In the opening paragraph, the narrator establishes an overwhelming atmosphere of dread. As he approaches his destination on a “dull, dark, and soundless” day, he notes that the clouds were hanging “oppressively low” in the sky over the “singularly dreary tract” where the “melancholy” House of Usher stood. The house immediately stirs up in the narrator “a sense of insufferable gloom,” and it is described as having “bleak walls,” “vacant eye-like windows,” and “minute fungi overspread the whole exterior”.The interior of the house is equally dreary, “the ebon blackness of the floors”, “the dark draperies” and the “tattered” furniture. All these make it hard for the narrator to breathe, and “an air of stern, deep, and irredeemable gloom hung over and pervaded all”. Such gloomy and bleak scenes are exactly the perfect reflections of the house of Usher which is on the blink of collapse. Large amounts of descriptions of the decay of the house
not only establish an appropriate state of mind for the collapse to come, but also create the gloomy atmosphere of doomsday.
After that, the author put his fingers on the figures in this house, which implies that the whole family is to collapse soon as well. Usher family has a long history and is well known for its sensitivity. Roderick and his twin Madeline are the only surviving members of the family, and have continually lived in the shabby and decay house. Their spirits have been strongly influenced by the outside gloomy sights and inside decay features of the house, which brings about horrible effects. Roderick, the only one left of Usher family, shows a kind of symptom of death either physically or spiritually. “A cadaverousness of complexion”, “hair of a more than weblike softness and tenuity” and “floated rather than fell about the face”. That’s not enough. Roderick is oversensitive to everything. He could wear only garments of “certain texture”, and he feels all flowers were “oppressive”. His sister’s illness also heavily touches his fragile nerves and makes him even more unusual. Madeline is also suffering from some unusual illness: “a settled apathy, a gradual wasting away of the person, and frequent, transient affections of a partially cataleptical”. Though the narrator’s introduction of the family and the detailed descriptions of its members, the author convey the tension, terror and gloom before the death. The melancholy, dreariness of the house, and the strange and dying family members of it arouses the readers’ expectations and establishes an appropriate state of mind for the death to come.
Based on the first half, the author pushes the story forward to its climax. The “suspiciously lingering smile upon the lips of Madeline after she has been put into the coffin, the sudden and unusual changes of Roderick when he’s dying, and the most wonderful, the description of the storm night when Madeline revives. Outside the house, “the undersurfaces of the huge masses of agitated vapor, as well as terrestrial objects immediately around us, were growing in the unnatural light of a faintly luminous and distinctly visible gaseous exhalation which hung about and enshrouded the mansion”; inside the house, “the dark and tattered draperies swayed fitfully to and fro upon the walls and rustled uneasily about the decorations of the bed”. In order to pass the horrible night, the narrator read stories to Roderick. But the horrible plot interacts with varieties of
sound inside and outside, making the atmosphere even more horrible. Roderick’s eyes “were bent fixedly”, and as the narrator put a hand upon his shoulder, there was a “strong shoulder over his whole person” and “a sickly smile quivered about his lips”, he spoke in a low, hurried, and gibbering murmur”: “I heard it”, “we have put her living in the tomb” “Madman! I tell you that she now stands without the door”. Exactly at that time, there did stand the “lofty and enshrouded figure of the lady Madeline of Usher” with the blood all over her white robes. As the narrator ran out of the house, he saw the full, setting, and blood-red moon and that the house of Usher collapsed in a long tumultuous shouting. What a stirring spetacle! On one hand, the author emphasizes the terror of the outside which strike the readers physically; on the other hand, he tracks the narrator’s fear to impress the readers spiritually. They two combine together to have great power on leading the readers to experience it themselves.
No author is more adept in manipulate the settings than Edgar Allan Poe. He not only provides the details of the settings, but also tells the reader just how to respond to them, which cannot do by direct and plain narration. This has already proved to contribute to the popularity of his fictions.
