is a poet and artist, well-read (witness the assortment of books which he and the narrator read together), sensitive and indeed overly sensitive (to every sound, taste, sight, touch, and so on). Many critics have interpreted the story as, in part, an autobiographical portrait of Poe himself, although we should be wary, perhaps, of speculating too much about any parallels.

For instance, it has sometimes been suggested that Roderick’s relationship with Madeline echoes Poe’s own relationship with his young wife (who was also his cousin), Virginia, who fell ill, as Madeline has. But Virginia did not fall ill until after Poe had written ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’.

An interpretation which has more potential, then, is the idea that the ‘house of Usher’ is a symbol of the mind, and it is this analysis which has probably found the most favour with critics. Sigmund Freud would, over half a century after Poe was writing, do more than anyone else to delineate the structure of the conscious and unconscious mind, but he was not the first to suggest that our conscious minds might hide, or even repress, unconscious feelings, fears, neuroses, and desires.

Indeed, it was the German Romantic philosopher Friedrich Schelling (1775-1854) who distinguished between the conscious and unconscious mind in his early work System of Transcendental Idealism (1800), labelling the latter Unbewusste (i.e. ‘unconscious’). The term ‘unconscious’ was then introduced into English by the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834). The notion that we might have both a ‘conscious’ and an ‘unconscious’ mind, then, was already in circulation when Poe was writing ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’.

Might we then interpret Roderick as a symbol of the conscious mind – struggling to conceal some dark ‘secret’ and make himself presentable to his friend, the narrator – and Madeline as a symbol of the unconscious? Note how Madeline is barely seen for much of the story, and the second time she appears she is literally buried (repressed?) within the vault.

However, Roderick cannot keep her hidden for long, and she bursts out again in a frenzy – much as Freud would later argue our unconscious drives and desires cannot be wholly repressed and will find some way of making themselves known to us (such as through dreams).

Note that such an analysis of ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’ complements the uncanny elements in the story: the secret which ought to have remain hidden but has come to light is something deep within the unconscious which has broken out.

But when our unconscious breaks out and communicates with us, it usually does so in ways which are coded: ways which reveal, without revealing, the precise nature of our desires and fears. (As the theatre critic Kenneth Tynan once quipped, ‘a neurosis is a secret that you don’t know you are keeping’.)

Dreams, for instance, are the way our unconscious mind communicates with our conscious mind, but in such a way which shrouds or veils their message in ambiguous symbolism and messages.

If the unconscious did communicate with us clearly and openly, it would overwhelm and destroy us. Perhaps that is what happens at the end of ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’: Roderick comes face-to-face with his darkest unconscious, and it destroys him.

And this explains why both Madeline and Roderick are destroyed: the mind, both conscious and unconscious, is killed at once. The house (the body which houses the mind?) cannot function without the mind, so it must also be destroyed.

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Home › Literature › Analysis of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher

Analysis of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on May 24, 2021

Long considered Edgar Allan Poe ‘s masterpiece, “The Fall of the House of Usher” continues to intrigue new generations of readers. The story has a tantalizingly horrific appeal, and since its publication in Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine, scholars, critics, and general readers continue to grapple with the myriad possible reasons for the story’s hold on the human psyche. These explanations range from the pre-Freudian to the pre–Waste Land and pre-Kafka-cum-nihilist to the biographical and the cultural. Indeed, despite Poe’s distaste for Allegory, some critics view the house as a Metaphor for the human psyche (Strandberg 705). Whatever conclusion a reader reaches, none finds the story an easy one to forget.

Poe’s narrative technique draws us immediately into the tale. On a stormy autumn (with an implied pun on the word fall ?) evening, a traveler—an outsider, like the reader—rides up to the Usher mansion. This traveler, also the first-person narrator and boyhood friend of Roderick Usher, the owner of the house, has arrived in response to a summons from Usher. We share the narrator’s responses to the gloomy mood and the menacing facade of the House of Usher, noticing, with him, the dank lake that reflects the house (effectively doubling it, like the Usher twins we will soon meet) and apprehensively viewing the fissure, or crack, in the wall. Very soon we understand that, whatever else it may mean, the house is a metaphor for the Usher family itself and that if the house is seriously flawed, so are its occupants.

With this foreboding introduction, we enter the interior through a Gothic portal with the narrator. With him we encounter Roderick Usher, who has changed drastically since last the narrator saw him. His cadaverous appearance, his nervousness, his mood swings, his almost extrahuman sensitivity to touch, sound, taste, smell, and light, along with the narrator’s report that he seems lacking in moral sense, portrays a deeply troubled soul. We learn, too, that his twin sister, Madeline, a neurasthenic woman like her brother, is subject to catatonic trances. These two characters, like the house, are woefully, irretrievably flawed. The suspense continues to climb as we go deeper into the dark house and, with the narrator, attempt to fathom Roderick’s malady.

Roderick, a poet and an artist, and Madeline represent the last of the Usher line. They live alone, never venturing outside. The sympathetic narrator does all he can to ease Roderick’s hours, recounting a ballad by Roderick, which, entitled “The Haunted House,” speaks figuratively of the House of Usher: Evil and discord possess the house, echoing the decay the narrator has noticed on the outside. During his stay Roderick tells the narrator that Madeline has died, and together they place her in a vault; she looks deceptively lifelike. Thereafter Roderick’s altered behavior causes the narrator to wonder whether he hides a dark secret or has fallen into madness. A week or so later, as a storm rages outside, the narrator seeks to calm his host by reading to him a romance entitled “The Mad Trist.” The title could be evidence that both the narrator’s diagnoses are correct: Roderick has a secret (perhaps he has trysted with his own sister?) and is now utterly mad. The tale unfolds parallel to the action in the Usher house: As Ethelred, the hero of the romance, breaks through the door and slays the hermit, Madeline, not dead after all, breaks though her coffin. Just before she appears at the door, Roderick admits that they have buried her alive and that she now stands at the door. Roderick’s admission is too late. Just as Ethelred now slays the dragon, causing the family shield to fall at his feet, Madeline falls on her brother (the hermit who never leaves the house), killing them both and bringing down the last symbol of the House of Usher. As the twins collapse in death together, the entire house disintegrates into the lake, destroying the double image noted at the opening of the story.

The story raises many questions tied to gender issues: Is Madeline Roderick’s female double, or doppelgänger? If, as many critics suggest, Roderick is Poe’s self-portrait, then do Madeline and Roderick represent the feminine and masculine sides of the author? Is incest at the core of Roderick’s relationship with Madeline? Is he (like his creator, some would suggest) a misogynist? Feminists have for some time now pointed to Poe’s theory that the most poetic subject in the world is the “Death of a Beautiful Woman.” Is Madeline’s return from the tomb a feminist revenge story? Does she, as the Ethelred of the romance does, adopt the male role of the hero as she slays the evil hermit and the evil dragon, who together symbolize Roderick’s character? Has the mad Roderick made the narrator complicit in his crime (saying we rather than I buried her alive)? If so, to what extent must we view him as the unreliable narrator? Is the narrator himself merely reporting a dream—or the after-effects of opium, as he vaguely intimates at points in the story? Or, as the critic and scholar Eugene Current-Garcia suggests, can we generally agree that Poe, like Nathaniel Hawthorne, was haunted by the presence of evil? If so, “perhaps most of his tales should be read as allegories of nightmarish, neurotic states of mind” (Current-Garcia 81). We may never completely plumb the psychological complexities of this story, but it implies deeply troubling questions and nearly endless avenues for interpretation.

Analysis of Edgar Allan Poe’s Stories

BIBLIOGRAPHY Current-Garcia, Eugene. The American Short Story before 1850. Boston: Twayne, 1985. May, Charles E. Edgar Allan Poe: Studies in the Short Fiction. Boston: Twayne, 1991. Poe, Edgar Allan. “The Fall of the House of Usher.” In The Heath Anthology of American Literature. Vol. 1, 3rd ed. Edited by Paul Lauter. Boston: Houghton Miffl in, 1998. Strandberg, Victor. “The Fall of the House of Usher.” In Reference Guide to Short Fiction, edited by Noelle Watson. Detroit: Gale Press, 1994.

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The Fall of the House of Usher

Background of the story.

Hezekiah Usher House could provide a source of inspiration for Poe’s story. The house was located in the Usher estate. The house was built in 1684 and was relocated in 1830. The sources indicate that the owner of the house caught a sailor and his young wife in the house and entombed them in their place of trysting. In 1830, when the house was torn down, two bodies were found in the cellar cavity.

The Fall of the House of Usher Summary

The short story opens with an unnamed narrator who approaches House of Usher on the dark, dull, and soundless day. The house belongs to his boyhood friend Roderick Usher. The house is mysterious and gloomy. The narrator noticed the diseased atmosphere and absorbed evil in the house from the murky pond and decaying trees around the house. He also observes that even though the house appears to be decaying, its structure is fairly solid. In front of the building, there is no small crack from the roof to the ground.

Madeline dies, and Roderick resolves to bury her in the house temporarily. Since her disease was rare and unique, he fears that the doctors may take her dead body scientific research, so he wants to keep her in house. The narrator helps his friend to put Madeline’s body in the tomb and observes that her cheeks are rosy. He also realizes that Madeline and Roderick were twins.

Roderick Usher

Madeline usher, unnamed narrator.

The story deals with the family that is so remote and isolated from the world that they have developed their own non-existing barriers to interact with the world outside. The house of Usher has its own reality and is governed by its own rules, with people having no interest in others. This extreme isolation makes the family closer and closes to the extent that they become inexplicable to the outside world.

Literary Analysis

The readers are left alone with the narrator as it is such a haunted place. Even though the narrator is the boyhood friend of Roderick, he does not know much about him – even he does not know the basic fact about him that he has a twin sister. Poe makes the readers ponder on why Roderick contacts the narrator in his state of need and the persistence of the response of the narrator.

Poe also creates confusion between the inanimate and living objects by doubling the house of Usher to the genetic family line of the Usher family. The narrator refers to the house of Usher as the family line of the Usher Family.

Madeline appears to be suffering from the typical problems of nineteen-century women. All of her identity is invested in her body. While on the other hand, Roderick possesses intellectual powers. However, when Madeline comes out from the tomb, she possesses more power in the story and counteracts the weak, immobile, and nervous disposition of her brother.

“For a moment she remained trembling and reeling to and fro upon the threshold,—then, with a low moaning cry, fell heavily inward upon the person of her brother, and in her violent and now final death-agonies, bore him to the floor a corpse, and a victim to the terrors he had anticipated.”

Writing Style

Symbolism, imagery, allegory, reality and art, the house of usher.

The narrator tells the readers the term “The House of Usher” refers to the house and the family dwelling in the house and the Usher bloodline. The title does not only refer to the literal fall of the house but also to the fall of the Usher family with the death of Roderick Usher. The narrator mentions that Roderick and his sister Madeline are the only two surviving family members, so their death makes the death of the family line. 

The Small Fissure

The narrator, while entering the House of Usher, sees a small crack in the house, this crack not only refers to the crack in the house, but also the crack in the Usher family. There is a symbolic connection between the literal fissure and the metaphorical fissure. This small fissure shows disruption in the family, specifically between Roderick and Usher. This small fissure splits the family and the house of Usher. 

Narrator Point of View

The story “The House of Usher is narrated in the first person with the peripheral narrator. The narrator of the story is nameless, suggesting that his only job is to narrate the story. The readers are not provided much information about the narrator. Instead of focusing on the narrator, much of the interest of the readers are drawn towards the strange events that are being narrated. 

The narrator insists on portraying all of the happenings in the house of Usher with vivid and accurate descriptions. This description is one of the most interesting things to note and very futile to observe.  For example, the narrator writes that 

“I should fail in any attempt to convey an idea of the exact character of the studies, or of the occupations, in which he involved me.” 

One of the most interesting statements made by the narrator is:

Moreover, there is a mixture of reality and fiction in the narration. Whatever the narrator is reading aloud to Roderick also manifests in reality. Over here, the narrator tries to explain that words are insufficient to describe reality. The words he reads to Roderick Usher turns real. So one can say that the fictional words, read by the narrator to Roderick, are prophetic words that foreshadow or prophesize the upcoming events. These words are similar to the words of Roderick in which he prophesied his death early at the beginning of the story. Thus one can say the narration of the story is prophetic in nature.

More From Edgar Allan Poe

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92 The Fall of the House of Usher Essay Topics & Examples

Looking for The Fall of the House of Usher essay topics? A gothic fiction masterpiece by Edgar Allan Poe is worth analyzing!

• 🏰 Thesis Statements
• 🏆 A+ Essay Examples
• 📌 Essay Topics
• 👍 Thesis Ideas

❓ The Fall of the House of Usher Essay Questions

In your The Fall of the House of Usher essay, you might want to focus on the character analysis, themes, symbolism, or historical context of the short story. Whether you’ll have to write an analytical, explanatory, or critical assignment, this article will be helpful. Here we’ve gathered top title ideas, essay examples, and thesis statements on The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Poe.

🏰 The Fall of the House of Usher Thesis Statements

• The key themes of “The Fall of the House of Usher” by Edgar Poe are madness, isolation, family, and identity.
• Though “The Fall of the House of Usher” is told from first-person point of view, which is typical for Poe, the story is unique: its narrator remains nameless; we don’t know anything about their gender or physical features.
• The word choice and Poe’s writing style of “The Fall of the House of Usher” create a special atmosphere of horror and macabre.
• It is widely accepted that in “The Fall of the House of Usher,” Poe tells a story of his own madness.

🏆 A+ The Fall of the House of Usher Essay Examples

• The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe: The Role of the Narrator The role of the narrator of the story The Fall of the House of Usher is great indeed; his rationality and his ability to represent the events from the side of an immediate participant of […]
• Madeline in “The Fall of the House of Usher” by Poe Her personality seems perplexing because she appears only three times: toward the middle of the story she passes “through a remote portion of the apartment”; some days after her supposed death she is seen in […]
• “The Fall of the House of Usher” & “The Cask of Amontillado”: Summaries, Settings, and Main Themes As the narration progresses, fear arises in the reader or viewer, and finally, something horrific happens.”The Fall of the House of Usher” and “The Cask of the Amontillado” share all of the features above, as […]
• Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” In “The Fall of the House of Usher”, Poe portrays the Usher family as struggling to survive albeit in a gloomy manner that involves degradation, disease, and death.”The Fall of the House of Usher” is […]
• Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” and “The Black Cat” Meanwhile, in “The Fall of the House of Usher,” the burial of Madeline was the last farewell to send the woman to her grave.
• “The Birth-Mark” and “The Fall of the House of Usher” Poe in his work, The Fall of the House of Usher and Hawthorne in his work’ The Birthmark; they have employed different literary elements.
• Mini Anthology: Poe Edgar Allan and Dickson Emily’ Works The other story that Poe Allen has written is “The fall of the House of Usher” whereby the main theme is about the haunted house, which is crumbling and this aspects brings out a Gothic […]
• The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe Ideally, using the subjective understanding of Poe’s work, it is possible to evaluate some of the qualities of the story. At the same time, the setting of the story creates a lot of suspense for […]
• Edgar Allan Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart, The Cask of Amontillado, The Fall of the House of Usher In particular, we may analyze such novellas as The Tell-Tale Heart, The Cask of Amontillado, and The Fall of the House of Usher.
• Pure Rationality in Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” Finally, the destruction of the Usher’s house can be explained by the fact that its base was not solid and the change in weather conditions caused it destruction.
• Madness in “The Fall of the House of Usher” by Poe Poe uses a wide range of tools to create an uncomfortable mood, yet it is his ability to maintain the balance between reality and madness that shines through the whole story.
• “The Fall of the House of Usher” by Edgar Allan Poe Literature Analysis Although “The Fall of the House of Usher” is traditionally believed to be a timeless horror story and a representation of the deepest human fears, it can also be viewed both as a product of […]
• “The Fall of the House of Usher” and “Benito Cereno” The narrator appears surprised of the status of his friend’s house, with the inside appearing as spooky as the compound of the house.
• The Fall of the House of Usher Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher is a short story which makes the reader feel fear, depression and guilt from the very first page and up to the final scene.
• The Theme of Love: “The Two Kinds,” “The Fall of the House of Usher,” and “Hill Like White Elephants” In the “Two Kinds” there is some love between the mother and daughter. This love is depicted in the way the mother prevails upon her daughter to succeed in her studies.
• World’s Disintegration: “Young Goodman Brown” and “The Fall of the House of Usher” This is one of the similarities in the style of these writers. This is one of the main details that be identified.
• Evans, Walter. “The Fall of the House of Usher” and Poe’s Theory of the Tale. In this article, Walter Evans discusses the narrative style of Edgar Allan Poe and speaks about the peculiarities of such a short story as The Fall of the House of Usher.
• Comparing and Contrasting Good and Evil The essay is a critical examination of how evil and good are portrayed in two literatures; Shakespeare’s The Tempest and Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher.

📌 The Fall of the House of Usher Essay Topics

• The Feeling of Scare in “The Fall of the House of Usher” by Edgar Allan Poe
• Roderick Usher’s Status and Changing Conditions in “The Fall of the House of Usher” by Edgar Allan Poe
• Negative Adjectives in “The Fall of the House of Usher”
• The Transformation of the Protagonist in “The Fall of the House of Usher” by Poe, “Where Is Here” by Oates, and “The Dream Collector” by Tress
• The Importance of the Setting in “The Fall of the House of Usher” by Edgar Allan Poe
• The Application of Chiaroscuro in “The Scarlet Letter” and “The Fall of the House of Usher”
• Using the Narrator to Deepen the Tale in “The Fall of the House of Usher”
• The Gothic Images and Symbolic Motifs in Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher”
• Comparison of “Young Goodman Brown” and “The Fall of the House of Usher”
• Romantic Elements in “Frankenstein” and “The Fall of the House of Usher”
• An Analysis of the Imagery of the Supernatural in “The Fall of the House of Usher” by Edgar Allan Poe
• Women’s Role in “The Fall of the House of Usher”
• Setting in “The Fall of the House of Usher,” “The Raven,” and “The Oval Portrait” by Edgar Allan Poe
• Exploring the Theme Behind the Character Names in Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher”
• The Use of Symbolism in “The Fall of the House of Usher” by Edgar Allan Poe
• The Destruction of the Feminine and Triumph of Society: Homosexuality in Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher”
• Imagination and Hallucinations in “The Fall of the House of Usher” by Edgar Allan Poe
• Irrational Actions Caused by Imagination in “The Fall of the House of Usher” by Edgar Allan Poe

👍 The Fall of the House of Usher Thesis Ideas

• The Mockery of Transcendentalism in Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher”
• “The Fall of the House of Usher” and “The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allan Poe
• Psychoanalytical Approach to Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher”
• The Dark Themes of Horror, Death, and Romance in “The Fall of the House of Usher” by Edgar Allan Poe
• The Theme of Incest in “The Fall of the House of Usher”
• The Similarity of Roderick Usher and the Narrator in “The Fall of the House of Usher” by Edgar Allan Poe
• Irony, Imagination, and Description in “The Fall of the House of Usher” by Edgar Allan Poe
• Psycho Sexual Reading of “The Fall of the House of Usher”
• The First Person Point of View in “The Fall of the House of Usher” by Edgar Allan Poe
• Comparison of “The Fall of the House of Usher” and “The Tell Tale Heart”
• The Literary Elements Used by Edgar Allan Poe in “The Fall of the House of Usher”
• Feminism in “The Fall of the House of Usher” by Edgar Allan Poe
• Overcoming Reasoning Due to Imagination and Fear in “The Fall of the House of Usher” by Edgar Allan Poe
• The Psychology of Fear in “The Fall of the House of Usher” by Edgar Allan Poe
• Imagination and Mental Instability in “The Fall of the House of Usher” by Edgar Allan Poe
• The Reversal of Transcendental Philosophy in “The Fall of the House of Usher”
• A Journey Into the Darkness in “The Fall of the House of Usher”
• Imagination Overcome Fear in “The Fall of the House of Usher” by Edgar Allan Poe
• The Dual Nature of the Twins and the Conflict in “The Fall of the House of Usher” by Edgar Allan Poe
• The Character of Madeline in “The Fall of the House of Usher” by Edgar Allan Poe
• The Supernatural Atmosphere in “The Fall of the House of Usher” by Edgar Allan Poe
• Madness and Insanity in “The Fall of the House of Usher” and “The Cask of Amontillado”
• How Does Edgar Allan Poe Use the Supernatural to Create a Neurosis Narration in “The Fall of the House of Usher”?
• What Does the Storm at the End of “The Fall of the House of Usher” Symbolize?
• What Are the Fairy Tale Elements in “The Fall of the House of Usher”?
• To What Does the Narrator Compare the Windows of the House in “The Fall of the House of Usher”?
• Is “The Fall of the House of Usher” a True Story?
• What Is the True Identity of the Narrator in “The Fall of the House of Usher”?
• What Does the House of Usher Look Like in “The Fall of the House of Usher”?
• What Is the Climax of “The Fall of the House of Usher”?
• What Are Some Examples That Defy Logic in “The Fall of the House of Usher”?
• What Causes Roderick’s Death in “The Fall of the House of Usher”?
• What Is the Main Point of “The Fall of the House of Usher”?
• What Does Roderick Usher Represent in “The Fall of the House of Usher”?
• What Did Roderick Admit They Had Done Without the Visitor Knowing in “The Fall of the House of Usher”?
• How Does the Narrator React to Lady Madeline’s Death in “The Fall of the House of Usher”?
• What Is the Conflict of “The Fall of the House of Usher”?
• Does Imagination Overcome Fear in “The Fall of the House of Usher” by Edgar Allan Poe?
• Who Is to Blame for “The Fall of the House of Usher”?
• What Does Roderick Believe Is Causing His Illness in “The Fall of the House of Usher”?
• What Was the Main Reason Poe Dropped Out of West Point in “The Fall of the House of Usher”?
• How Are “Young Goodman Brown” and “The Fall of the House of Usher” Similar?
• Why Did Edgar Allan Poe Write “The Fall of the House of Usher”?
• How Far Does “The Fall of the House of Usher” Meet With the Conventions of Gothic Fiction?
• How Does Roderick Change After He Announces His Sister’s Death in “The Fall of the House of Usher”?
• What Is the Conclusion of “The Fall of the House of Usher”?
• How Is Fear Shown in “The Fall of the House of Usher”?
• What Are Five Examples of Gothic Elements in “The Fall of the House of Usher”?
• What Is the Recurring Symbolism in “The Fall of the House of Usher”?
• What Idea About the Relationship Between Art and Life Is Supported by These Elements of the Story “The Fall of the House of Usher”?
• Who Was a Tortured Character in “The Fall of the House of Usher”?
• What Is One of Roderick Usher’s Disturbing Ideas in “The Fall of the House of Usher”?
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IvyPanda. (2023, December 13). 92 The Fall of the House of Usher Essay Topics & Examples. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/the-fall-of-the-house-of-usher-essay-examples/

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IvyPanda . 2023. "92 The Fall of the House of Usher Essay Topics & Examples." December 13, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/the-fall-of-the-house-of-usher-essay-examples/.

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IvyPanda . "92 The Fall of the House of Usher Essay Topics & Examples." December 13, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/the-fall-of-the-house-of-usher-essay-examples/.

Home / Essay Samples / Literature / The Fall of The House of Usher / Examples Of Gothic Literature: “House Taken Over” And “The Fall Of The House Of Usher”

Examples Of Gothic Literature: "House Taken Over" And "The Fall Of The House Of Usher"

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