Gothic Literature

Gothic literature, as portrayed in Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher,” shows the darker side of literature. During the Gothic era, much of what was going on in the pop culture was a sort of interesting darkness in literature. Many of the things that were written in Gothic books had a dark twist to them, a tragic ending, taboo subjects, and very grotesque imagery used to describe the setting of places. In “The Fall of the House of Usher,” all of these parts of Gothic literature are portrayed in the short story.

As far as imagery goes for Roderick usher’s house, it just reeks of dark, damp, and unwelcoming features. The unnamed narrator of the story describes the house as follows upon seeing it.

“I looked upon the scene before me- upon the mere house, and the simple landscape features of the domain- upon the bleak walls- upon the vacant eye-like windows- upon a few rank sedges- and upon a few white trunks of decayed trees- with an utter depression of soul which I can compare to no earthly sensation more properly than to the after-dream of the reveller upon opium…” (Poe 1)

From what the narrator has told the reader, this house just foreshadows doom, and hints that something tragic will happen at this place. Of course, something tragic cannot happen in a Gothic story without a twist in the tale. In the case of Usher, his twin sister Madeline, whom helps make up the taboo duo and helps create a super-closeness that tends to put people off, falls ill and dies while the unnamed narrator is still visiting the House of Usher. From there, things start deteriorating mentally for Usher, and soon has a meltdown while being read to by the narrator, reveling that Usher may have buried his sister alive. Next thing the narrator knows, the sister is behind the door, running into the room, covered in blood from her struggle of getting out of the coffin, and scaring her brother literally to death.

All in all, this story written by Edgar Allen Poe represents the very idea of the Gothic era, and the literature that this era produced.