The relation between Roderick Usher and the family mansion Bianka Bozsik College

Edgar Allan Poe, who was born in the early nineteenth century, had an undeniable impact on American literature. Influenced by the era’s trend, the Romanticism, he had written plenty of short stories, tales and poems spiced with gothic features and grotesque humour. His widely known works are The Pit and the Pendulum, The Tell-Tale Heart, The Black Cat, The Raven and The Fall of the House of Usher. In this essay I will discuss the lattermost, exploring the strange connections between the protagonist and his house and the supernatural events that had befallen them.

Poe uses personification to describe the Usher mansion, we could say, it is considered the fourth character. Entering the scene, the narrator found himself in a gloomy, dreadful condition, which he failed to explain rationally. The house with its „vacant eye-like windows” (Works, III. 273), the atmosphere „which had reeked up from the decayed trees” (Works, III. 276) all had their terrible influence on both Usher and the narrator. The friend from boyhood, Roderick Usher summons the narrator to his mansion, claiming he is suffering from a mysterious mental illness; therefore he has not much time left and asking the narrator to spend few days with him. His sickness, a „...