Comparing Poe's Fall Of The House Of Usher And Young Goodman Brown
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Edgar Allan Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne were both romantic authors living during the Romantic Period. Their writings were commonly based on human psychology, and lots of allegories were used in their stories. Throughout their stories, both Poe and Hawthorne try to give a sense of the uncanny to their readers. In looking at Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” and Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown,” one must examine the use of gothic motifs, such as doppelganger, gloom, and terror, and how they play out in both of these stories. We will find that Poe and Hawthorne both use ideas of the uncanny in their stories to explore how the human psychology works and how it is influenced. Poe begins his story by talking about the setting from a first person perspective of an unnamed narrator. Poe uses traditional Gothic elements while describing the atmosphere of the House of Usher, such as rough weather and a dull landscape. By undermining the appearance of the house of Usher, Poe creates a sense of horror toward confined places. In the story, the narrator says:…show more content… The narrator describes the structure of the house similarly to the structure of the human skull when he says that the windows look like empty eye sockets in a skull. The house of Usher basically symbolizes death, but that’s not all; the house of Usher represents the human mind. When the narrator gazes upon the house, he actually looks at nothing more than a reflection of himself. This is an example of doppelganger, or doubles, which is a fundamental theme that the idea of uncanny stands