Examples Of Ligeia And The Fall Of The House Of Usher

Edgar Allan Poe is an American Gothic author from the 19th century. It is well known that Edgar Allan Poe was a master of suspense. The word ‘suspense’ is defined by the Oxford Dictionary to be ‘A state or feeling of excited or anxious uncertainty about what may happen.’ Two of Poe’s works are ‘Ligeia’ and ‘The Fall of the House Usher’. ‘Ligeia’ is the story of an unnamed narrator in love with his wife Lady Ligeia and how he copes with her death. ‘The fall of the House of Usher’ is the story of an unnamed narrator visiting his friend Roderick Usher at his house. Both of them are full of suspense and this is the main topic this essay will be focusing on. This essay will attempt to illustrate how Poe builds suspense in his short stories†¦show more content†¦However, later in the story, the narrator is the one seeing movement and hearing sighs. But as the narrator is an opium addict, the reade r also assumes it is a hallucination. Because these two narrators are unreliable, the reader can’t trust anything to what it is about to happen. However, throughout the stories, Poe is leaving clues to the reader in order to solve the mystery. It is called foreshadowing and this what the second part will be dealing with. As it was said in the first part, Lady Rowena and the narrator in ‘Ligeia’ are seeing inexplicable things but it is considered as hallucinations. However, it is actually clues from the author, in order to prepare the reader to see Ligeia appear. At the beginning of the story, Poe takes the time to do an extensive depiction of Ligeia in order to the reader to be on the lookout for slightest resemblance. These â€Å"hallucinations† are only sharpening the reader’s attention because a small part of him knows something is happening but doesn’t know what and make him read faster to know the end. Poe is also using foreshadowing in ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’. At the beginning of the story, before the narrator enters the house he says: â€Å"Perhaps the eye of a scrutinizing observer might have discovered a barely perceptible fissure, which, extending from the roof of the building in front, made its way down the wall in a zigzag direction, until it became lost in the sullen waters of the tarn.† The small crack described showsShow MoreRelated Comparing Gothic Romanticism in The Fall of the House of Usher and Ligeia1625 Words   |  7 PagesGothic Romanticism in The Fall of the House of Usher and Ligeia The Gothic style found in the majority of Edgar Allen Poe’s short stories is obvious to the average reader. The grotesque, the desolate, the horrible, the mysterious, the ghostly, and, ultimately, the intense fear are all the primary aspects of the stories which are emphasized. But few writers remain uninfluenced from their contemporaries and Poe is no exception. He is clearly a product of his time, which in termsRead MoreExamples Of Gothicism In The Fall Of The House Of Usher744 Words   |  3 Pagesuncomfortable discussing. The two pieces of American literature Ligeia and The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe are great examples of gothic literature. As a Gothic writer, Poe uses specific words and events which exhibit gothicism in these two texts by haunting, usually unspoken, and dark themes which are characteristic to gothicism. The story of Ligeia is a great example of gothicism because of the supernatural themes. For example, â€Å"The room lay in a high turret of the castellated abbeyRead MoreEdgar Allan Poes Use of Gothisism891 Words   |  4 PagesEdgar Allan Poe is a well-known fixture in American literature; whose stories have made sizeable contributions to the Gothic literary element. Many of Poe’s stories contain more than one Gothic element. â€Å"The Fall of the House of Usher† is a prime example of this. In this story Poe presents the themes of death and the accompanying supernatural. Poe often uses his proficiency in Gothic to invoke deep reading. For many, this proficiency causes Poe’s stories to be difficult to fully understand at firstRead More Comparing Gothic Elements in Fall of the House of Usher, Uncle Toms Cabin, Ligeia, and American Sl2650 Words   |  11 PagesComparing Gothic Elements in Fall of the House of Usher, Uncle Toms Cabin, Ligeia, and American Slave Gothic literature has a number of conventions, including evils of horror, present of light and dark, suggestions of the supernatural, and dark and exotic localities such as castles and crumbling mansions (American). Violence in gothic literature never occurs just for the sake of violence; there is always a moral dilemma (Clarke 209). By going the extremes, a gothic author is able to accentuateRead MoreDestructive Transendence: an Intrepretation of Edgar Allan Poe1890 Words   |  8 Pagesspectrum by developing a new genre of writing (detective fiction) as well as motivating modern day writers such as the famous Arthur Doyle and his Sherlock Holmes series. Edgar Allan Poe’s use of Destructive Transcendence in â€Å"The Fall of the House of Usher† and â€Å"Ligeia† conveys the idea of the physical world and the spiritual world conflicting on the outskirts of reality to unite as one through the use of insanity, symbolism, imagery, and diction. To begin with, the use of insanity in Poe’s worksRead More The Creation of Art and Life2321 Words   |  10 PagesPoe’s fabulous creations such as Ligeia, The Pit and The Pendulum, and The Fall of The House of Usher. First, it has been well documents that there have been many deaths in Edgar Allan Poe’s life. Each death may have brought out a story from the great writer. The truth may also be that the works of Poe’s involving love and death have aid in some of his loved ones dying. There are several stories that Poe has created before an untimely death. One story happens to be Ligeia, a creation of great love andRead More The Creation of Art and Life2275 Words   |  10 Pageslife and art with Poe’s fabulous creations such as Ligeia, The Pit and The Pendulum, and The Fall of The House of Usher. There have been many deaths in Edgar Allan Poe’s life. Each death may have brought out a story from the great writer. The truth may also be that the works of Poe’s involving love and death have aid in some of his loved ones dying. There are several stories that Poe has created before an untimely death. One story happens to be Ligeia, a creation of great love and passion for a femaleRead MoreResurrected Love: an Analysis of Edgar Allen Poes Ligeia Essay1442 Words   |  6 PagesEdgar Allen Poes short story Ligeia, in a style much like that of The Fall of the House of Usher, has all the makings of a classic, gothic horror tale. It is a story of a love so strong that it overcomes the realms of death. The unnamed narrator is so in love with the Lady Ligeia, as she is with him, that her untimely death soon after their marriage was unable to separate them. Ligeia rejoins the narrator in life through the body of another, Lady Rowena Trevanion of Tremaine. Rowena is the se condRead MoreEssay about Mans Need For Woman in the Works of Edgar Allen Poe2186 Words   |  9 Pagesof love stories is Ligeia.  Ã‚   Lady Ligeia is the narrators first wife.   She is the one, his one true love.   She is infinitely beautiful: the skin rivaling the purest ivory...I regarded the sweet mouth. Here was indeed the triumph of all things heavenly...the eyes...They were, I must believe, far larger than the ordinary eyes of our own race (Selected 27).   She, however, dies of a debilitating disease and the narrator marries Lady Rowena.   Rowena cannot compare with Ligeia, and Ligeias spiritRead MoreAnti-Transcendentalist Themes in Poes The Fall of the House of Usher1651 Words   |  7 Pagesmocked transcendentalist ideals by clearly expressing anti-transcendentalist themes in one of his most well known works, â€Å"The Fall of the House of Usher†. Although this work openly exhibits Poes contempt for transcendentalism as a literary movement, it was nonethe less influenced by – and perhaps even based on – transcendentalist beliefs. Poes â€Å"The Fall of the House of Usher† is considered to be a Dark Romantic text. Dark Romanticism began in the mid-nineteenth century as a negative reaction to the