The Fall Of The House Of Usher Answer Pointers

The Fall House of Usher

English Literature

1. How does Poe create an atmosphere of supernatural horror throughout the story?

Author’s background

• All of the stories he has written includes a narrator who resembles his traits. The narrator becomes a character in the story while narrating events.

Mystery

• When you analyse archaic, old fashioned stories, we have to include questions posed to us by the writer.
• The physical appearance of the house shows psychological decay.
• The house is personified. The backdrop in which the story is set is a confined space cut off from the ordinary world of mundane elements. 
• The world in which the house is is described vividly for us to understand the incomprehensible eeriness of the house. 
• The moaning sounds heard, the interiors of the house, the moat, the eerie building- enhances the gothic elements in the story. 
• The old, archaic and ancient elements is stirred and we begin to fascinate it. 
• Schizophrenia is a mental disorder characterised by abnormal behaviour, strange speech and a decreased ability to understand reality.
• A cloistered, confined atmosphere seen and the moment you enter the house, you get absorbed into the eerie world. You are hypnotised by it and cannot escape. It is a world of make belief. 
• Pain staking descriptions used to set the gloomy atmosphere
• Unity of atmosphere- The plot is set in the past. There is an all- pervading gloom and encapsulates everything and everybody. 
• Poe creates a sense of ‘insufferable gloom’. It is a key characteristic of gothic stories. A darkness shrouds the house. The author chooses night time to enhance the gloom
• ‘Barren landscape’- sense of gloom
• Develop the gloomy sense through the setting of the story. Narrative techniques used to describe the scenes. 
• Title of the story– Summarises what the story is about. The gloom of the house seen. The fall of the house is foreshadowed. A disaster is going to strike the house and the eerie of the story is shown before the story unfolds. 
• Roderick sits and plays the music (blooding). The sister is struck with the unknown sickness. The narrator feels something heavy in the heart when he enters the house
• The narrator allows plot development. And he is the only witness of the disaster that unfolded.