Edgar Allen Poe
According to Dictionary.com, death is defined as the termination or extinction of something. Edgar Allen Poe used this definition all throughout his story, "The Fall of the House of Usher". After reading the story several times to try to pick up on any thoughts or emotions Poe intended the reader to grasp, I found that unlike most stories, E. A. Poe had no idea of a moral or an idea of reason behind the story of the House of Usher. Under my impression, he wrote this story to scare the living shit out of people. So...why and how does Edgar Allen Poe scare people even to this day with "The Fall of the House of Usher"? Edgar Allen Poe didn't have the best of lives growing up in Boston at the turn of the 19th century. Death has incorporated somehow into his life from the age of less than a year when his father died until his own death in 1849. Edgar Allen Poe is classified as a writer in the Romantic Period. Writers in this period focused on life, emotions, and the existence of the human race. Even with Poe being in the Romantic Period, "The Fall of the House of Usher" is classified as a Gothic piece. With this eerie setting, Edgar Allen Poe's stories get even scarier when he goes into the greatest of detail on everything;
in the house. The Narrator continues until finally he made the announcement to the Narrator that he had buried his sister alive. He listened to her moving about in the coffin, heard her struggling, and felt the beating of her heart. He told the narrator that she was alive and standing behind the closed doors. (we went over his "overboard" descriptions in class). Poe shows that Roderick relied on his twin sister for she was his connection to the human realm. When she died, he had the Narrator help move her body to a steel coffin in a vault under the house. This was to keep the doctors, who were fascinated by the rarity of her disease, from examining her for pathologic reasons. After Madeline's death, Roderick became more agitated and grew paler. He would stare blankly into space as if Edgar Allen Poe had a way to make someone get chills even in the 21st century by reading his stories. I believe that this story in particular had the most symbolism for any of his stories that I have read. After reading some of his stories and doing research on him, I can see why people considered him a madman. At this point, Roderick was completely mad. To try to calm him, the Narrator pulled a book from the shelf and began reading. As the story progressed, a knight in the book tore open a door and Roderick was convin
Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 893
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)
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