Journal #23 Edgar Allan Poe: Just Spit It Out Already!

QUOTE:

“The writer spoke of acute bodily illness – of a pitiable mental idiosyncrasy which oppressed him – and of an earnest desire to see me” (Poe 1554).


SUMMARY:

Usher writes to the narrator of The Fall of the House of Usher about his peculiarity, which he feels requires him a friend to help cheer him up.


RESPONSE:

What a wonderful beginning for a ghost story! It seems like the setup for every scary/horror story or film, and those are always fun to read. However, it took me three different attempts at reading The Fall of the House of Usher to actually finish the darn thing! I had to finally use two different carpools with my mom and a reading during a dinner with my mom and dad to get through Poe’s story; and this was reading it out loud to them. My mom even said that many of the long-winded and almost tedious sentences were leaving her gasping for air. Maybe Poe’s story was meant to be especially scary for the claustrophobic? We did notice however, that after the “song” Usher sings, the story starts to move more quickly and a little more easily.

Now that I’ve actually read the full story, I do like it. Some of it is a little wordy, but I can appreciate the atmosphere Poe is creating with his words. It’s actually a creepy story, and I can even picture everything happening as like a little movie playing in my head. I even think my dad was saying something about a movie of this story being made with Vincent Price? Now I want to see that movie, even though I doubt it will be as good as the book! I guess now that I’ve gotten through the whole thing, to answer the question on the quiz about who dies in the story; I would say that Usher dies, his sister Madeline dies, and the house dies as well! (But I like my answer too, the dragon dies!)