Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” was written in 1839. The gothic horror story has a psychological element and arguable symbols that have given rise to many critical readings. It can be viewed literally or metaphorically. The collapsing of the house down into the tarn symbolizes the ultimate collapse of the Usher family. In Poe’s short story, symbolism is the mechanism used to create understanding, images in order to establish mood, and reason to the story.
The Gothic novel is a style of fiction that places heavy emphasis on atmosphere, using setting and diction to build suspense and a sense of unease in the reader. Not only does this entail horror and repression but according to the Critical Survey of Long Fiction, the Schauer-Romantik school of horror, a sub classification of Goth used by Lewis, “did not offer the reassurance of a moral rational order. These works tend to evoke history but stir anxiety without resolving or relieving it. They are perverse and sadistic, marked by the amoral use of thrill”. The main characters of this story are to be typical of the 18th century church, but with a brutal twist which is often found in Gothic literature.
By this, the superego and the id are balanced and form the character's identity, an integrated self. Another very important and appropriate part for a psychoanalytic interpretation of 'The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde' is the return of the repressed that Freud describes in his theory of psychoanalysis. Society, its norms and taboos suppress the antisocial individual desires which nevertheless exist in the subconscious. Stevenson's novel 'is one of the most famous literary expressions of the uncanny' (Meyer 138). That means something that should have stayed unknown but still appears is revealed by the return of the repressed.
Moreover, the ‘superior-for doors’ shows that somehow she wants to keep the reader out. * Those who visit are “the fairest”, which can be taken to be the more beautiful, but also, the more careful in their judgments. The ones who want to dwell in possibility with her. * The occupation for those 'to gather Paradise,' may be interpreted as the creation of poetry. * “This”, on the fourth stanza, refers to the action of discovering the ‘self’ in the writing - the process of understanding poetry.
“Maud: A monodrama” is a complex exploration of love, death and society, conveyed through an erratic narrative with a near-schizophrenic speaker who laments the death of his lover, Maud. Received badly by most contemporary critics, the idea of “Maud” being both “mad” and “mud” shall be examined in this essay and the reasons why certain critics may have regarded it in such a way. The speaker’s madness, delusion and cynicism pervade the poem. The neurotic, frantic and exasperated speaker may have led to certain critics regarding the poem as “Mad”. In the first stanza, the environment in which the speaker’s father committed suicide is personified as having “lips” that are “dabbled with blood-red heath” and “red-ribb’d ledges”.
Draft Essay Look closely at Mercutio’s Queen Mab Speech. Are dreams depicted as dangerous or attractive? Written within the Elizabethan ear, one of the most remembered scenes of the classic ‘Romeo and Juliet’ was the Queen Mab Speech, beautifully narrated by Mercutio. A text immersed with different frame of reference, to a degree filled with unearthly and majestic beings that bring joy, and on the other hand brimming with the cruelty of a mere nightmare. The fairy tale has become into something much darker, though this dark vision is a portrayal of society.
Poe implements obscurity as a mean to make the readers think and creatively connect the dots and solve the mystery that lies in the story. The ambiguity throughout the story interests yet twists and confuses the reader but enables the reader to use their imagination to what happened. Poe leaves particularly the end full of doubts and confusion in order to highlight and unveil the significance of the story’s resolution. This permits the ending to be interpreted as a physical, psychological or moral breakdown of Roderick and Madeline that caused the house to fall. A few paragraph into the story, the narrator already drop a hint about the cause of the eventual fall of the house.
The fall of the house of usher is a short story written by Edgar Allen Poe. There are many interpretations of the title. One of the interpretations of the title is the actual house of Roderick Usher collapsing. Roderick is the main character of this short story. He sends a letter to a long time friend because he is ill mentally and emotionally.
Then the house just crumbled to the ground on them. “So while telling an eerie tale of gothic horror, Edgar Allan Poe managed to echo the literary past. Embody contemporary ideas and imagery, and anticipate the development of modernism” (“The Fall of the House of Usher”). This means that
I heard many things in hell.” Through his denial of the hold lunacy has on him, the Narrator establishes the very nature of his madness. His contradictions’ such as denial of being afflicted by the disease, then the very next thought is to defend the nature of the illness by praising it for moulding his senses is evidence towards his increasing madness and the inevitable doom of the Narrator. The Mad Man’s seemingly unprovoked rage towards the Old Man is blamed upon his dead, hazy eye. The Narrator in a fit of Madness trying to explain his actions, claims his motivation; “One of his eyes resembled that of a vulture – a pale blue eye, with a film over it. Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold: and so by degrees – very gradually – I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye forever.” The Narrator again proves his madness through his apparent lack of solid intent coupled with his explanation of the rage within him.