Analysis: The Central Role of Horror in Poe's 'Usher' Story

This argumentative essay critically analyzes the centrality of horror in Edgar Allan Poe's short story, 'The Fall of the House of Usher.' The essay examines how Poe creates terror through the unnamed narrator, the haunted mansion, the Usher siblings' physical and mental states, and various other elements like the murky landscape, the coffin, and the storm. It argues that, despite some plot weaknesses, the story's characters and horror elements effectively captivate the reader, making it a quintessential gothic tale. The essay highlights the story's grotesque inventiveness, suspense, and thrill, emphasizing how Poe successfully creates scariness through the characters and the overall atmosphere, from the beginning to the end of the story. The conclusion reinforces that the horror elements, including the mysterious narrator, the haunted mansion, Roderick, and Madeline, maintain the story's central focus on terror, effectively fulfilling its primary objective.

Running head: ARGUMENTATIVE ESSAY ON THE CENTRALITY OF HORROR
Argumentative Essay on the Centrality of Horror
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author note

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Edgar Allen Poe, in his short story “The Fall of the House of Usher,” has offered some
severe horror fragments in the tale (Poe, 2019). The story focuses on some of its horror raisers,
for example, the unidentified narrator, the haunted house of Roderick, Roderick himself and his
sister Madeline (Mikolčić, 2019). The purpose of this essay is to argue and critically analyze the
centrality of terror in the story, although the plot is not concrete
Certain elements have dominated the impact of terror on the story. For example, the
appearance of the unnamed narrator, who is telling about all his paranormal experiences and
witnesses, is a suspense holder himself because his identity is hidden throughout the story, this
character is effectively creating the unreal horror and offers a mysterious tone. Usher clans
mansion, which is described as a haunted house, due to its cracked walls and unearthly
atmosphere, the appearance of Roderick and his sister Madeline and their mental illness along
with the dual personality disorder and the strange unknown disease that both the siblings are
suffering from is giving a barbaric tone in the plot. Some other elements that have added to the
phantom are the murky landscape, unreal illusory, hanging shiels, the coffin and door opening.
From the very beginning itself, the author tried creating the eerieness in the story, and his
description about the characters ghostly sides and the atmosphere inside as well as outside the
house has validated his intention; everything all together makes this piece of work a Gothic tale,
which has some quintessential characteristics, which suitably enhances the scariness of the story
(Pang,2015).
The grotesque inventiveness can be witnessed in the work of Allen Poe along with factual
and allegorical content. This short story creates an unrealistic image of the world that does not
exist. This story does resemble another famous work, which is a novel named “Frankenstein”.
The mood and vibe created by this mentioned novel is very similar to the mood and feel of this

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short story. Although the story lacks a little rigidness on its plot formation and the characters and
the small elements present in the story are responsible for creating the horror fragments. The
literay achievement of Allen Poe in terms of entertainment is the renovation of the ‘horror tale’
which causes curdling in veins and blood rush. He realised the fact in his early career that
frightening stories are his strength and he has the ability to create horror in his stories, exactly
what he did in this short story “The Fall of the House of Usher” (Rock, 2016). The darkness that
is mentioned in the opening of the story itself creates an essence of supernormalism since the
very beginning itself. The ghostliness is the carried forward in the story by the unhealthy
atmosphere of the haunted mansion, then Roderick and his sister’s unknown disease that has
taken over their mental health has added to the frightening essence of the story. The effect ends
in the very end of the story itself where the narrator elopes and the mansion collapses into pieces.
Altogether it can be considered that the impact of horror in the story can be sensed from the
beginning till the end of the story (Moss, 2014).
Edgar Allen Poe has successfully created the precise scariness in the story with the help
of its characters and the segments that arises the horror. (Muller, 2016). Although the plot has
failed to give the story the essence that can offer the readers the hair raising experience of
supernaturalism, and some disruptions as well as inexplicable sections are there. But the
characters and horror elements are effective enough to grab the audiences attention through
horror.
Thus, this gothic literature by Poe offers a significant amount of terror, grotesque,
suspense and thrill. Even after having some defaults and some sudden confusing situations in the
plot makes it rigid less flexible, but still, there are some positive elements present in the story
along with the characters that are balancing and maintaining the effect of terror. The description

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of the haunted mansion and its atmosphere, the unnamed narrator’s mysterious character,
Roderick’ part in the story, Madeline’s sudden appearance after her burial, along with her attack
on her brother and narrators escape, the storm, the fallinf shield clamor and some other bits
makes the story centralised towards horror. These segments effectively overcome the weakness
of the plot and maintain its horror effect on the core, which fulfils the prime motive of the story.

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References:
Mikolčić, M. (2019). American Horror Story" as Adaptation of EA Poe's" The Fall of the House
of Usher (Doctoral dissertation, Josip Juraj Strossmayer University of Osijek. Faculty of
Humanities and Social Sciences.).
Moss, W. (2014). The fall of the house, from Poe to Percy: The evolution of an enduring Gothic
convention. A companion to American Gothic, 177-188.
Müller, N. B. (2016). The Knots in" The fall of the house of Usher": a psichoanalytic analysis of
the characters.
Pang, W., Wang, D., & Hu, S. (2015). Gothicism in The Fall of the House of Usher. Advances in
Literary Study, 3(01), 15.
Poe, E. A. (2019). The fall of the house of Usher. Strelbytskyy Multimedia Publishing.
Röck, C. (2016). Mental illnesses and their symbolic meanings in Poe’s short story ‘The Fall of
the House of Usher.’. Academia. edu.

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