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Argumentative Essay On The Fall Of The House Of Usher

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“Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win”(King). Stephen King is one of the most famous horror fiction writers in history, with such classic works as The Shining and It on his resume. However, King would be nothing if it weren’t for the tortured, Edgar Allan Poe(1809-1849). Poe’s works seem to project the monsters and ghosts which lived inside him, through his awful, short life. Poe writings are woven tightly with language holding hidden meanings and psychological anguish. Argumentary the most famous work of Poe is The Fall of the House of Usher(The House of Usher), as the short story incorporates every trope of modern horror, important among these is the setting. A nameless narrator …show more content…

In Gothic literature, settings were bleak, remote, and eerie. Though making fun of a serious genre, many writers wrote with a sense of satire. Kevin J. Hayes, professor of English at the University of Central Oklahoma, explains, “Poe is the last great gothic writer...humor had frequently been an element of the gothic before Poe's time. "Usher," however, treats the gothic with profound seriousness. Reading the story, one gets the impression that Poe set out to write the gothic tale to end all gothic tales”. Hayes alludes to how dark The House of Usher becomes as the narrator spends more time with his boyhood friend. There is no glimpse of humor or optimism. Poe’s short story is twisted and despondent to end the gothic era with a setting as tortured as it’s writer. The catalog of the Usher mansion symbolises its inhabitants. The article Themes and Construction: "The Fall of the House of Usher" from Gale Cengage Learning, remarks, “The Usher mansion is the most important symbol in the story; isolated, decayed, and full of the atmosphere of death, the house represents the dying Usher family itself”. Poe writes that Roderick and Madeline are the last two members of the Usher family left alive. Also, Madeline is on the brink of death, and Roderick mental state isn’t stable. Nevertheless, there are more symbolisms between the setting and the family of Usher. The melancholy

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