What one reviewer said about Fall of the House of Usher and Other Tales by Edgar Allan Poe, Stephen Marlowe:
The Fall of the House of Usher was a dark, morbid, and absolutely creepy short story. It's a tale about a visit to the decaying House of Usher, a house haunted by the Ushers' past evil. In the end, their evil past ultimately becomes to great for the house to hold. Of course some might not agree with me; the story is up to a good deal of interpetation. The story emphasizes the gloomy, foreboding, atmosphere with great detail that never becomes too tiresome. The suspense was excellant. At the climax the reader is given hints at what is to happen, but still the reader is forced to hold his or her breath until it finally falls through. As in most short stories, the actual climax and resolution seemed to be too shortly written. Thus leaving the reader wishing for more detail and depth. The rest of the stories in this book weren't nearly as good, but still they had the gloomy suspense and horror associated with Poe.
Begins:
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 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. What was it - I paused to think - what was it that so unnerved me in the contemplation of the House of Usher ? It was a mystery all insoluble ; nor could I grapple with the shadowy fancies that crowded upon me as I pondered. I was forced to fall back upon the unsatisfactory conclusion, that while, beyond doubt, there _are_ combinations of very simple natural objects which have the power of thus affecting us, still the analysis of this power lies among considerations beyond our depth. It was possible, I reflected, that a mere different arrangement of the particulars of the scene, of the details of the picture, would be sufficient to modify, or perhaps to annihilate its capacity for sorrowful impression ; and, acting upon this idea, I reined my horse to the precipitous brink of a black and lurid tarn that lay in unruffled lustre by the dwelling, and gazed down - but with a shudder even more thrilling than before - upon the remodelled and inverted images of the gray sedge, and the ghastly tree-stems, and the vacant and eye-like windows.
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