Edgar Allen Poe and His Short Story——“The Fall of the House of Usher” .doc

爱伦坡和他的短篇小说厄西亚房子的倒塌edgar allen poe and his short story“the fall of the house of usher”contentsabstract .11. introduction of the writer and the story.21.1 the introduction of edgar allen poe.2 1.2 the introduction of the story.32. the analysis of the story.52.1 the current situation about the fall of the house of usher. 52.2 the process of the development of the story.8 2.3 the analysis of the story83. classic note on the fall of the house of usher.114. conclusion.16references17edgar allen poe and his short story “the fall of the house of usher”摘 要:厄西亚房子的倒塌是由爱抡坡编写。它是一篇最早最出名的恐怖小说。爱伦坡（18091849），是十九世纪美国最出名的作家。他也是侦探小说的鼻祖。在厄西亚房子的倒塌中，主人公被他的少年期朋友罗德里克邀请拜访他，因为罗德里克遭受可怕的精神和身体病症。主人公看见了黑暗, 腐朽, 和愚钝的房子。他陪伴朋友几天直到朋友最后埋葬了他的双胞胎姐妹。当妹妹从坟茔逃脱了,迎来了她的兄弟的死亡, 与房子一起的崩溃。爱伦坡用恐怖元素成功地填装了故事: 一个腐朽恐怖的庄园，一个腐朽的庄园住宅、土牢和建筑。为了惊吓他的读者和加强气氛，爱伦坡详细的介绍环境慢慢进入故事。根据作用理论来阐述他的观点, 作用团结取决于细节团结。这个故事细节将帮助说明令人毛骨悚然的结尾和朋友分裂的思想。我希望简要地谈论爱伦坡怎么把他独特的写作特点运用在厄西亚房子的倒塌。关键词:爱伦坡 警示 侦探 恐怖 abstract :“ the fall of the house usher”, written by edgar allan poe, is one of the earliest and most famous of all horror stories. edgar allan poe, (1809-1849), is one of the most famous writer in early 19th century in america. and he is also the one who first published detective stories. in “the fall of the house usher”, the narrator was invited by his boyhood friend roderick usher to visit him, since roderick usher was suffering from a terrible mental and bodily illness. the narrator saw the dark, decayed, and dull house. he accompanied usher for the next few days until usher finally buried his twin sister madeline. as the madeline escaped from the tomb, came the death of his brother, along with the collapse of the house. poe filled successfully the story with horror elements:a decaying manor a decaying manor house, dungeons, medieval trappings, and suggestions of dementia. in order to scare his reader and strengthen the tense, poe introduced detailed descriptions of the environment into the story. according to his unity of effects theory, the unity of effect depends on unity of details. every details of this story will help to illustrate the eerie ending and the fragile mind of usher. i would like to discuss briefly how poe applied his strategies in “the fall of the house of usher”key words: edgar allen poe warn detective horroredgar allen poe and his short story “the fall of the house of usher”1:introduction of the writer and the story1.1:the introduction of edgar allen poe edgar allen poe (1809-1849), american poet, a master of the horror tale, credited with practically inventing the detective story. edgar allan poe was born on january 19, 1809 in boston, massachusetts, to parents who were itinerant actors. his father david poe jr. died probably in 1810 and his mother elizabeth hopkins poe in 1811. edgar was taken into the home of a richmond merchant john allan and brought up partly in england, where he attended manor school at stoke newington. never legally adopted, poe took allans name for his middle name. poe attended the university of virginia, but was expelled for not paying his gambling debts. this led to a quarrel with allan, who later disowned him. in 1827 poe joined the u.s. army as a common soldier under assumed name and age. in 1830 poe entered west point and was dishonorably discharged next year, for intentional neglect of his duties. little is known about his life in this time, but in 1833 he lived in baltimore with his fathers sister. after winning a prize of $50 for the short story ms found in a bottle, he started a career as a staff member of various magazines, among others the southern literary messenger in richmond, gentlemans magazine in philadelphia, and grahams magazine. during these years he wrote some of his best-known stories. in 1836 poe married his 13-year-old cousin virginia clemm. she burst a blood vessel in 1842, and remained a virtual invalid until her death from tuberculosis five years later. after the death of his wife, poe began to lose his struggle with drinking and drugs. he addressed the famous poem annabel lee to her. poes first collection, tales of the grotesque and arabesque, appeared in 1840. it contained one of his most famous works, the fall of the house of usher. during the early 1840s poes best-selling work was the conchologists first book. the dark poem of lost love, the raven, brought poe national fame, when it appeared in 1845. the murders in the rue morgue and the purloined letter are among poes most famous detective stories. poe was also one of the most prolific literary journalists in american history. poe suffered from bouts of depression and madness, and he attempted suicide in 1848. in september the following year he disappeared for three days after a drink at a birthday party and on his way to visit his new finance in richmond. he turned up in a delirious condition in baltimore gutter and died on october 7, 1849.1.2:the introduction of “ the fall of the house of usher”roderick and his twin sister madeline are the last of the all time-honored house of usher. they are both suffering from rather strange illnesses which may be attributed to the intermarriage of the family. .the stem of the usher race.had put forth, at no period, any enduring branch; in other words, that the entire family lay in the direct line of descent, and had always, with very trifling and very temporary variation, so lain. roderick suffers from a morbid acuteness of the senses; while madelines illness is characterized by .a settled apathy, a gradual wasting away of the person, and frequent although transient affections of a partly cataleptically character. which caused her to lose consciousness and feeling. the body would then assume a deathlike rigidity. besides his own illness and being depressed by madelines deteriorating condition, roderick becomes .enchained by certain superstitious impressions in regard to the mansio. he believes that somehow the mansion controls his behavior, and what eventually will become of him. .for many years, he had never ventured forth-in regard to an influence whose supposititious force was conveyed in terms too shadowy here to be restated. in his desperation, roderick pens a letter to a boyhood companion to whom he refers as .his only personal friend. in hopes that .the cheerfulness of his friendssociety . might alleviate.his malady. it was the apparent heart that went with his request-which allowed the friend no room for hesitation. the friend travels on horseback to the house of usher. it is the autumn of the year, and there is a sense of death and decay surrounding the usher mansion. although no portion of the masonry had fallen.there appeared to be a wild inconsistency between its still perfect adaptation of parts, and the crumbling condition of the individual stones. the eye of a scrutinizing observer might have noticed 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. once inside, the friend notices an air of stern, deep, and irredeemable gloom which hung over and pervaded all. roderick arose from the sofa as his friend entered the chamber. surely,a man had never before so terribly altered, in so brief a period, as had roderick usher! he had a cadaverousness of complexion; an eye large, liquid, and luminous; lips.very pallid; a nose.with a breadth of nostril unusual in similar formations; a.chin.in.want of moral energy; hair of a.web like softness and tenacity; these features, with an inordinate expansion above the regions of the temple, made up altogether a countenance not easily to be forgotten. for several days ensuing. the friend busied himself in earnest endeavors to alleviate the melancholy of roderick. they painted and read together, or the friend listened, as if in a dream, to the wild improvisations of rodericks speaking guitar. one evening, roderick informed his friend that the lady madeline was no more, and he stated his intention of preserving the corpse for a fortnight (previously to its final interment). due to the unusual characteristics of his sisters illness as well as the possibility of eager inquiries of her medical men.at the request of usher, his friend personally aided him in the arrangements for the temporary entombment. as the two men carried the unconfined body to its temporary resting place, the friend became aware of the similarities of the vault and a painting roderick had done. the vault or dungeon, although lying at a great depth, was located directly beneath the portion of the building in which was located the friends own sleeping apartment. it was also at this point, that the friend was made aware of the fact that roderick and madeline were not just brother and sister; they were twins who shared .sympathies of a scarcely intelligible nature. as they secured the lid to the coffin, a faint blush upon the bosom and the face, and a suspiciously lingering smile upon the lip. were noticed as was usual in cases of a cataleptically character. and now, some days of bitter grief having elapsed, an observable change came over the mental disorder of roderick.he roamed from chamber to chamber.the pallor of his countenance had assumed.a more ghastly hue and the luminousness of his eye had utterly gone out. he gazed upon vacancy for long hours, in an attitude of the profoundest attention, as if listening to some imaginary sound. it was the seventh or eighth night after the placing of madeline in the vault. a fierce storm raged outside, and neither roderick nor his friend were able to sleep. roderick entered the friends chamber more agitated and restless than he had been in the past few days. his friend tried to calm him by reading from the mad trist by sir launce lot canning. the hero of the tale was ethelred who must break into the dwelling of the hermit and slay the dragon who guards the palace of gold with a silver floor in order to capture the brass shield which hung upon its wall. as his friend read, it seemed that .from some remote portion of the mansion, there came indistinctly to their ears what might have been, in its exact similarity of character, the echo.of the very sounds that sir launce lot had so particularly described. completely unnerved, the friend leaped to his feet. roderick had, in the meantime, moved his chair so that it was now facing the door of the chamber. his head had dropped upon his breast, but he was not asleep. his eyes were rigid and open while staring at the doorway, and his lips trembled as he muttered inaudibly. his body gently rocked from side to side in a constant and uniform sway. as the friend placed his hand on rodericks shoulder, .a strong shudder came over rodericks whole person; a sickly smile quivered about his lips; and his friend heard roderick speak in a low, hurried, and gibbering murmur, as if unconscious of his friends presence. bending closely over him, the friend at length drank in the hideous import of his words. not hear it?-yes, i hear it, and have heard it. long-long-long-many minutes, many hours, many days, have i heard it-yet i dared not -oh, pity me, miserable wretch that i am!-i dared not-i dared not speak! we have put her living in the tomb! said i not that my senses were acute? i now tell you that i heard her first feeble movements in the hollow coffin. i heard them-many, many days ago-yet i dared not-i dared not speak! roderick then explains to his friend that the corresponding sounds which they had heard during the reading of the mad trist were actually madeline returning from the grave: .the breaking of the hermits door. was the rendering of her coffin; the death-cry of the dragon. was the grating of the iron hinges of her prison .as she opened the door, and the clangor of the shield corresponded to madelines struggles within the copper archway of the vault! at this point roderick sprang to his feet. madman! i tell you that she now stands without the door! at that moment, a gust of wind blew open the doors, and .there did stand the enshrouded figure of the lady madeline.there was blood upon her white robes, and the evidence of some bitter struggle upon every portion of her emaciated frame. for a moment she remained trembling and reeling to and fro upon the threshold, then with a low moaning cry, fell heavily inward upon.her brother, and in her violent and now final death agonies, bore him to the floor a corpse. suddenly the wrath of the storm increased, and the mansion began to shake and crumble. the friend frantically fled from that chamber and from out of that mansion. only once did he turn to glance back, when his attention was arrested by a wild light. the radiance was that of the full, setting.blood-red moon, which now shone vividly through that once barely discernible fissure. while he gazed upon the scene, the fissure rapidly widened. there was a loud explosion, and the walls of the mansion came crashing down. then the deep and dank tarn.closed sullenly and silently over the fragments of the house of usher.2: the analysis of “ the fall of the house usher”2.1: the current situation about the fall of the house of usher.quinn challenges g.r. thompsons claim in his book poes fiction:romantic irony in the gothic tales of the narrators unreliability. as an explanation for the narrators shortcomings thompson offers the idea that perhaps poe intended for us to view the narrator as unreliable. furthermore, thompson insists that the story itself is mainly an account of the narrators mental deterioration, a contention that quinn cannot uphold without sufficient evidence, of which he claims there is none. quinn attempts to prove here that it is perhaps the critic and not the narrator whose veracity should be in question. he claims that “having long believed that poe wanted his readers to give credence to, indeed to the identify with, the visitor to ushers house, and finding myself unpersuaded by the opposite proposals thompsons book, i should like to review the matter in some detail” .not only does quinn not concur that the narrator was acting in a “frenzy of terror,” or that he was “completely untrustworthy,” but he finds thompsons reading to be contradictory in regards to his own statement of theme. quinn contends that only if the narrators mental faculties are fully functioning can there be any grain of truth to thompsons thematic theory and critical examination of the text. quinn then testifies against thompsons versions of the houses appearance, the narrators own experiences, what happened to the house, and even thompsons take on the storys theme. the crux of quinns disagreement with thompsons reading ultimately lies in their very different takes on the narrators sanity. by dissecting thompsons critical analysis of the story, quinn is setting up his final point in an effort to undermine what he sees as a flawed reading. quinn relies on an assumption concerning poe himself and claims that “surely it was as obvious to poe as it is to us that a deranged mind, mired in its own subjectivity, is unable successfully to perceive objective reality, much less cope with it. there would be no point, ironical or otherwise, in mocking such inability” .in this case, it would only make sense that poe intended the narrator to be lucid and sane, and in order to substantiate thompsons thematic claims the stability of the narrator is essential. quinn pits his reading of “the fall of the house of usher” against readings done by g.r. thompson, who in turn claims to be indebted to an essay about “usher” by daniel abel. he points out that while thompson no doubt admires abels reading, he does not, in fact, build on abels proposals and ideas, but instead veers off into original territory and gives a reading that quinn finds far less convincing than abels. quinn summarily attacks thompsons stance that the narrator (whom he sees as the storys key figure) is unstable and therefore gives an unreliable account of his experiences throughout. conversely, abel feels that usher himself is the most important figure in the tale, and that it is really a “contest between life and death for the possession of roderick usher”. this contradiction of theory makes thompsons reliance on abels essay seem misguided. point by point, quinn deconstructs thompsons reading and questions his statements of poes intentions. for instance, thompsons description of the house as a “deaths head” and a “skull-like face” do not sit well with quinn, who hotly contends that poe may have intended the reader to have this dark image of the house, but that he did not dwell endlessly on this image as thompson suggests. rather than the narrator allowing himself to succumb to his fears, quinn feels that each source of terror on the final night of the tale provides the narrator with an opportunity to prove his level-headedness and to keep his wits about him. the narrator is confronted on three separate occasions with situations that could easily have driven him to distraction, and yet he remains sane and reasonably calm, making him a very reliable source for the reader. the importance of the narrator in two of poes stories, “ligeia” and “usher.” bieganowski suggests that “as the reader becomes an active mediator containing the psychological effects of the storys utterance, so the narrators imagination records a series of psychologi