The Role Of Imagination In The Fall Of The House Of Usher

Words: 564
Pages: 3
Open Document
Imagination fills in the cracks of reason, evoking mindless fear and paving the way for irrational actions and decisions. In “The Fall of the House of Usher,” published in 1839, Edgar Allen Poe utilizes imagery and tortured characters to illustrate how and when imagination overcomes reason, whereas in “House Taken Over,” published in 1947, Julio Cortázar uses realistic setting and unimpressed tone. As a child, walking by a room filled with darkness with an open door impelled me to begin running past it, to keep the monsters lurking behind me. This unreasonable fear implies that although our mind is aware of our safe surrounding, we still choose to allow imagination influence our actions.

Firstly, Poe uses imagery and tortured characters in his short story, “The Fall of the House of Usher,” to show how and when reason is overcome by imagination. His manipulation of the …show more content…
“House Taken Over” unfolds within a large family home, where the bedrooms “...faced toward Rodriguez Pena, [in a city called] Buenos Aires…” (39). This realistic setting makes the story believable to the readers - they imagine the possibilities of a supernatural being residing in a real city. And when this supernatural being invades the large family home, the characters who live in it seem unfazed, as if they had been expecting it. However, “as happened frequently, neither of [them] could fall asleep” (41). This implies that the characters really did have fear in their hearts, surprising the readers. The reader's’ creative mind begins to question this behavior, and generates an image in his or her head that tries to put a face to the unspecified invaders. Altogether, Cortázar’s use of realistic setting and unimpressed tone creates fear in the readers’ minds as they illustrate their own monster within their mind to compensate for what is missing in the
Show More

Related Documents: The Role Of Imagination In The Fall Of The House Of Usher

Common Themes In William Faulkner's The Fall Of The House Of Usher

In Edgar Allan Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher," and William Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily," the reader can identify many common themes among the characters and settings in each story. Through the use of surrealism, allegory, and symbolism, each author develops a short story full of suspense and horror as they depict the tale of two characters who are adhered to tradition, and psychologically bonded to deceased family members. In both stories the main characters are out of touch with reality…

Words 2171 - Pages 9

Romanticism: Life and Nature Essay examples

pure depth of the work. When looking at the many works it is seen that they all sometimes have something in common connecting them and opening our imagination to see the meaning of it. Nature tends to be a very common theme in the romantic writings. There is always some aspect of nature in a writers piece. In the piece "the tide rises, the tide falls" by Henry wadsworth is a very beautiful poem focused around nature and as we'll life and death. In this poem a traveler is traveling on the beach,…

Words 1095 - Pages 5

Essay on Edgar Allan Poe and Maupassant’s Stories

how the writer describes carefully the detailing of a person, place, thing, or event. Setting and description are the main elements. In the Poe’s stories ,such as “The Black cat” , “The tell-tale heart”, “The Cask of Amontillado”, and “The Fall of the House of Usher” , all these stories are constructed with the creepy environment and description through specific details in order to create the horrible mood toward audiences , and develop the character from the perfect description. Moreover, in the…

Words 1932 - Pages 8

Charles Halloway's Something Wicked This Way Comes

government took its role of protecting the people farther than physical security and into the realm of the psychological. It repressed anything it perceived as causing disagreements, biases, fear, or as being unusual or disturbing. In “Carnival of Madness,” William Stendahl throws the very thing that is being repressed into the faces of those who influence and encourage the censorship. He does this by recreating the House of Usher from Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” and murdering…

Words 1678 - Pages 7

Little Girl Short Story

Heath Avenue, Apt 20C Bronx NY NY 10463 Ramatuahmed77@yahoo.com 347-603-0380 -Member, Bronx Community Board Four- [CB4] -Founder, African Life Center Ahmed/ Inspiration of a little girl Prologue The thought goes beyond imagination. The ‘little girl’ was filled with the hope to become a productive citizen. The profession she was familiar with is bus conductor, teacher, military nurse and a lawyer. Her understanding of work resonated from what she saw other adults doing in…

Words 8212 - Pages 33