Journal #24 Edgar Allan Poe: It's Alive! The House Is Alive! MWAHAHA!

QUOTE:

“While I gazed, this fissure rapidly widened – there came a fierce breath of the whirlwind – the entire orb of the satellite burst at once upon my sight…and the deep and dank tarn at my feet closed sullenly and silently over the fragments of the ”House of Usher” (Poe 1565).


SUMMARY:

This is when the House of Usher literally falls. It’s almost as if the house was alive, and then dies by completely disappearing into the earth.


RESPONSE:

This ending of the story becomes so frantic; I can imagine it happening like the countdown until a bomb will explode in many action movies. It almost seems like the house was alive though, I mean, what happened?! Madeline of Usher comes back and everything crumbles. Madeline also kills her brother by falling on him! He experiences so much terror from her not being dead after all, that he dies as she dies too. I would say that something seems amiss, if The Fall of the House of Usher weren’t supposed to be a fictional story meant to frighten its readers.

I said in my other journal that I’d like to see the movie, maybe, because I think it would be very dramatic and suspenseful to see everything happening at once. However, maybe I would just like to see a movie come out like next year, with all of the amazing special effects cinematographers can put in their movies. I’m not saying, however, that Poe’s story needs to rely on special effects. I just think that his explicit descriptions of everything from the atmosphere around it to the house itself, to the frightening and sickly seeming Roderick Usher, probably need some C.G.I. graphics to do them justice.

As for the house being alive, something about the grounds around the structure, as well as the large and seemingly impressive edifice itself, almost make me imagine a living house. Maybe in a movie with cool graphics, the house could even be constantly changing throughout the story! (Now I’m getting carried away!)