Question

In "The Fall of the House of Usher", the description of the House of Usher in the first paragraph helps to create a mood of what?

Answer 1

The moody description of the House of Usher creates a sense of insufferable gloom, hopelessness, and fatalism, foreshadowing the characters' decline and reflecting on the flawed nature of humanity.

Step-by-step explanation:

In Edgar Allan Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher," the description of the House of Usher in the first paragraph sets a mood of insufferable gloom, hopelessness, and fatalism. The narrator describes his approach to the house on a 'dark and soundless day' with a pervasive feeling of gloom.

This atmosphere is intensified by the notion of reflections, both literal reflections in the tarn and metaphorical reflections of Roderick Usher's deteriorating condition and the house's decay. The story uses these reflections and the dark setting to mirror the narrator's despondency and to foreshadow the inevitable downfall of the house and Roderick Usher, as well as to grapple with the concept of humanity's own disintegration.

Answer 2

The description of the "House of Usher" in the first paragraph gave the feeling of dread, eerie and also something unwanted, creating a mood of fear and apprehension on both the narrator and the readers.

Step-by-step explanation:

Edgar Allen Poe's short story "The Fall of the House of Usher" tells the sad yet intimidating and rather scary tale of how the narrator had went to love with his friend. His experiences in the house, the numerous eerie events that he encountered and the eventual decision to flee the house all give a sense of gothic themes in the story.

The narrator describes the house as being "melancholy, ..... a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit" with "bleak walls, vacant eye-like windows, decayed trees". He also called it "this mansion of gloom", which give an expression of something terrible, dark and decaying. The dark and dreary setting of the -place did nothing good too. It rather creates the tone of apprehension which is also filled with fear not only on the readers but also on the narrator himself.