The Story of Usher Summary and Relationship to Themes

The story begins on one "...dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year...." From the very beginning, the reader, as a result of Poe's imagery, is aware of a sense of death and decay. Even the narrator, Roderick's childhood companion, describes "a sense of unbearable gloom [which] pervaded [his] spirit" as he approached the House of Usher. Setting in all works of literature is the make or break of a story. If an author does a good job the reader places his or herself in the book and sees themselves in the setting. The story begins at dusk on an autumn day in an earlier time. The place is a forbidding mansion in what is a somewhat deserted countryside. The mansion, covered by a fungus, is encircled by a small lake, called a tarn that resembles a moat. A bridge across the tarn provides access to the mansion. All these factors define the setting and provide the reader with a certain mood. Although "The Fall of the House of Usher" has no definite setting except for the "singularly dreary tract of country" through which the narrator must travel to reach the House of Usher doesn’t mean setting isn’t significant in this short story. The setting here is inside a closed atmosphere. From the time the unnamed narrator enters the House of Usher until the end of the story when he runs away in terror, the entire story is boxed within the limitations of the gloomy rooms on an oppressive autumn day where every object and sound is suiting to the over-refined and over-developed sensitivities of Roderick Usher.

There are several themes throughout the short story that go along with the many interpretive elements. Each minor theme is aided by setting. Evil as a theme, for instance has been at work in the House of Usher for generations, polluting the residents of the mansion. Roderick Usher's illness is "a constitutional and family evil . . . one for which he despaired to find a remedy," the narrator reports. Right from the start of the