The Fall of the House of Usher - Edgar Allen Poe

A further sense of suspicion is raised when the reader discovers it had been multiple years since the narrator and Usher had seen or even spoken to one another due to the fact that they are supposedly best friends. "but many years had elapsed since our last meeting". A sense of oddness would describe such a strange incident. If the narrator was his only best friend, then the question of 'why has it been so long since they last spoke?" comes up. The unanswered question only elaborates the reason as to why this point further presents gothic features in the story.

Poe uses structure of sentences as an instrument to further impose a gothic atmosphere to the story. Both long sentences and descriptions of certain objects and scenes add to the gothic effect. "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 white trunk of decayed trees-within an utter depression of soul..." the long and seemingly, neverending sentences cause the reaser to face difficulty with trying to follow the text and this adds to the gothic effect through further infliction of unsettled and lost feelings. The choice of words too, add to this gothic effect, with a very negative and sad like choiceof words to describe the house, "with an utter depression of soul.." personifying the house, making it somewhat alive, in a way. This only sets the house in an even more gothic like manner, leaving the reader to imagine a very creepy-like place.

In the story the house is described as a decaying and rotting building. The irony of this is that the house is a metaphorical representative of Usher himself and the bloodline of the Usher family. "House of Usher'- an appellation which seemed to include, in the minds of the peasantry who used it, both the family and the family mansion". The idea that the house is somewhat dependant on the lives in it causes a very suspicious and gothic image to the situation. Which is later in the story accentuated by the fact that the house collapses after the death of Usher and his sister.

The whole story is paraded with a large impact of gothic atmosphere inflicted by Poe and the techniques he uses to manipulate the effects of the story. Even the title is used as a pun, representing both the house as a building and housee as the family.