Usher according to the unknown narrator on page 81, line 30 has a strange solitary life:
‘He suffered much from a morbid acuteness of the senses; the most insipid food was alone endurable; he could wear only garments of certain texture; the odours of all flowers were oppressive…’
This strange description of Usher tells us how he is living a lifeless life; in fact he is breathing physically but isn’t really living. He doesn’t make use of any of his senses, he is described almost as a drug addict, as though he has no control over his life or himself. The lexis seems to be so strong within this quote along with the rest of the extract possibly to emphasize the solitary figure. Vocabulary such as ‘morbid’ and ‘insipid’ are so emotive they seem to emphasize the whole description so well the audience feels sympathy towards the character which is the trait of a gothic genre. An excellent comparison to this is Marlowe himself. Chapter 6, page 36:
‘Neither of the two people in the room paid any attention to the way I came in, although only one of them was dead’
Although there is a corpse in the room Marlowe’s speech is so calm which enforces an idea of loss of innocence. Another suggestion is the dead body and the breathing human are almost mentally equal according to this quote which again reinforces isolation and the solitary figure. Metaphorically Marlowe is alone amongst humans and generally sentences as such tend to be figurative but in this case it is literal also.
In terms of language and style in Poe’s extract sentences are long and complex with lots of detailed description, for example:
‘I gazed upon him with a feeling half of pity, half of awe. Surely, man had never before so terribly altered, in so brief a period, as had Roderick Usher!’
Firstly the sentence starts off with ‘I’ suggesting the first person of the text which shows how descriptive the quote will be as the unknown narrator is showing real personal experience. The words which are important in this sentence are quite short which shows the lexis is specifically chosen to emphasize loneliness. For example pity and awe are both verbs which are quite very strong so they didn’t need adverbs to support them. The following quote from The Big Sleep is very short yet powerful:
‘Sodden trees dripped all over the landscape.’
The main focus of the sentence is the adjective sodden; its main meaning in context of this sentence is thoroughly wet although another interpretation of sodden is drunk. Therefore this could possibly be a form of double meaning and personification as trees cannot be drunk, sodden literally and also figuratively. Marlowe who is a drinker himself drinks a lot in fact it is almost like his only companion is whiskey. Therefore this could suggest Marlowe’s solitary figure in his speech as he even describers other objects as drunk.
In both texts even the description of places are so intense and breath taking which expand on the solitary figures in the story. The following quote from the Poe’s short story extract shows a short description of the House of Usher:
‘The general furniture was profuse, comfortless, antique and tattered…’
The four adjectives in the quote are all negative interpretations of the furniture. The word comfortless is particularly important because comfort is something everybody appreciates but in this case the home of Roderick Usher is not comforting at all. The following is from The Big Sleep:
‘Rain filled the gutters and splashed knee-high off the pavement… The rain drummed hard on the room of the car…’
Rain is mentioned often within this quote, the connotations of rain could associate to loneliness as the idea of Marlowe in this rain filled environment suggests he is a lonely man.
The Fall of the House of Usher was written many years before The Big Sleep therefore there is a significant difference between the lexis, style of writing and also the genre. The noir genre has been very loosely defined over the course of its history and it adopts the themes and concerns of the Gothic and science fiction. The Fall of the House of Usher carries a noir and gothic genre. On the other hand The Big Sleep is a hard-boiled crime novel. The novel enhances it detective genre with its complexity, with many characters double-crossing each other and many secrets being exposed throughout the novel. The Fall of the House of Usher uses lots of now archaic lexis. For example:
‘A cadaverousness of complexion’
The archaic term used being cadaverousness means as pale as death. This language is typical of the noir gothic genre. This quote comes from the paragraph where the unknown narrator is describing Roderick Usher; therefore this lexis enhances how isolated and lonely Usher is from his description. In comparison The Big Sleep uses the following sentence on page 34:
‘It seemed like a nice neighborhood to have bad habits in.’
I found this quote quite powerful because it uses the words ‘nice’ and bad’ as an oxymoron within the same description, this gives an interesting effect to show a sense of comparison. Hard boiled fiction uses slag and irony often as it focuses readers on individual parts of the novel. Hard boiled fiction uses vivid but often sordid urban backgrounds, and fast-paced, slang dialogue.
Overall both texts emphasize and portray the solitary figure as Marlowe and Usher which are two genuinely very lonely figures. This is a huge advantage for both texts; The Fall of the House of Usher text in particular continues to describe Usher and his surrounding settings as very different and lonely. The Big Sleep uses lots of figurative effects such as metaphors, similes and personification. Poe‘s extract uses lots of complex sentences to add as much description as possible whereas on the other hand Chandler uses short sentences to build suspense therefore they both use different approaches to achieve the same purpose of enhancing the isolated figure. It is known that many of Poe’s characters are almost always dominated by emotion. Poe also believed that writing should be about strange events which affect the reader in a way which he would not encounter in everyday life. In The Fall of the House of Usher the strange events vary from Madeline supposed to be dead to the house collapsing. The diachronic variation between both novels is incredible. Both plots have lots in common; deep mysteries and loneliness that the narrators have to unravel through intelligence and feeling.