"During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens.as the shades of the evening drew on.with the view of the melancholy House of Usher." Pg. 234) With these words, Edgar Allan Poe begins one of his most famous works. Poe was infamous for his constant imagery of death and decay that he used to produce a sense of terror in his stories. In order to achieve this horror he implemented many images of the latter in the descriptions of his settings. In "The Fall of the House of Usher", Poe used death and nature to describe the actual exterior house itself. He described the house as having "eye like windows" (Pg. 234) and being covered by "minute fungi.hanging in a fine tangled web work from the eaves." (Pg. 236) Fungi eat off the dead remains of other organisms. Even his description of the elements surrounding the house portrays images of death, decay and an "unredeemed dreariness" (Pg.234). The "barely perceptible fissure.[which] made its way down the wall in a zigzag direction until it became lost in the sullen waters of the tarn." (Pg. 236) Poe continuously refers to this "fissure" throughout the whole piece. This "fissure" is to be the eventual cause for the physical destruction of the house and the family itself. Darkness is the primary theme that Poe chooses to implement in his when describing the interior of the house. "The somber tapestries of the walls [and] the ebon blackness of the floors." (Pg. 236) and the "dark, tattered draperies." (Pg. 242) all add to the eerie effect that Poe was trying to establish with his readers. "The huge antique panels.threw slowly back.their ponderous and ebony jaws." (Pg. 245). Descriptions such as these allowed the reader to imagine something greater and darker/evil than themselves, which was intriguing to the average person and Poe knew this.