occurred incestuously in the house. The reader confused by the house with the Usher family because of the physical structure dictated to the genetic patterns of
the family.
This features I found through the setting and the characters behavior. The two intrinsic elements create an atmosphere of a haunted house. The other
elements, that are plot, point of view, theme, style and tone do not have big contribution to create a haunted house image in the story.
4.2.2 Dreary Landscape
The second quintessential-features of gothic tale that I found is dreary landscape. The darkness, sorrow, horror and gloomy situation not only can feel in the house
of Usher, but also in the surrounding of the house. The narrator felt that situation d
uring he had passing alone to Usher’s house. The setting of place and time during the narrator go to the House of Usher who explain about dreary landscape
shows clearly in the first paragraph of the story. It is proved by the quotation:
During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung
oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback
, through a singularly dreary tract
of country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy
House of Usher. . I know not how it was--but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable
gloom pervaded my spirit.
I say insufferable; for the feeling was unrelieved by any of that half-pleasurable,
because poetic, sentiment, with which the mind usually receives even the sternest natural images of the desolate
or terrible. I looked upon the scene before me--upon the mere house, and the simple landscape features of
the domain--upon the bleak walls--upon the vacant eye-like windows--upon a few rank sedges--and
upon a few white trunks of decayed trees --with an
utter depression of soul which I can compare to no earthly sensation more properly than to the after-dream
of the reveller upon opium--the bitter lapse into everyday life-the hideous dropping off of the reveller
upon opium--the bitter lapse into everyday life--the hideous dropping off of the veil. There was an iciness,
a sinking, a sickening of the heart--an unredeemed dreariness of thought which no goading of the
imagination could torture into aught of the sublime
. Poe, 1839: 1
From the quotation above it can be seen that instead of standard narrative markers of place and time Poe uses traditional Gothic elements such as inclement
weather and a dreary landscape. We are alone with the narrator in this haunted space, and neither we nor the narrator know why.
The setting of the story shows the image of ―Dreary Landscape‖ as the quintessential- feature of gothic tale clearly.
4.2.3 Mysterious Sickness
