The House of Usher

Essay by vinni119 March 2003

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The various settings in the story "The House of Usher"

In the story The House of Usher, Poe uses the mood and the setting to create the ups and downs of a great horor story. By changing the mood througout the story keeps the readers in suspense the whole time. It is a book that when you read it, you actually get sucked in and you believe that it is really you instead of Roderick. The atmosphere always describes the feelings both Roderick and Usher have in the story. Sometimes it could be calm, while other times it becomes scary and unpredictible. The change starts off in the beginning of the book and never stops changing until the book is over.

The atmosphere of the book starts off very bleak in the very beginning. When Roderick approaches the house, you can sense how evil and unsafe this visit is going to be.

Poe talks about the house saying "with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit" (718). He further descibes the house as a place that nobody would want to visit. "I looked upon the scene before me--upon the mere house, and the simple landscape features of the domain--upon the bleak walls--upon the vacant eye-like windows--upon a few rank sedges--and upon a few white trunks of decayed trees--with an utter depression of soul which I can compare to no earthly sensation more properly that to the after-dream of the reveller upon opium--the biter lapse into common life-the hideous dropping off of the veil" (718). This description alone makes you feel that its a place that life is gone. That whoever lives there, has no will to live or knows that its a bleak situation no matter what. Roderick approaches this house...