What Is The Mood In The Fall Of The House Of Usher

922 Words4 Pages
Castle dungeons, dark, haunted forests or forbidden woods, and pitch black nights are all common settings found in Gothic tales. In “The Fall of the House of Usher” the setting is a large contributor to its Gothic moods, like dark and dreary. The Gothic moods in “Where is Here?” are tense and mysterious. The settings in each story are described similarly; create the moods, which change throughout the stories; and even though the settings of the two stories are different, they are equally important to the events that create each story. The settings in “The Fall of the House of Usher” and “Where is Here?” are presented and described similarly. Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” opens with the lines, “During the whole of a dull,…show more content…
In “The Fall of the House of Usher” the lines previously quoted set a mood spooky and dreary. Throughout the story the mood changes though. In the middle of the story the mood is not as dark or dreary, when the narrator and Usher were acting as good friend, as in the beginning; it is still a heavy mood, but not as evident. The mood in “Where is Here?” by Joyce Carol Oates changes from spooky with a stranger in the very beginning, to a lighter mood when the father agrees to let the stranger look around. While the stranger is looking around the garage and the backyard, the mood is a bit of two things; it’s a light mood with the father, but there’s a mood of tension from the mother with the father and her thoughts of the stranger. The mood continues to get less stressed once the mother lets the stranger in the house. Once the stranger wonders around the house and runs upstairs the mood becomes very tense, seen from the view of the mother and father. The mood stays tense until the father throws the stranger out of the house; but even then the mood was tense because the father was upset. The mood grew darker and spooky with the description of the lights flickering and the colors of the setting fading. In both stories the moods change throughout the texts as the settings…show more content…
In Poe’s story, the first main event is the narrator’s arrival the “The House of Usher”, during which the mood is spooky, dreary, and dark. The next main event is the reunion of the narrator and Usher; the mood seems to a lighter, and not so oppressive. Once the narrator and the reader learn of Usher’s malady’s death, a tension in the mood is created. During the burial of Usher’s sister, the mood is depressing and dark. After she comes back, when everyone learns that Madeline was still alive when she was entombed and came back to , in a way, haunt, taunt, and torture Usher, creates a mood of fear and agony. The ending main event is when the narrator escapes and flees “The House of Usher”, creating an entirely different mood of surprise and/or relief. In Oates’ “Where is Here?”, the main events don not always change the mood throughout the story. The first main event is when the stranger shows up on their doorstep, this creates the mood of distrust and it creates tension too. The next main event is when the parents let the stranger into their house; the mood of is still a questionable one, there is still some distrust and tension in it. When the stranger runs to the upstairs, the tension in the mood grows immensely. Towards the end, the father throws the stranger out of the house, breaking most of the tension and distrust
Open Document