Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque

The literary works of Edgar Allan Poe often focus on characters that suffer from some form of mental or physical illness. In his poems and short stories, Poe uses repetition and extensive description to create a relevant atmosphere for the reader. This is especially evident in Poe 's “The Fall of the House of Usher”. Using a narrator to provide an account through a first person perspective, Poe tells a story of two friends whose sanity becomes exceedingly more questionable as the story continues. An unnamed narrator is visiting a friend, Roderick Usher, who summoned him to his home. Usher is in failing health and has requested help from the narrator. As he tells the story, Poe creates a sense of fear and uneasiness through his descriptions of the home, Usher’s behavior, and the degrading mental status of Roderick Usher, his sister Madeline Usher, and the narrator. As “The Fall of the House of Usher” opens, Poe provides the reader a detailed description of the house and environment in which it resides. The narrator describes the scene as “a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens” (Poe 890). Within the first line, Poe has already begun to setup the dark and depressed mood of the story. This is the first of eight occurrences of some form of the word “oppress”, used here to describe the clouds as having begun to “weigh on the mind, feelings, or senses” (OED 2) of the narrator. This is the reader 's first…

ridiculous, indeed, that I but mention it to show the vivid force of the sensations which oppressed me” (Poe). Mirroring is a success in exploiting claustrophobia in the narrator and reader. It isolates the reader from safety as the narrator avails oneself to inescapable death. The short story “The Fall of the House of Usher” by Edgar Allen Poe is a haunting tale surrounded by mystery, mirrors, and malicious terrors. When taken more than a glance the tale leaks its true meaning and purpose,…

“Hell in Isolation” In his short story, “The Fall of the House of Usher,” Edgar Allen Poe investigates the negative effects of self-isolationism. Roderick Usher, a mentally ill, incestuous, and secluded man, requests the narrator’s help. Upon his arrival, the narrator notices eerie attributes of the “melancholy” (3) house of Usher, while walking through clouds of miasma. The narrator then witnesses Roderick’s extreme paranoia, which stems from his solitude. The narrator also catches…

Often a person can be conditioned to do a certain behavior, either by their own actions or influences from others, sometimes without realizing it. In two different novels that share a similar theme of racism, A Walk in The Night by Alex La Guma, and Maru by Bessie Head, the act of conditioning is explored. A Walk in The Night follows many different characters throughout the novel but mostly centers around the actions of Michael Adonis. Michael is a person of color in a coastal city of South…

as “The Black Cat” and “The Tell-Tale Heart” do a good job showing the similarities and differences between the insanity in both of the stories, as well as the insanity in other short stories of Edgar Allan Poe’s. “The Black Cat” and “The Tell-Tale Heart” are both very similar stories. In both texts the narrators are crazy and unreliable storytellers. The smallest…

A dead cat, a bloody shirt and a field trip. Why, Honey? is a short story written by Raymond Carver. The story tells about a mother who's writing a letter about her son, who is a governor. In the letter she describes how her son had become the kind of person he is. The text consists of fear and long-lost trust alongside with the mother's various claims of the son. The author shows how some people can turn into something very different than what expected and how not trusting someone can change…

being a survivor. If Edgar Allen Poe wrote the short story in any other point of view we would've gotten the same experience of being a survivor. Poe wrote ¨The Pit in the Pendulum¨ in first person point of view to further engage the reader. In this point of view the reader gets to experience what it's like to be a survivor along with the narrator. The narrator is sentenced to death in a dungeon and faces horrible, painful, and super-torturous death. Because he is a prisoner and slightly loses…

Can you imagine writing your personal experiences to teach readers a theme or the main idea behind the story? In the book “War Dances” written by Sherman Alexie, which published in 2009, is a collection of short stories and personal poems that describe tragedies that can occur in someone’s life and how the challenges can affect their daily purpose. Many of the personal topics that Alexie mentions in his book are the Native American stereotypes, his family’s medical history, and loss of Native…

The “Cask of Amontillado” written by Edgar Allan Poe is a thrilling short story about seeking revenge through a murder plot. This story is not only interesting, but it also has incredible detail. Through his use of carefully constructed characterization, diction, and irony, Poe creates a mood that is both chilling and horrifying. Throughout this short story Poe uses characterization to build up suspense and to strengthen his writing. Without Fortunato's character there would not be a story.…

A Short Story Analysis on C.P. Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper The short story entitled, “The Yellow Wallpaper” written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman was a gothic horror tale that was later viewed as a story utilizing symbolism to demonstrate repression and disapproval of Victorian patriarchy. This short story made her particularly important in this certain genre of story-writing (Meyering, 4). When the narrator was diagnosed with neurasthenia, which is the chronic mental and physical depression,…