Nov 14, 2009

The Fall of the House of Usher | Overview

"The Fall of the House of Usher" is one of Poe's most popular short stories. Moreover, analyzing this story provides a basis for understanding Poe's gothicism and his literary theories. As in all of Poe's short stories, "The Fall of the House of Usher" concentrates on a "single effect"—in this case, the degeneration and decay of the Usher house and family. In the story's opening, for example, the narrator comments upon the "insufferable gloom" that pervades his being as he notices the "few rank sedges," the "white trunks of decayed trees," the unruffled luster of the "black and lurid...